In Which I Turn the Key To Destroy the World

With all the time I had in Tucson,  I knew I had to see some of the traditional tourist sights. I often get tied up with a work, and the days goes by, just as if I were a local. But if I leave a place without having seen some of the "must see" things, it feels as if I missed the essence of being there.

When looking on the map of the area, I noticed the Titan Missile Museum a few miles south of town on the Interstate. It is basically a preserved nuclear missile silo. The last time I had taught college physics, I had used the history of rocketry as a theme. This was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

My uncle, who is an engineer at a well-known electronics manufacturer, readily endorsed the choice, telling me that he had taken my grandfather there, and that "it was like being back in the 1950s."

After having spent most of Sunday working in my hotel room, I allowed myself to take Monday afternoon off. I drove south on the Interstate a few miles to the exit in the small town where the museum was.

The visitor center was small plain building. I paid nine fifty for the entrance. I was just in time for the tour. I took a seat in small room where man was giving a lecture about the history of the facility. Of the two dozen people in the room, I looked to be the youngest by many years.

The Titan II missile program, I learned, had been started in the early 1960s to replace the earlier generation of Titan I and Atlas missiles. That earlier generation had used liquid oxygen as a propellent. Although it functions great as rocket fuel, it is highly unstable, and had to be stored outside the engine, until launch. Loading it required almost an hour---an eternity in a nuclear attack. so the Titan II was designed with a more stable propellant. The missile could be launched in less than a minute.

I learned that the facility was one of 54 Titan II sites spread out over three locations in Arkansas, Kansas, and Arizona, and operated by the Air Force They had been decommissioned in 1982 by the Reagan administration so that the funds could be used for a newer program, the Minuteman III. Hearing about all this brought back memories to high school, when all of this was in the process of happening, especially the MX program that Reagan wanted but which never happened because of lack of funding. My fascination with the Cold War nuclear strategy was one of the reasons I went to Georgetown.

A video tape told us about the security procedures of how the crew checked in for each 24-hour "alert," as they were called. At each stage, one had to pick up and phone and get clearance from the crew inside. It all seemed quaint and old-fashioned by today's security standards--yet it worked. We also learned about the "tipsies," the scoop-like security devices around the silo cover that sent invisible laser beams back and forth, and which alerted the crew to any security breach on the ground.

Afterwards,  the volunteer giving us our briefing told me to put on a blue hard hat, since I was over five foot ten. He led us outside and down a flight of metal stairs past the "Beware of Rattlesnakes" signs. It was an issue out of the desert, he said, especially when no one used the stairs for twenty four hours.

We entered through the thick steel door that guaranteed temporary survival from a nearby hit, and passed the light fixtures suspended from springs, and into the underground control room that turned out to be a suspended within its shell by huge springs to absorb the shock of an attack, in order to allow the crew to launch the missile according to any orders received.

My uncle had been right. It was like a trip back in time. The control room was lined by banks of period electronics, gauges, and dials. The shelves were full of three-ring binders of checklists and manuals.

Our tour guide inside the solo was a woman who had been the first female commander of a Titan II installation, during the last few years of the program in the 1980s. She explained what all the computers were for---guide systems, targets and status monitors. The crew never knew what the target actually was, she said. All they knew was whether the burst would happen in the air above the target or at ground level.

She explained how the launch orders came (or didn't come, as it happened), via a radio alert followed by a long series of letters and numbers that the two crew members had to copy down simultaneously and then compare. Then they went to a safe that had to be unlocked by both of them, to retrieve the correct paper envelope. Inside the envelope was a verification key to be compared with the numbers and letters they received. This would verify that the order to launch had come from the president.

Then each of the two crew members had to turn and hold their keys at the same time. The keyholes were located such that no one person could reach them both at the same time. It was a complicated procedure, in way, yet very simple---the only thing standing between the world and nuclear war.

After explaining how it worked, she asked for a volunteer to play "commander" for a launch simulation. When no one else volunteered, I stepped forward and raised my hand. She told me to sit in the commander's chair in front of the control monitor.

She was to play the deputy. She told me to give a countdown to launch, which I did in crisp military fashion. Then we both turned our keys and held them in position for four seconds. At that point series of lights on the control panel started to go on, indicating that had this been a real scenario, the rocket engines were powering up, and the silo cover was being pulled back. After 58 seconds, like clockwork, the launch light came. At that point, there would have no way in the world to recall or disarm the missile. The fate of the world would have been sealed.

A few minutes later, our guide led us down a long tight science-fictionesque hallway to the silo. Through several small windows. one could see the missile itself,  one of the few remaining in existence from the program. It was enormous and gloriously beautiful in dull metallic silver and black, with the words US AIR FORCE on the side. The Titan II missiles had been adapted for the Gemini space program in 1965-1966, and seeing one of them brought back flashes to memories from early childhood. I always felt privileged to have grown up them, amidst all that incredible optimism and spirit of adventure.

The tour lasted about an hour until we were above ground again. It was definitely one of the highlights of my tour. Such an awesome facility, and needless to say, so much more awesome that it never had to be used for its intended purpose.