Today's History Lesson

 

Today Bill and I visited the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, a small town about 20 miles south of Tucson.  What an interesting history lesson!  Our first stop was in the visitor center, where we purchased tickets for the 12:00 tour.  Once again, we took advantage of our Tuscon Attractions Passport and were able to get two tickets for the price of one.

 

After spending time in southern Arizona, we are getting used to seeing friendly reminders such as this:

 

Our tour began in the "briefing" room where we watched a 10-minute video showing us what we could expect on the tour.  Our tour began outside.  Here is our tour guide, Mike, talking about the missile engine.

 

Here is the re-entry capsule.  This capsule contained the hydrogen bomb and was the nose cone of the missile.

At one time there were over 50 of these Titan II missiles in three states:  Arkansas, Kansas, and of course, Arizona.  They were built in the 1960's and decommissioned in 1982 through 1987, in accordance with the SALT treaty.  The SALT treaty allowed one of the  silos to remain open as a museum.  Of course the U.S. had to prove to Russia that the missile was unusable.  In fact, the missile at the museum is a training missile and never had fuel or a bomb in it.  The museum's underground silo is opened permanently, and glass covered, so visitors can see the missile.

Next, the tour went below ground, into the control center.  Although this was state of the art electronics at the time, it looked like an old movie set to me.  During the years this missile was on "stand-by," the Control Center was manned by four U.S. Air Force airman, two officers and two enlisted.  Each group of four provided coverage for a 48 hour period.

 

I found it interesting to learn that had these guys received the orders to launch, it would have taken about one minute to launch the missile.  And once the "launch" button was pressed, there was no turning back.  Thank goodness, they never received the order.

Here is the countdown clock. Mike, the tour guide, said if the crew had received orders to launch, they would have written the launch time on the face of this clock with a grease pencil.

Once our group cleared out of the control center, I took a seat in the Commanding Officer's chair.  Man, what power back in the day!

What a great history lesson!  And to think all of this is 35 feet underground.  A visit to the Titan Missile Museum is well worth it!  And if you are ever in Badlands National Park in South Dakota, make sure you visit the nearby Minuteman Museum for another great history lesson.

We also learned that many of the other missile silos that were decommissioned were sold to private parties.  While Bill was putzing on-line, he came across an ad where you can buy your very own missile complex.  Click here to take a look.