A high-end master bedroom, spacious living room and stainless steel kitchen gives a visitor the feeling of visiting a supervillain's lair more than a military facility engineered for Armageddon. To this day, those Titan II targets remain classified, he said. A 1961 decommissioned Atlas-F intercontinental ballistic missile silo complex is for sale. Many were built in Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. However, thanks to the ingenuity and tenacity of one person with a unique determination, one of those missile sites have been renovated into a luxury rental that you can stay in! The aim was to bring the weapon right up to the point where it could be launched, without actually sending it off: They needed to know the missile would be ready to use in attack, if needed. A total of 54 Titan II missiles, capable of going from launch to a target 8,000 miles away in about half an hour, were installed in Arizona, Kansas, and Arkansas. 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion - Wikipedia Decommissioning the former missile silos included destroying the top 25 feet of each silo and the access portal and elevator to the LCC. For a one-night stay, I would recommend bringing all of your own food. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. 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. You can see the locations of all silos on the ICBM History page. Designed by The Twiggs Group. He can be reached at editor@nsweekly.com. 2010 Native Sun News. But somethinglater determined to be an elevator malfunctionwent wrong. He started the radio station after his previous employer, Dogpatch, a Li'l Abner theme park, went belly-up. Airmen Jeffrey Plumb and David Powell were in the silo working on the missile. Basically, you crawl 10 feet and then it's a 50-foot ladder," Hill said. 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. The nuclear warhead was also ejected from the missile silo. GT and Nick met us again to check out and we got to see a sneak peek into the other side of the complex. Mondale and Jimmy Carter lost their bid for re-election in 1980. We always take Highway 71 South taking us through Kimball, Nebraska and Limon, Colorado coming out at Highway 25 at Trinidad, Colorado. Crews of four men would work 24-hour shifts, followed by 24 hours off. Tell Us About the Most Amazing Parts of Tulsa, Oklahoma! The air turned white and chunks of steel-reinforced concrete fell out of the sky after the fuel ignited. This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. The idea is no longer to win a nuclear war, but to prevent one from starting, Chuck Penson, who recently retired as historian for the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona, tells Popular Mechanics. You think things will take a year, but they really take five years.". They tried to recreate it in an empty silo, and it bounced into the wall. It took a while to locate the nine-megaton nuclear warhead in the dark and gloom; it was still intact and not leaking. U.S. Nuclear Missile SILO Fields Maps and Coordinates - NYPrepper Titan Ranch missile control center comes with a full kitchen, stocked with drinks refrigerator, and a massive projector equipped with multiple movie streaming options along with some saved movies. locate Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. 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. Two airmen were performing maintenance at Missile Complex 374-7, located 3 miles north of Damascus, the evening of September 18th. Because their vapor detectors indicated an explosive atmosphere, the two were ordered to evacuate. The only thought I had at that point was, I know Im a dead man. Oh yes, Jackie's checkup, despite her MS, showed her to be in excellent health. Crews of four men would work 24-hour shifts, followed by 24 hours off. A WWII Bomb Has Been Found at the Fukushima Nuclear Site, Dozens of Previously Hidden Nuclear Test Videos Declassified, Uploaded to YouTube, In the 1960s, Telegraph Poles Were Equipped With Nuclear Bomb Alarms, Decades Ago, the U.S. Military Set Off a Nuke Underwater, And It Went Very Badly. Top: Vanderberg Air Force Base, for reference. Then we realized what it was and started grabbing for masks.. The following is a list of active missiles of the United States military. Wed been there for a while, and we were like, Send us in or send us home, Devlin recalls. Whiteman Air Force Base (AFB) was headquarters for the 510th Strategic Missile Squadron of the 351st Strategic Missile Wing, consisting of 150 Minuteman II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silos and 15 launch control facilities spread over 14 counties of west central Missouri . It never bounced into the missile.. Titan Ranch has a little gift shop with some fun coffee mugs and t-shirts and I bought my kids t-shirts. Nuclear Ukraine: Inside The Missile Base That Could Have Changed History 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. Titan Ranch is located in Vilonia, Arkansas, just northeast of Conway. Two airmen were performing maintenance at Missile Complex 374-7, located 3 miles north of Damascus, the evening of September 18th. