The Road to Tombstone

Sunday, 17th June, 2012.

We left Flagstaff at 7am and drove south on Interstate 10 and apart from a very brief stop for fuel (both for the car and ourselves) we pretty much drove non-stop to Tuscon. (Please excuse some blurriness, there was a smudge on the lens and it took us a while to realise and clean it off!)

So we drove down from the mountainous region of Northern Arizona, our ears popping as we descended back down to the sea level...

...and back to desert again. But the joshua trees of Nevada have been replaced by cacti. LOTS of cacti.

We drove straight through Phoenix without leaving the Interstate and arrived in Tuscon for a quick lunch. Then it was off to East Sahuarita where we paid a visit to the Titan Missile Museum.

 A now defunct nuclear missile silo, containing a benign Titan II ICBM. The facility was shut down in the early 80s and preserved as a museum.

 This is what the surface of the silo looks like today. When operational, there would have been only the silo doors (the cream coloured shape in the middle). They are built on railroad tracks allowing the doors to pull back in approx. 19 seconds.

This is what lies underneath those silo doors. A Titan II nuclear rocket. The Titan II, before being used as an ICBM was used to launch Neil Armstrong and co. into space for the Apollo Moon mission!

Here are the rockets from the Titan II. The top photo is the first stage rocket, the bottom one is the second stage rocket which would separate from the Titan II at the last minute to act as a decoy, making the Soviets think there were two inbound missiles instead of one.

This is the entrance to the silo. Staircase in the foreground, elevator in the background.

Apparently, when personnel arrived at the base, they would give an authorisation code to enter, then have three minutes to arrive at the first checkpoint (above) guarded by a CCTV camera. The theory was, if the personnel were being held captive and forced to enter the base, all they had to do was delay. Once three minutes were up, the base would go into lockdown and security would be mobilised. 

If everything was fine, the personnel (there were always two officers and two enlisted on duty for a given 24 hour period) would call on a phone (not pictured) and read out the next code. Then they would burn the paper the code was written on and place it into this red painted coffee can.

A corridor within the complex. There are pistons on each side of the corridor. The complex had to be able to survive a nuclear shockwave, to pistons and springs were built into it so the complex could buck and sway along with the earth around it if a nuclear device went off near by.

The control room.

It was policy in the silo that no one was allowed to wander alone, except in the crews quarters. A "No Lone Zone" meant you were not permitted in the area by yourself. This was for two reasons; 1) Safety and 2) Security. They had to make sure no one was a spy.

The control room is also mounted on large springs.

Our tour guide demonstrates what the control panel would look like after the key is turned.

But before the key can be turned, the "go-code" must be authenticated. Here is the safe (and the keys) where the codes were kept.

 And here's a better view of the Titan II

The museum was incredible, and something we would never  have seen if we hadn't driven all the way down to southern Arizona.

After the museum, we pressed on to Tombstone. A post about our time there is coming soon.