The most extensive Cold War construction undertaken by the United States was building an elaborate network of missile bases. The first U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile was the Atlas, a 75-ft-long, 10-ft-dia, 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-ft-sq, 5-ft-thick concrete launch stand buried 23 ft in the ground with a flame deflection pit and a steel hoisting tower to hoist the missile into position. The complex included tanks for the rocket’s liquid propellant, a 244-ft by 162-ft assembly building, and a two-story reinforced concrete launch operations building buried under a mound of earth. An Atlas test stand at Cape Canaveral in Florida required a more robust mobile service tower, 135 ft tall and weighing 475 tons, which shuttled the missile on rails 580 ft from the assembly building to the test stand.
A 1958 ENR article by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lt. Col. John P. Beeson, a missile project officer, outlined the challenges involved in building the apparatus for handling and storing rocket fuels. “All parts of the fuel system must be assembled within very close tolerances [because] liquefied oxygen and nitrogen evaporate quickly because of their low boiling points, and highly compressed gases used in rocketry have pressures up to 6,000 psi. … The problem of clean pipelines plagues contractors at Cape Canaveral. Fuel lines must be almost surgically clean to prevent explosions and assure proper flow of fuels. Specs prohibit any foreign particles over 150 microns ... for example the contractor must clean stainless steel pipes with steel brushes, flush them with a degreasing agent, pickle them with acid solution, rinse them with demineralized water and dry them with nitrogen gas.”
Arms Race Drives Efforts
An aggressive push to build six Atlas bases across the western U.S. ramped up in 1959. That year, missile-related work constituted over 40% of the total military construction budget. Before the first Atlas was operational however, the under-development Titan 1 was already set to render it obsolete. But the defense establishment, firmly committed to an arms race with the Soviet Union, kept both programs going.
In contrast to the Atlas, Titans were housed in underground silos, requiring more extensive construction. Each three-missile complex encompassed three missile shafts 165 ft deep and 40 ft in dia; a 37.5-ft-dia underground fuel chamber; two 27-ft-dia, 65-ft deep silos for retractable antennae; a 60-ft deep equipment terminal; a dome-covered power house; and a control center, all connected by 2,000 ft of tunnels. The underground structures and equipment were all spring-mounted to enable them to withstand the shock of 50 times the force of gravity. ENR reporters J. Roland Carr and Ralph Smith made a reporting 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 Defense Dept. moved forward simultaneously on 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 to specifications. “A contract award on a bid basis for an ICBM base is really a permit to negotiate change orders,” one anonymous source told ENR at the time. The George A. Fuller Co., the prime contractor building six Atlas launchers at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, received 110 changes in specs. These changes added $5 or $6 million to their original $11.7-million contract, but final completion was only extended 30 days.
The novelty of the work resulted in some labor issues, mostly inter-union disputes over jurisdiction. At Warren AFB a five-day walkout by plumbers and steamfitters prompted 500 other workers to halt work. Contractors and building trades unions tangled with missile manufacturers and the industrial unions over who should get contracts and which unions would perform work. The Labor Dept. stepped in when one of its officials observed missile manufacturer crews performing construction work—in this case steel erection—on bases in California and Colorado. In May 1960 the Labor Dept. drew up criteria to enable the Air Force to separate work belonging to the construction trades from on-site jobs to be performed by manufacturers.
At the same time, Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates blasted Air Force and Corps brass for allowing base construction to fall behind schedule. Gates called a meeting to improve the situation. Executives from 30 architectural, engineering and construction firms, along with 19 missile and missile component makers convened in the Pentagon in July. Brig. Gen. William E. Leonard, deputy commander of the Air Force’s ballistic missile division, said the Atlas delays were due to contractor inexperience, jurisdictional labor disputes, shortage of required skills, and late deliveries of equipment. Maj. Gen. Walter K. Wilson Jr., Corps deputy chief for construction, announced that the Corps was considering a switch from sealed bids to a negotiated contracting procedure in order to speed progress. The Corps would agree to a compromise, only allowing a limited number of prequalified firms to bid on prime contracts. Weeks later, Gates met with AFL-CIO President George Meany and other union chiefs, who pledged that they would work to prevent jurisdictional disputes from becoming work stoppages.
The Strategic Air Command deployed 13 Atlas squadrons with a total of 130 missiles between 1959 and 1962. But by 1965 Atlas was phased out, superseded by Titan I and Minuteman ICBMs. While Titan I’s underground silos and crew bunkers rendered them more resistant to attack, they took 15 minutes to fuel and then had to be lifted to the surface on huge elevators for launching, slowing their response time. Its liquid propellants were also difficult to handle. Six Titan I squadrons, with a total of 54 missiles, were deployed from 1963 to 1965. The Minuteman I ICBM, first deployed in 1962, was considered a major advancement because its solid fuel enabled it to launch on command, fired directly from its underground silo. By 1968, one thousand Minuteman I and II missiles were operational in six areas stretching from Missouri across the Great Plains 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 string of 58 radar stations from Alaska across northern Canada to Baffin Island. Completed in 1959, it worked to detect unidentified aircraft flying over Arctic terrain. Supplies were brought to the remote sites by Navy ships and cargo planes. Twenty five thousand workers built housing, airstrips, hangars and antenna towers. The DEW line was superseded by the North Warning System in the late 1980s.
In 1954 the Air Force decided to plant a series of radar platforms off the U.S. East Coast. They were called Texas Towers, since their designs were adapted from Texas offshore oil drilling platforms. Each one was a triangular steel structure, 200 ft on each side, standing on three caisson legs, towed to sea and jacked into position. Tower No. 2, erected in 1955, was 130 miles east of Cape Cod, Mass., in 56 ft of water. Tower No. 3 was placed in 1956, 80 miles southeast of Nantucket, Mass., in 80 ft of water. Tower No. 4, erected in 1957, was located 80 miles southeast of New York City in 185 ft of water.
Given its location in deeper water, Tower No. 4 faced far greater environmental stresses. Its substructure included horizontal and diagonal bracing, while its 12.5-ft-dia legs were driven into the sandy bottom and then filled with concrete. The platform was positioned 67 ft above mean water depth. A hurricane in 1958 broke some bracing bolts, and a 1960 inspection found worn strut pins which led to cross bracing being installed for stiffening. Hurricane Donna in September 1960 loosened connections of bracing to struts at two levels. An inspection conducted 175 ft underwater on January 6, 1961, uncovered a broken brace, leading the Air Force to decide to evacuate the tower by February and postpone repair operations until better weather in May. But a winter storm hit Jan. 15. Tower crew members reported ongoing damage, and U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships were dispatched to evacuate them, but the tower collapsed before they could reach it. All 28 airmen and civilian contractors died. Witnesses at a Senate hearing about the tragedy established that damage to the bracing during the towing and erection process weakened the components, and the tower did not achieve its designed strength. The committee’s conclusion blamed the tragedy on human error by engineers, contractors, the Air Force and the Navy.