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into space in 1957, it made the idea of long-range nuclear bombers obsolete. Sid King had just sat down to dinner on September 18, 1980 when he got the call. [8][17], Jeff Plumb's account of his role in the incident was featured in a 2017 episode of WBEZ's This American Life. Jimmy Roberts and Donald Green saw the explosion. I . The initial PTS team was sent home. They were given codes on paper, to be confirmed by the crew in place for a changeover, and the paper was burned. "Two officers would each turn a key, and 58 seconds later the Titan II would be out the door," Hill said. The remaining half, the author David K. Stumpf writes in Titan II: A History of the Cold War Missile Program, had launched into the air and spun 180 degrees before landing back on the ground. Pen & Quin: International Agents of Intrigue - The Mystery of the Painted Book is her debut novel. Had the Cold War ever turned hot, it was capable of being launched in one minute and could deliverits 9 megaton warhead to a target 9,000 miles away. So the Titans stayed in placeand demonstrated time and again their peril. King decided to hang around. The nuclear missile next door - MSN 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. After the accident, the area around the missile silo was littered with debrisboulders of concrete, giant springs, pieces of navigation systems. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, National Register of Historic Places listings in Van Buren County, Arkansas, "Titan II Missile Explosion (1980) Encyclopedia of Arkansas", "Missile silo blast kills 1, hurts 21; no radiation leak", "Colonel Replaced in Action Linked to Fatal Titan Explosion", "Command and Control American Experience WGBH PBS", "Air Force truck removes damaged warhead", "Titan warhead flown to nuclear arms plant", "Season 4, Episode 4 Nuke Kids on the Block", "The night we almost lost Arkansas a 1980 nuclear Armageddon that almost was", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion&oldid=1137032445, National Register of Historic Places in Van Buren County, Arkansas, September 1980 events in the United States, Nuclear accidents and incidents in the United States, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 2 February 2023, at 12:19. But spend any amount of time here and you'll forget that you're underground," he said. The 308th SMW was the last active titan wing, but after 23 years of continuous service, the ICBM mission at Little Rock AFB was over. Theres a real risk right now. Now she writes adventures to send her characters on journeys, too. The first Titan II missile in Arkansas was installed in a silo near Searcy in 1963. After a decommissioned Titan II missile silo in Arizona was sold in just two weeks late last year, two more desert silos . It was the same warhead that had been atop the missile during the deadly Searcy fire 15 years earlier. Incredible Missile Silos In Arkansas For Sale References Where's this story? By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. Little Rock, Conway, Searcy, Benton, Heber Springs, Fayetteville, Bentonville, Springdale, Fort Smith, Jonesboro, West Memphis, Batesville, Mountain View, Hot Springs, Pine Bluff, Texarkana, Arkadelphia. Its worth it, I promise. "We could excavate it, but if you think about it, it's like, 'Why?' By 9 p.m. the Air Force had a team on site and began evacuating personnel as well as some local residents. [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. The Titan II's earth-shattering payload was 30 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Deactivated silos were located in Arizona, California, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, New York, South Dakota, Texas, and Washington. "That way if there was a nuclear explosion, they always wanted to have one door closed to protect the facility," Hill said. 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. John Hooks Well, first we got to dig into how they got here in the first place. Arkansas was home to 18 Titan II ICBMs in a missile field located north of Conway. (February 2011) Air-to-air missiles. What you may not know is that at one time, there were 18 ICBM (intercontinental nuclear missile) silos surrounding the Little Rock area. During the 25-year period of operations, Arkansas experienced two disasters connected to the missiles. Powell was working on a Titan II missile fitted with a thermonuclear warhead, tucked away underground in Damascus, Arkansas. We need your stories about the city's hidden corners and unusual places. Eighteen were in Arkansas, from which intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nine-megaton nuclear warheads could be launched to strike targets as far as 5,500 miles away. Livingston was posthumously promoted to staff sergeant. He said, "The same as it was when you came in." Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 7 . Hill said he had no plans to excavate the silo in the immediate future. Senator David Pryor's office had been concerned about the safety of the Titan sites since January 1978 when a cloud of toxic vapor was accidentally released at the Damascus launch site, resulting in four hospitalizations. On September 19, 1980, a second tragedy struck the 308th Strategic Missile Wing. After the missiles were retired, they were again used as space launchcraft until the last one was launched in 2003. You don't know who you were killing. Titan Ranch began hosting conferences and meetings in 2019, and added its AirBnB listing in November 2020. We always take Highway 71 South taking us through Kimball, Nebraska and Limon, Colorado coming out at Highway 25 at Trinidad, Colorado. Construction on the Minuteman II structures began in 1946. Incredible Active Missile Silos In Arkansas Ideas. file size: 5 MB. 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. As my stepdaughter Sarah, a rodeo girl, used to say about the distance between Rapid City and Faith, South Dakota when asked the distance, "About as far as you can drive and 20 miles more." Vince Guerrieri is a writer based in the Cleveland area. Two years earlier, a trailer at Damascus leaked oxidizer, the component that mixes with rocket fuel to propel a rocket into space or toward a strategic target. The former disaster took far more lives, but the Damascus explosion posed a far greater potential threat because the missile was armed with its warhead at the time. Rex Peters was up to get a blood pressure pill. There do remain some active missile silos, in montana, north dakota, and at warren air force base, which is in both colorado and wyoming. Print Headline: The Titan missile silo disasters. October 18, 2021. The first ICBMs, called Atlas, were ready by 1959 and deployed at air force bases around the nation. But not before my kids donned their Star Wars Mandalorian costumes for a little photo shoot. It was still dark outside early the next morning when we dropped the room key in the office mailbox and boogied down the highway eager to get back to good old Rapid City. Once through the blast doors, visitors enter Level 2, which is the former operations center where the officers would initiate the order to launch the ICBM. Explosive era: Tour visits site where Titan II blast in 1980 sent USS Cyclops Is the Navys Last Missing Big Ship, Russias New Warhead Is an Engine of Destruction, How Drones and Sats Have Given Ukraine a Chance. Two More Titan II Nuclear Missile Silos Blast Onto the Market in Arizona These sites in Springhill in Faulkner County, Southside in Van Buren County and Center Hill in White County are now on the National Register of Historic Places. The Titan II, on the other hand, had a longer range and could be used for defense as well as for the nations nascent space program. This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. The site was closed, and President Ronald Reagan chose to retire the Titan II missile program, announcing his decision a year after the Damascus Titan II missile explosion. As if they didn't have enough to worry about. The aerozine 50 fuel immediately began leaking into the launch duct. Fuel vapor started to fill the silo. See. Copyright 2023, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. Visitors to Titan Ranch stay inside the former ICBM facility's launch control center (LCC), located 50 feet underground. On the night of September 18, 1980, a Titan II missile carrying a thermonuclear warhead exploded in rural Arkansas. To Find America's Nuclear Missiles, Try Google Maps 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. The silos were of necessity deep, about 150 feet. Of course the flies didn't swarm on us until we opened the tailgate and started to prepare our lunch. Out of 55 workers, only two survived. The most common sites have been the . The 390th Strategic Missile Wing, headquartered at Davis-Monthan AFB, Tucson, was active from 1962-84 and had command of the 18 sites in Southern Arizona. 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. While researching what was going to be a book about warfare in space, journalist Eric Schlosser heard the story of the Damascus explosion. All rights reserved. Civilian construction workers were working in all nine levels of the launch duct, painting and flushing the hydraulic systems that operated the steel platforms beside the missile. We met with Nick, one of the current hosts, who led us down the steps into the bunker. "This whole facility was designed to shake to survive in case of war," Hill said. This design allows the structure to absorb the force from a nearby nuclear strike, with eight giant springs serving as shock absorbers. 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