Word: vandenberg
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...quietest and perhaps most meaningful news was that the Air Force was getting ready this week to fire an intermediate range Thor from a brand-new base perched on a jagged coastal saucer 168 miles northwest of Los Angeles-Strategic Air Command's Vandenberg Air Force Base. The West Coast missile complex is designed to take up where Cape Canaveral leaves off; i.e., primarily to shoot operational missiles and train crews to handle them. One Western advantage : satellites can be flung thence into polar orbits (see diagram) without hazard to populated areas...
Gantries & Sentries. Named for the late Air Force Chief of Staff (1948-53) General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, the new base is abuilding on 64,000 eucalyptus-strewn acres that in World War II and Korea were Army's Camp Cooke. Tattered bayonet targets, reminders of pre-pushbutton war, stand in a quiet tract, while 3,900 civilians and 3,500 airmen work busily around a futuristic maze: three 135-ft. Atlas gantries on nearly completed pads, three more Atlas pads still being poured, eight Thor pads, 8,000-ft. bases for electronic tracking, a hangar-shaped missile-assembly building...
...David Wade, Atlas-sized (6 ft. 4 in., 210 lbs.) command pilot (7,000 hours) who served (1956-57) as SAC chief of staff to the father of alert deterrence, Air Force General Curtis E. LeMay. Wade's command includes the new SAC 704th Strategic Missile Wing at Vandenberg and two Jupiter squadrons now at Huntsville, Ala. In SAC's businesslike way, Wade now enforces "maximum security" on the base, will soon reinforce his armed guards with sentry dogs...
...miles inland to impact at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah. Now enlarging to handle bigger missiles-perhaps to test submarine-based Polaris as well as work on National Aeronautics and Space Administration experiments-the Navy has recently started pad construction on 20,000 acres at Point Arguello right next to Vandenberg...
...such, Titan presages the day when all long-range missiles will lurk beneath the earth, invisible and well-nigh invulnerable to enemy attack. The sunken silo at Vandenberg is only one part of a subterranean complex under construction as Titan's first "hard base." Adjoining the missile tank are other sunken cylinders (see diagram), housing air-conditioning and hydraulic equipment, a power station, liquid oxygen and fuel tanks, and a command control center for the launch crew. Tunnels connect the widely dispersed elements, but after the alert, only the control center will be occupied. Remotely controlled, the monster, fueled...