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 . Senior Airman David Livingston, one of the two airmen on the scene, died from injuries sustained during the explosion. Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. 40 Years Ago, We Almost Blew Up Arkansas. "And we don't have any vacancies because there's a tournament in town," he spat. What Happens When a Giant Nuclear Missile Accidentally Falls Back Into Its Silo. The explosion blew the silo blast doors off and sent chunks of debris flying everywhere, including the nine-megaton nuclear warhead that sat atop the missile. The process was eye-opening, and a great history lesson. The blast completely destroyed the silo and sent the 750-ton silo door . At the end of the 1950s, the United States military began developing the Titans as part of its growing supply of intercontinental ballistic missiles. On September 19, 1980, a second tragedy struck the 308th Strategic Missile Wing. Miraculously, only one person died: Livingston, in a local hospital the day after the explosion of pulmonary edema, sometimes called dry drowning. On Sept. 19, 1980, a silo near Damascus, Arkansas, exploded, killing one airman. These sites stayed active until President George H.W. A look inside Level 2 of the Titan Ranch in Vilonia, a decommissioned Titan II nuclear missile facility, featuring two-queen sized beds and a spiral staircase. 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. View of the nose of a Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile sitting in its 150-foot deep underground launch pad at McConnell Air Force Base near Wichita, Kansas, circa 1965. The discovery of what appear to be hundreds of new missile silos under construction in China has inspired arguments that imply the United States needs more nuclear weapons. It was the loudest explosion Id ever heard in my lifebefore or since, Devlin says. It was sitting there at a moments notice, and putting the enemy on notice that they couldnt win the war.. Then we realized what it was and started grabbing for masks.. The team was then ordered to reenter the silo to turn on an exhaust fan. Nobodys saying its from that, but nobody else in my family has a thyroid condition.. Ultimately, the Titan system was declared to be essentially reliable, though minor changes were recommended. Greg Devlin and his wife, Annette, in 1980. It is eerie to see military vehicles and military personnel going to and from these scary silos in the middle of wheat country. Two airmen were performing maintenance at Missile Complex 374-7, located 3 miles north of Damascus, the evening of September 18th. The complexes were grouped together in missile fields. 75) of Scorpion is largely based on this event. Winner will be selected at random on 04/01/2023. Delta- 09 was believed to be assigned the name "Cassandra's Missile . The missiles were stored in massive underground silos, which were constructed in the early 1960s and closed in the early 1980s. They stood 103 feet tall and had a range of 9,300 miles. An airman dropped a wrench socket and it fell 80 . This hidden gem, a former missile silo in Vilonia, Arkansas, was designed not only to survive a nuclear explosion, but also launch a nuclear . tercontinental ballistic missile wing, has the largest number of active fense Council (NRDC) and Hans M. Krisair force weapons. A missile took 15 minutes to launch and had to be fueled with a highly flammable mix of kerosene and liquid oxygen. While the Polaris, a solid-fuel missile, was developed at the same time as the Titan missiles for use in submarines, the military was attached to the Titan II for diplomatic reasons. The countdown to launch started and thenright before the signal to ignite the rocket would have been givenit was stopped. by Tom Dillard | May 19, 2019 at 1:45 a.m. Two of the most serious disasters to plague the Titan II missile program during the Cold War occurred in Arkansas. But the effects of the explosion and working with the potentially toxic fuel linger for many of the airmen who were on site. "Every bullet and bomb used in World War II including the two atomic bombs was only half the yield of what a Titan II was capable of," said Titan Ranch owner GT Hill, who doubles as the facility's historian and tour guide. His weekly column won the H. L. Mencken Award in 1985. 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. But somethinglater determined to be an elevator malfunctionwent wrong. The Air Force decided to take measures to improve security within the launch complexes. On Aug. 9, 1965, a fire and the resulting loss of oxygen in a silo near Searcy, Arkansas, killed 53 people, most of them civilian repairmen doing maintenance on the facility. At about 6:30 p.m. Sept. 18, 1980, an airman working on the missile dropped a wrench socket, which fell 80 feet before hitting and piercing the rocket's first-stage fuel tank, causing a leak, but not an immediate explosion. The 18 Arkansas Titan II sites were a third of the total Titan II fleet in service from 1963 until 1984. [5] The 8lb (3.6kg) socket fell off the ratchet and dropped approximately 80 feet (24m) before bouncing off a thrust mount and piercing the missile's skin over the first-stage fuel tank, causing it to leak a cloud of its aerozine 50 fuel. The Damascus incident was front page news for at least a few days. The missile was installed later that month at the Albion site, northwest of Searcy, Ark., but not active until May. Level 3 now serves as the living room and kitchen area. This photograph is considered public domain and has been cleared for release. Nuclear weapons are just ideal for that., The next nuclear bomb to go off will not be delivered by a missile. Twenty years ago Kansas, Arkansas and Arizona were littered with nuclear missiles, ready to be deployed at a moment's notice. Find out more at KSMitchell.com. Offer subject to change without notice. The situation was critical. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Its a lot of heavy information in a short time, but worth absorbing every minute of it. