There and Back Again for Four Years
In which Teófilo galivants about his job providing security for 150 missile sites
I reported to work at the 45th Missile Security Squadron (45th MSS) soon after my arrival. The unit was embedded within the 44th Security Police Group, itself a part of the 44th Strategic Missile Wing (44th SMW). I was assigned to the 45th’s “Bravo Flight” then under the leadership of TSgt. Kenneth Griffith. Back then the 45th MSS was headquartered in a blue building walking distance from the Pride Hangar, where the 44th SMW had its headquarters. Our Armory was located in the basement of yet another building, away from the Squadron’s main offices and guardmount area, where we mustered when we started our rotations.
As my first direct reporting supervisor I was assigned Sgt. “D”, who was pleased by the deference I showed to those ranked “Sergeant” and above. Hailing from Ohio, he was in his upper 20’s, perhaps 30 years old. He had no experience working with either Hispanics or Catholics, as he was also a convinced Baptist Fundamentalist. He was an avid collector of the Jack T. Chick comics and was a positive anti-Catholic. Since I displayed advanced knowledge of Scripture and defended my faith well from that standpoint, he found pigeonholing me a challenge. Despite all these strikes against him, he had a good heart at the time, and he was fair. He warned me not to take siestas at work, which left me dejected as I had packed my beach chair and umbrella to doze in by the Minuteman hole as often as I could.
Big Land, Big Sky
My job consisted of two main things: I would accompany maintenance teams deploying from Ellsworth to any one of the 150 Minuteman II ICBMS spread out in a semi-circle around the base. This semi-circle was what we called “the missile field” and was 13,500 square miles in area. Its extension dwarfed Puerto Rico’s own area (3, 515 square miles).
The missile field was allocated two three entities, the 66th, 67th, and 68th Strategic Missile Squadrons. Each squadron had five “flights” denoted by five letters for each. The 66th had letters A through E; the 67th had the letters F through J, and the 68th had the letters K through O. Missile Launch Sites – commonly known as “silos” – were granted a letter corresponded to each flight, plus a number. Each flight had responsibility for 10 silos, so for example, the ten silos in H Flight would be numbered H1, H2, H3…H10. We used NATO phonetics in which a word would stand for a letter. For “H” this was “Hotel” so “H Flight” was “Hotel Flight” and its silos were called “Hotel 1, Hotel 2, Hotel 3” and so forth. Each lettered flight had its NATO phonetic name. In due course I came to know how far a silo was from my home by knowing only its letter-number site name.
Each flight was managed and controlled from a Launch Control Facility corresponding to its NATO phonetic name. In the example above, Hotel Flight was controlled from the Hotel Launch Control Facility (LCF). This facility housed security personnel from our sister flight, the 44th MSS, charged with regular patrols and security checks for their flight area. All security activities were also housed in the LCF, called the Flight Security Control (FSC) manned by a NCO who was the controller for that flight. Underneath the LCF, in a bomb-protected, sealed environment, lied the Missile Launch Control (MLC). Known also as “the Capsule,” that’s where the two officers ultimately responsible for each flight made their living. Theirs was the duty to launch the 10 missiles under their command when Doomsday came.
Each flight was organized in the same way. Each squadron oversaw 50 silos, the three squadrons summing up the 150 missiles I referred to before.
My Job, Again
Coming back to my job. As you can imagine, every missile in the missile field and or its silo, required constant maintenance. Each aspect of maintenance required its own specialized care and the 44th SMW was also host to all these squadrons. Since accessing a missile site required a “split knowledge” so that one entity couldn’t gain sole, unfettered access to a missile site without another party concurring. We were the designated other side of the “split.” Without us the maintenance crews wouldn’t be able to access the silo proper. I could be called in the earliest hours of the morning or in the early evening to escort a maintenance crew. The latter call implied an all-nighter. Deployments to the furthest sites often resulted in overnight stays at guest quarters on the LCF’s, eating re-heated food confected by an ill-humored, resident cook.
My other job was to “camp” on the site as part as a “camper team.” Missile-sites required around-the-clock onsite security when its alarms were inoperative, which happened fairly often.
I came to hate this duty viscerally. I was never the camping, outdoorsy guy in the American sense of the term. The loneliness got to me and fired my most repressed thoughts. I’ll talk about the effects on me later.
Other duties which I found more exciting was convoy duty which happened on occasion. Convoys provided security while a special weapon (read, “missile warhead”) was being transported from or to the base. Each security vehicle carried a fire team of four members each, usually inside a Peacekeeper vehicle that was an oven in the summer and a freezer during the winter. Another fire team crewed a surveillance Huey H-1 helicopter, along its two pilots. The fire teams had to remain in place while the “hole was open” and maintenance crews worked within the exposed missile silo.
I did this day-in and day-out, six days on and three days off, for four years, often pushing 12-to-16-hour days. Entire days and nights passed by when I went “camping.”
I did develop a preferred “site” list. The Hotel flight was closer to the base so I liked it best, excepts missions to Hotel 5. This site was the one operational site meant as a “training site.” That meant long days. However, it was the one site closest to the base.
Sites on the Kilo and Lima flight areas were either close to, or right at the Black Hills of South Dakota. That meant their surroundings would be scenic and beautiful. The Lima Flight was home of Bear Butte, a holy mountain for the Lakota Sioux and scenic in its own right. Flights out in the 66th area such as Delta and Echo were located near the Bad Lands and could be scenic in their own right. The rest of the flight locations were vast ranchlands of dirt roads and rolling hills of nothingness but for the isolated homestead and the small towns where the gas station, the grocery store, city hall, and post office were all contained within one and the same building.
The Air Force had promised I would get to travel, and I did so, by visiting such exotic places as Sturgis, Newell, Belle Fourche, Mud Butte, and Wall — home of the redoubtable Wall Drug store. Not what I had in mind, but the Air Force had never specified what would my “travel” consist of. I had no grounds to sue…
Video Bonus
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Wao Pedro!! Que muchas experiencias especializadas de trabajo y preparación has tenido💥Dios te sigue bendiciendo 🙏🏻🙏🏻Adelante Siempre !💓🙋🏻♀️
I did a response earlier, but here goes the same response about Wall, S.D. My father's family is from South Dakota. He grew up on a farm. The family still has a farm just south of Sioux Falls near Canton, S.D. The Norwegian family name is Kjerstad. Kjerstad's are all over South Dakota. El Norris Kjerstad had a farm near Wall, S.D. I rode tractors on it as a boy. I know Wall and the Wall Drugstore well.