Should the missile need to be fired in anger, launch instructions would indicate that either Target 1, Target 2, or Target 3 was in the crosshairs; the men firing the ICBMs never knew what the targets actually were. For North Dakotans living next to nuclear missiles, the - InForum "From a weapon of mass destruction to hosting birthday parties and weddings, that's pretty wild ride," Hill said. The Strategic Air Command facility of Little Rock Air Force Base was one of eighteen silos in the command of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing (308th SMW), specifically one of the nine silos within its 374th Strategic Missile Squadron (374th SMS), at the time of the explosion. Jimmy Roberts and Donald Green saw the explosion. Why the Air Force Wants a Stealthy Tanker by 2040, Why Runaway Mines Are Detonating in the Black Sea, How This Humble Drone Shrugs Off Russian Jamming. Bottom: Damascus after the explosion. But not before my kids donned their Star Wars Mandalorian costumes for a little photo shoot. Perhaps most famously, as the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser recounts in his book Command and Control, in 1980, a Titan II missile exploded in its silo in Damascus, Arkansas, while carrying a nuclear warhead. While these missiles were retired in 1987, the company that made them, Martin-Marietta (by then Lockheed Martin) took them back and reconditioned them for space use. Though these missiles were judged essential to the protection of the United States, storing and maintaining them proved deadly. Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) systems were . Little Rock, Conway, Searcy, Benton, Heber Springs, Fayetteville, Bentonville, Springdale, Fort Smith, Jonesboro, West Memphis, Batesville, Mountain View, Hot Springs, Pine Bluff, Texarkana, Arkadelphia. Two airmen were performing maintenance at Missile Complex 374-7, located 3 miles north of Damascus, the evening of September 18th. The Titan II Missile program was a Cold War weapons system featuring fifty-four launch complexes in three states. Not that the Air Force was sharing that information. I heard somebody yelling "Help me! The Titans sat fueled and ready to go at a moments noticebut that meant constant monitoring and maintenance. Back in September 1980, September 18, Jeff Plumb climbed into his pickup and headed toward the nuclear missile silo near a tiny town in Arkansas called Damascus. It has been painstakingly restored by GT Hill. One of the workers, Airman David P. Powell, had brought a ratchet wrench 3ft (0.9m) long weighing 25lb (11kg) into the silo instead of a torque wrench, the latter having been newly mandated by Air Force regulations. They all knew each other. We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the worlds hidden wonders. He called the station, and word spread. Happy #EmployeeAppreciationDay! The silos launch door was propelled over 600 feet from the launch complex. Our destination in the vicinity of this sleepy little town was an enormous subterranean Dvina missile silo complex, once the home of R-12 medium-range ballistic missiles (NATO designation: SS-4 Sandal) of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. From 1963 to 1987, crews maintained the missiles on 24-hour alert and were ready to initiate launch within minutes after receipt of authenticated orders from the National Command Authorities. Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. 2023 Farmers Bank & Trust. I can recall vividly the September 1980 explosion which destroyed a missile in its silo located near Damascus on the Faulkner-Van Buren County line. You can see the locations of all silos on the ICBM History page. You may know that theres an Air Force base there. Top: Vanderberg Air Force Base, for reference. You may also know that it was an important location during the Cold War, a difficult time in the US and World History. We were so used to it that it didnt scare us.. In Arkansas, three launch sites remain with both launch pads and control centers. The discovery follows the report earlier this month that China appears to be constructing 120 missile silos near Yumen in Gansu province. The missile was installed later that month at the Albion site, northwest of Searcy, Ark., but not active until May. Now she writes adventures to send her characters on journeys, too. Since it was very hot outside I asked this cadaver of a man, "What's the temperature." Active Missile Silos In The Us But the investigative crew was in a holding position for a while, and finally, around 1 a.m., Devlin and Hukle went into the silo. The blast completely destroyed the silo and sent the 750-ton silo door . [5], A 1988 television film, Disaster at Silo 7, is based on this event. The master suite is on the very top floor of the birdcage and is housed in what used to be crew quarters. I never knew we were so close to a pasture filled with grazing cattle, and where there is an abundance of cattle there is an abundance of cow pies and where there are cow pies there is an abundance of flies. Your email address will not be published. In 1965, dozens of people died after a fire started in a Titan II silo in Arkansas. If you would like to republish please give the photographer