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. Here are some maps showing the locations of U.S. Minuteman III ICBM silo's along with coordinates. At a station that small, King couldnt afford to specialize. These were giant rockets, designed to fly long distances while carrying nuclear weapons. Today they are still used, although . The lake was blue and beautiful and we parked about 25 yards away and opened the hatch of our SUV intent on a nice, tailgate lunch. Airbnb feels you, so now you can for $324 a night. Fueled and ready to go 24 hours a day, Titan IIs could be ready to go at a moment's notice. Kimberly S. Mitchell loves journeys, real or imagined. Matthew Kroenig, a Defense Department adviser during the Trump administration, suggested in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that "the Pentagon should . When in service, the 110-foot long, 10-foot wide Titan II missile carried the largest warhead the United States military ever placed on an ICBM. Titan Ranch has a little gift shop with some fun coffee mugs and t-shirts and I bought my kids t-shirts. The missiles were shipped off to a base in Utah, and the silos were destroyed. We stopped at Rockyford, Colorado about 6 p.m. and walked into the lobby of the only motel in town. By comparison, a house my be blown down by 5 psi of pressure, he said. After finally reaching Limon we discovered that two of the three motels in town had shut down and the only one open, the KS Motel, was it. The police facilitating the movement of the population in Little Rock following the explosion at Damascus. Pieces of debris were taken away from the 400 acres (1.6km2) surrounding the facility, and the site was buried under a mound of gravel, soil, and small concrete debris. After a half hourthey could only stay in the silo that long because of their oxygen tanksthey came back up. On the night of September 18, 1980, a Titan II missile carrying a thermonuclear warhead exploded in rural Arkansas. Before the unit inactivated, a Mark VI re-entry vehicle from the last Titan II ICBM on alert status in Strategic Air Command was dedicated in Heritage Park. The facility was one of 18 underground Titan II missile silos in Arkansas that helped formthe backbone of the United States' nuclear arsenal from the 1960s until the 1980s. How far is it from Rockyford to Limon? While renovating, GT decided to put in a spiral staircase to save space and it adds to the industrial ambiance. [2][12] The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 18, 2000. The high water table in Arkansas meant that without regular maintenance the bottom of the facility was prone to flood with groundwater. The Pentagon plans to spend $264 billion on its next-generation ICBM program, which . 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. Dig for Fossils in Northeast Texas. A socket like the one that punctured the missiles hull. 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. document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Only in Arkansas. October 18, 2021. Titan I missiles were stored in silo lifts and had to be raised to the surface to be fueled before launch. The entire motel was quite ramshackled and we entered number 20 with trepidation. Offer available only in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). The Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs is famous across the state and [] Titan II was a nuclear-tipped missile, also known as an intercontinental ballistic missile, designed to [], [] the early 1960s, the Air Force built 18 Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Silos in Arkansas. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into space in 1957, it made the idea of long-range nuclear bombers obsolete. 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. [2] The warhead landed a short distance away and no radioactive material was lost. As was the case with the Pangburn disaster, the explosion at the Damascus launch site resulted from routine maintenance work. [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. Tell Us About the Most Amazing Parts of Tulsa, Oklahoma! President Ronald Reagan announced the retirement of the Titan II program, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. In 1965, dozens of people died after a fire started in a Titan II silo in Arkansas. A total of 21 people were injured. However, a new threat arose from the growing heat inside the silo. Possibly a fuel leak. The Air Force-owned property houses the only remaining Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile complex left of the 54 that were active during the Cold War. Air Force personnel were evacuated, and a civilian evacuation soon followed as concerns grew that the empty fuel tank could collapse and bring the rest of the rocket and missile down on top of it. They were Titan II missile silos that housed nuclear weapons on a Gemini rocket, designed to be launched into space in under one minute. A look inside Level 3 of the Titan Ranch in Vilonia, featuring the facility's emergency escape tunnel and ladder. The initial explosion catapulted the 740-ton silo door away from the silo and ejected the second stage and warhead. The missile survived the fires and was not damaged. The blast and thermal effects within a dozen miles or so of each of these silo's will be deadly, and the fallout radiation will . The AirBnB listing even drew the attention of a couple central Arkansas musicians, who filmed three music videos inside the facility. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. Your email address will not be published. DoD image must be made in compliance with guidance found at On May 22, 1958, a crew was servicing Nike missiles at a site in Middletown, N.J. One missile exploded, starting a chain reaction that set off seven others, causing what the Associated Press . "It's all illuminated. A far more deadly disaster struck a Titan launch site near Searcy in White County on Aug. 9, 1965, resulting in the deaths of 53 men. The following is a list of active missiles of the United States military. Its worth it, I promise. The second airmen survived his injuries, while 21 others suffered injuries from the blast and following rescue operation and cleanup. John Hooks Well, first we got to dig into how they got here in the first place. They all knew each other. The rental space is inside what was once the crew quarters and missile launch control center. During the Cold War, Arkansas played a role in the protection of the nation by housing a series of intercontinental ballistic missiles across otherwise peaceful farmland. All rights reserved. But we dealt with hydrazine [the fuel] and nitrogen tetroxide [the oxidizer] every day. The first Titan II missile in Arkansas was installed in a silo near Searcy in 1963. This time, Livingston and Kennedy went down. You have to try it to see what I mean. Moving down from level two is the kitchen and entertainment space on level one. God, help me! Two of the most serious disasters to plague the Titan II missile program during the Cold War occurred in Arkansas. Happy #EmployeeAppreciationDay! You may also know that it was an important location during the Cold War, a difficult time in the US and World History.

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