You Might Want to Know - ICBMs Arriving - XI. Entry
XI. Entry
Thirty miles later, I had learned more about Lt. Roy’s wife Holly, who was very pregnant, you could see that right away. I learned she was also a teacher, and I could see that this wasn’t just a job she had. She really was one. “Teacher” is a term of high praise in my lexicon, higher than, say, “executive,” though I suppose the ideal would be to be both. Lt. Roy was also interested in teaching, he’d told me, maybe at the Air Force Academy. He’d be teaching me today. What he was allowed to, anyway.
And then we were into western Nebraska. You couldn’t tell from the terrain. It was still the same rolling buff and brown winter-blasted prairie.
By now Lt. Roy had explained some things.
Each Launch Control Center is in charge of a “flight” of Minuteman missiles, ten in each flight. The missiles themselves are some miles away from the Launch Control Center in unmanned silos that are connected to the LCC by big buried cables. His “flight” was in the 320th Squadron. A “squadron” has five “flights” in it, which means each squadron is in charge of fifty ICBMs. His “wing” had two other squadrons in it.
Any of the five launch control centers in a squadron was capable of launching not only its flight of ten ICBMs but the ICBMs of the other four flights in the squadron. That meant that from his Launch Control Center Lt. Roy could launch fifty Minuteman III missiles, if ordered to, and if he had received the right codes, and if his Deputy Combat Crew Commander agreed. He could launch only the fifty missiles in the 320th Squadron though. The other two squadrons in his wing would have to launch their own.
A “wing” had three squadrons in it. So each wing was in charge of one hundred fifty missiles. That’s how many there were in the 90th Missile Wing at F. E. Warren, and in each of the other two operational wings we had, one at Malmstrom AFB in Montana and one at Minot AFB in North Dakota. For a total of 450 ICBMs now. At the moment, that’s what we thought would do the trick.
We rolled along I-80, chatting, nothing happening, passing only one town in Nebraska alongside the interstate, Kimball, population twenty-four hundred. They had a Titan I missile in the city park, it looked like, just one of the two stages. I wondered how they came by it. F. E. Warren never was assigned any Titans.
After Kimball, nothing much out there on either side of the interstate, farms, farmhouses, silos in the distance and maybe, if you knew what you were looking for, manned Missile Alert Facilities and the little bumps on top of the Minuteman III ICBMs in the unmanned underground silos.
We took the exit off I-80 at Dix, Nebraska, you might not have heard of it, and crossed under the interstate into the town. In the center of town, over on the right, a huge six- or nine-silo grain elevator rose into the air.
In no time, we were out of Dix and driving north on a straight dirt road. Lt. Roy told me that when airmen are driving on this road, they are supposed to drive no faster than twenty-five miles an hour. Lt. Roy was driving his own car today but still drove no faster than that. A couple of times, he pulled over for the pick-ups that barreled up behind us.
Nothing to see, the odd farm house, more silos, some lines of trees planted as windbreaks, and then we turned right onto a smaller dirt road and ahead of us not so far away was a low building with buff sides and a darker brownish roof, a taller shed off to its side. It looked like an installation for the National Park Service, but it was the top part of the Launch Control Facility. (Shortly after this the LCFs got to be called Missile Alert Facilities.) It had a fence around it, nothing special, just a seven- or eight-foot chain link fence with several strands of barbed wire along the top angled outward. No sentries or guard towers.
Lt. Roy told me that the Entry Authorization Letter hadn’t gotten faxed over yet. On the way out here, Lt. Roy had called into the base several times to shake the tree. As we pulled up to the facility, he learned it still hadn’t arrived. Outside the gate, we turned off to the side and parked. We would have to wait. Next to us outside the fence was a big fuel tank, for diesel fuel, it looked like. I started to step out of the vehicle and Lt. Roy told me it would be better to wait in the car. I had noticed on the fence a sign that said, “Force Condition Alpha. Restricted Area. Deadly force authorized.” I didn’t know what Force Condition Alpha meant but I did understand the rest. I got back in the car.
Lt. Roy had to make a long commute to pull his alerts. I had to go to the bathroom.
While we waited, I saw a black Silverado pull up inside the fence and a guy carrying an assault rifle and wearing a side arm get out and go into the building. Parked behind the shed north of the building I now noticed two dun-colored Humvees with machine guns mounted on top of them.
Finally, thank goodness, the gate began to slide open, all by itself. We backed out of our spot outside the fence and drove inside. We got out of Lieutenant Roy’s car and went in the door I’d seen the armed guy go into. I really had to go now. First thing was the Men’s Room, straight ahead and to the left, Lieutenant Roy said. I passed through a Rec Area, I’d check it out more carefully on the way back.
That’s much better. Lieutenant Roy is a much younger man, but he had joined me in there. On the way back he pointed out some rooms where overnight guests could stay, the “DVs,” distinguished visitors. Members of Congress, maybe. These days, maybe some Russians during Cheyenne’s Frontier Days. Two sets of bunk beds in a room as spare as a college dorm room except for the high-backed black leather-look office chair at the desk. In the Rec Room a stove and refrigerator, pool and ping-pong tables, the box on legs of a foosball game, and some couches. TV? I didn’t see one. There had to be one somewhere. I wondered what stations it got. Not just Fox, pleasegod. A student I had who had married an Air Force officer told me that at the base they were stationed at in Alaska, Fox was the only station they could to get. Who made that happen, I wondered?
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