Saturday, November 7, 2015

Titan Missile Museum, Sahuarita, AZ

After leaving Cochise Stronghold Campground, we drove an hour and a half to my grandparents' place in Sahuarita. Sahuarita is the home of the Titan Missile Museum.  It's also like a 5 minute drive from their home so my grandpa took us there since my grandma was working on things at the church.

But first, a picture of my grandpa's tomato plant.  That's right, singular.  The monster takes up most of their patio.  It also has only produced a handful of tomatoes (which were not very good, we were told).

Giant tomato plant

It's started growing into the pond to get extra water.

A picture of some old carbide miner's lamps - I'm guessing these were owned by my great grandpa and great uncle who both worked in the mines.

The Titan Missile Museum has guided tours on every 2 hours or so.  After giving a brief history of the Cold War, they take you down into the bunker and show off the control room.  On the far right of the photo, you can see 2 full panels which are empty except for 2 slots - the 2 slots replaced the panels when computers started to become bigger and better (i.e. smaller), some of the other missile locations went down to one slot a few years later.  Now if they replaced all the computer components, the entire system you see here would be replaced with your cell phone.  That's right, if you ever start feeling like you're smart, just remember that they managed to land a man on the moon using computers less powerful than your cell phone.

Women were allowed to work in the Missile Silos beginning in 1969 and the last commander of this location was actually a woman.

Everyone over 5'10" has to wear a hard hat.  The entire bunker is on giant springs to protect everything when a) the missile is launched, and b) when the missile from the Russians hits.  You can see one of these springs behind my grandpa - the dapper man in the black polo shirt.

The file cabinet o' doom.  This is where the missile codes were kept.  The entire set up was meant to be a retaliation launch, not an offensive launch.  This basically means that the military men and women in the bunker knew that after they launched the missile it was just a matter of time until they would die because if they left the bunker, it would be a nuclear holocaust outside, but the bunker only had a limited supply of oxygen.

Drawbridge to the missile controls.  Gotta go old school to let people know not to touch buttons.

A view of the drawbridge - apparently some scene from Star Trek was filmed here.

Looking at the cone

Call box with Coffee Can.  This was the 3rd phone the person reporting for duty had to call the commander on and read off the day's pass code, where he would then burn it and throw it in the coffee can - the door wasn't opened until the commander saw ashes coming out of the bottom of the can.

Grandpa standing in front of the Tipsees - basically the burglar alarm at the site - anything that passed in front of the tipsees set up opposite each other broke a radar signal and set off alarms in the bunker.  The missile door also had a weight alarm on it so you couldn't just go walking about the site or take a smoke break on the missile door.

Looking down at the cone - the missing rectangular part is a visual show for the satellites that the missile has been neutered.  The doors are also stuck in a half open position for the same reason.

The engineers checking out the engines.

Standing outside the site looking in.  The missile doors are on the left behind the jeep (the thing that looks like a white, squat volcano)

Cactus bloom.  There were so many cacti in bloom it was crazy.  Of course, we had happened to be there right at the end of monsoon season.

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