The most extensive Cold War construction undertaken by the United States was the construction of an elaborate network of missile bases. The United States’ first intercontinental ballistic missile was the Atlas, a 75-foot-long, 10-foot-diameter, 130-ton weapon.
An ENR reporter visited the first Atlas missile site during construction at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in 1958. The resulting article described a 44-square-foot concrete launch pad and 5 feet thick buried 23 feet into the ground with a flame deflection. pit and a steel lifting tower to lift the missile into position. The complex included tanks for the rocket’s liquid propellant, a 244-foot by 162-foot assembly building, and a two-story reinforced concrete launch operations building buried under a mound of dirt. An Atlas test bed at Cape Canaveral in Florida required a more robust mobile service tower, 135 feet tall and weighing 475 tons, which moved the missile on rails 580 feet from the building assembly to the test bench.
In a 1958 US Army Corps of Engineers ENR article, Lt. Col. John P. Beeson, a missile project officer, described the challenges involved in building apparatus for the handling and storage of rocket fuels. “All parts of the fuel system must be assembled to very tight tolerances [because] liquid oxygen and nitrogen evaporate quickly because of their low boiling points, and the highly compressed gases used in rockets have pressures of up to 6,000 psi. … The problem of clean pipes affects Cape Canaveral contractors. Fuel lines must be almost surgically clean to prevent explosions and ensure proper fuel flow. The specifications prohibit foreign particles larger than 150 microns… for example, the contractor must clean the stainless steel pipes with steel brushes, wash them with a degreasing agent, pickle them with an acid solution, rinse – them with demineralized water and dry them with nitrogen gas.
The arms race drives the efforts
An aggressive push to build six Atlas bases in the western United States intensified in 1959. That year, missile-related work constituted more than 40% of the total military construction budget. Before the first Atlas was operational, however, the Titan 1 sub-development was already ready to render it obsolete. But the defense establishment, firmly committed to an arms race with the Soviet Union, kept both programs going.
Unlike the Atlas, the Titans were housed in underground silos, which required more extensive construction. Each three-missile complex comprised three missile shafts 165 feet deep and 40 feet in diameter; an underground fuel chamber 37.5 feet in diameter; two silos 27 feet in diameter and 65 feet deep for retractable antennas; a 60-foot-deep equipment terminal; a power plant covered by a dome; and a control center, all connected by 2,000 feet of tunnels. Underground structures and equipment were spring-mounted to allow them to withstand the shock of 50 times the force of gravity. ENR reporters J. Roland Carr and Ralph Smith took a fact-finding trip in 1959 to Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado, where the first Titan base was being built.
Contractors building missile bases faced a fluid situation. The Department of Defense simultaneously advanced all aspects of its missile development program: research, development, testing, production, base construction, and crew training. This concept, known as concurrency, resulted in constant changes in specifications. “A contract award on a bid basis for an ICBM base is really a permit to negotiate trade orders,” an unnamed source told ENR at the time. George A. Fuller Co., the prime contractor building six Atlas launchers at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, received 110 specification changes. These changes added $5 or $6 million to his original $11.7 million contract, but the final completion was only extended by 30 days.
The novelty of the work gave rise to some labor issues, mostly inter-union disputes over competences. At Warren AFB, a five-day walkout by plumbers and steam fitters caused another 500 workers to stop work. Contractors and construction unions tangled with missile manufacturers and industrial unions over who to hire and which unions would do the work. The Labor Department intervened when one of its officials observed crews of missile manufacturers performing construction work, in this case steel assembly, at bases in California and Colorado. In May 1960, the Department of Labor developed criteria to allow the Air Force to separate jobs belonging to the construction trades from on-site manufacturing jobs.
At the same time, Defense Secretary Thomas Gates criticized Air Force and Corps brass for allowing base construction to be delayed. Gates called a meeting to improve the situation. Executives from 30 architecture, engineering and construction firms, along with 19 missile and missile component manufacturers met at the Pentagon in July. Brig. Gen. William E. Leonard, deputy commander of the Air Force’s ballistic missile division, said Atlas delays were due to contractor inexperience, jurisdictional labor disputes, shortages of necessary skills and the delay in the delivery of equipment. Maj. Gen. Walter K. Wilson Jr., the corps’ deputy chief of construction, announced that the corps was considering switching from sealed bids to a negotiated procurement procedure in order to speed up progress. The Corps would accept a compromise, allowing only a limited number of prequalified companies to bid for prime contracts. Weeks later, Gates met with AFL-CIO President George Meany and other union leaders, who promised to work to prevent jurisdictional disputes from turning into work stoppages.
The Strategic Air Command deployed 13 Atlas squadrons with a total of 130 missiles between 1959 and 1962. But in 1965 the Atlas was phased out, replaced by the Titan I and Minuteman ICBMs. Although Titan I’s underground silos and crew bunkers made them more resistant to attack, they took 15 minutes to refuel and then had to be lifted to the surface in huge elevators for launch, slowing the its response time. Their liquid propellants were also difficult to handle. Six Titan I squadrons, with a total of 54 missiles, were deployed between 1963 and 1965. The ICBM Minuteman I, first deployed in 1962, was considered a breakthrough because its solid fuel allowed it to launch under command, fired directly from his underground. silo By 1968, a thousand Minuteman I and II missiles were operational in six areas stretching from Missouri across the Great Plains to as far north as Montana.
Early warning systems
For air defense construction, one of the most extensive measures was the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line, a series of 58 radar stations from Alaska through northern Canada to the island from Baffin. Completed in 1959, it worked to detect unidentified aircraft flying over arctic terrain. Supplies were brought to the remote locations by Navy ships and cargo planes. Twenty-five thousand workers built housing, airstrips, hangars and antenna towers. The DEW line was replaced by the Northern Warning System in the late 1980s.
In 1954 the Air Force decided to plant a series of radar platforms on the US East Coast. They were called the Texas Towers, as their designs were adapted from Texas offshore oil rigs. Each was a triangular steel structure, 200 feet on each side, standing on three caisson legs, towed out to sea and clamped into position. Tower no. 2, erected in 1955, was 130 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 56 feet of water. Tower no. 3 was laid in 1956, 80 miles southeast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 80 feet of water. Tower no. 4, erected in 1957, was 80 miles southeast of New York City in 185 feet of water.
Given its location in deeper waters, tower no. 4 faced much greater environmental stresses. Its substructure included horizontal and diagonal braces, while its 12.5-foot-diameter legs were driven into the sand bottom and then filled with concrete. The platform was located 67 feet above the mean water depth. A hurricane in 1958 broke some bracing bolts, and a 1960 inspection found worn strut pins that prompted the installation of cross braces to stiffen them. Hurricane Donna in September 1960 loosened the bracing connections to the struts at two levels. An inspection conducted 175 feet underwater on January 6, 1961, discovered a broken brace, leading the Air Force to decide to evacuate the tower in February and postpone repair operations until better weather in May . But a winter storm hit on January 15th. Crew members on the tower reported ongoing damage, and US Navy and Coast Guard vessels were dispatched to evacuate them, but the tower collapsed before they could arrive. All 28 airmen and civilian contractors were killed. Testimony at a Senate hearing on the tragedy established that bracing damage during the towing and assembly process weakened the components and the tower failed to achieve its designed strength. The committee’s conclusion blamed the tragedy on human error by engineers, contractors, the Air Force and the Navy.