appropriate credit. I have a thyroid condition, Ayala says. For us, there were two, queen size beds set up for my children. The triad, along with assigned . Two airmen were performing maintenance at Missile Complex 374-7, located 3 miles north of Damascus, the evening of September 18th. A welder accidentally hit a hydraulic fluid line with his welding rod, which sparked a fire that quickly filled the missile shaft and sucked the oxygen out. Many people played a part in creating Arkansas as we know it today. "And we don't have any vacancies because there's a tournament in town," he spat. Pen & Quin: International Agents of Intrigue - The Mystery of the Painted Book is her debut novel. Nuclear weapons are just ideal for that., The next nuclear bomb to go off will not be delivered by a missile. The fuels so volatile, it could explode on its own, Greg Devlin, who was a 21-year old Airman in the U.S. Air Force at Damascus on the night of the explosion, tells Popular Mechanics. There are only a few places in the United States where you can tour a former nuclear missile silo, but only one with luxury accommodations where you can also host a party, and its only a few hours away. If you saw footage from the massive explosion in Beirut this past August, King says, you saw what he saw that morning. It was time-consuming and costly, but thanks to GTs determination to recover and preserve some history, you can experience it firsthand by touring or staying the night at Titan Ranch. Be sure to fill out all the fields in order to have yours selected. Where Are All The Missile Silos In The US? - On Secret Hunt Going Nuclear: Locations of Nuclear Weapons in the United - BatchGeo GT has renovated the second level to be a multipurpose space, complete with projectors, a sound system, party lights, multiple whiteboards, and tables and chairs if needed. But we dealt with hydrazine [the fuel] and nitrogen tetroxide [the oxidizer] every day. Fuel vapor started to fill the silo. I . 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China Is Building A Second Nuclear Missile Silo Field Airbnb feels you, so now you can for $324 a night. Titan Ranch, located just northeast of Conway, Arkansas, is one of these nuclear missile bases. Miraculously, only one person died: Livingston, in a local hospital the day after the explosion of pulmonary edema, sometimes called dry drowning. [7][8], Livingston died at the hospital, and 21 others in the immediate vicinity of the blast sustained various injuries; Kennedy struggled with respiratory issues from inhaling oxidizer but survived. A piece of Cold War history is now available as an Airbnb property.. Titan Ranch, located at 23 Missile Base Road in Vilonia, Arkansas, offers renters the chance to spend a night underground in a converted intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) facility.The facility was one of 18 underground Titan II missile silos in Arkansas that helped form the backbone of the United States' nuclear . It took six years to retire the missiles, demolish the launch ducts and fill in the silos with debris. Arkansas was home to 18 Titan II ICBMs in a missile field located north of Conway. The Titan II ICBM Missile Silo 374-7 Site, located west of U.S. 65, 1.7 miles north of intersection with Arkansas Highway 124 near Southside in Van Buren County, is nationally significant by virtue of its unique and exceptionally important history within the Titan II program: it was the site of a September 1980 accident that severely damaged . There are no windows in the space and no inclination that the sun had retreated and the moon was up. Airbnb in New Mexico is a missile silo from Cold War - The Sacramento Bee He was the first Native American ever inducted into the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2007. King and Phillips arrived at the site at the same time as Van Buren County Sheriff Gus Anglin, and they were all greeted by military security personnel, who told them no evacuation of the area was necessary at that point. Arkansas' missiles were manned and operated by airmen from the Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville, Arkansas, with air bases near Tucson, Arizona, and Wichita, Kansas, maintaining nearby Titan II silos there. The first thing that makes this particular route interesting is the still active missile silos that dot the highway from Kimball to the Colorado border. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused! Entering the next space, where the computers and control units would have been, you can still see the places on the floor where the desks with the key slots sat when it was an active site. Despite the size of the explosion, no one was hurt in the accident: The second-set of recently reinforced blast doors held. As if they didn't have enough to worry about. Cleaning Up America's Worst Nuclear Waste Dump, Why Russian Hybrid Warfare Failed in Ukraine, Titan II: A History of a Cold War Missile Program, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. We backed out of the room quickly and asked for another room. It took about 15 minutes to load the fuel and move the Titan I into position before firingnot a great selling point when every second might count.