Recently, a reunion was held for personnel of the former 321st Strategic Missile Wing in Cooperstown, North Dakota. It was primarily made up of crews from the 1980s that served in the Grand Forks field, during a period some historians have dubbed the “Second Cold War” that emerged after the end of Détente in the late 1970s. Along with missile crews, there were a few who worked security and maintenance in the field. Hopefully more of them can com for the next reunion already planned.
It was a moment of Deja vu to see a crowd of men in their 60s and 70s listen to speakers address a range of topics from history, to working with the Veterans Administration, to an address from the Association of Air Force Missileers. Twenty one years ago I was able to witness the same thing as a teenager for a different missile unit at a different base. Their ages were much the same, although now many of their voices from twenty years ago are now silent. Volumes of knowledge and personal history too often whittled down to a few lines on an “In Memoriam” card.
I’d started a Geocities website about a SAC base history in high school, and soon began making contact with numerous veterans. This eventually yielded a contact working to preserve the history of his own unit, the 551st Strategic Missile Squadron – a former Atlas-F unit. My parents were understandably nervous when the gentleman and his friend flew out from New York to survey my hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska for a missileer reunion and wanted to meet me. I still recall his friend Tom, a kindly older man with a thick accent, wore a “World’s Best Grandpa” sweater that seemed to win my mom over – different days I guess (Tom was an absolute joy to sit around and chat with being former New York Police. A few years later he presented me with a World Trade Center Breast Bar worn by NYPD officers in service during 9/11 – a cherished artifact I still look at a lot. He has since passed on). Getting back to the SAC base, I was handed maps of the base that I had been studying for years, enthusiastic that I now had a baseline to study now long-gone buildings, and was taken out to my first missile silo – 551-10. Through his professional handiwork, and the aid of some good old friends from the 551st, he was largely responsible the next year for achieving a very successful first reunion for the missile unit. I took pride on being designated as their mascot. An honor to still call this gentleman, a former missileer, my friend. A man very much responsible for me ending up where I am. I owe a lot to his generosity and guidance.
To fast forward 21 years and it’s a whole different ballgame, but yet it was almost exactly the same. Here are men in a variety of outfits – from plain t-shirts to polos. From all across the country. With great stories ranging from alerts to shenanigans. There’s a lot of military talk I’ve picked up over the years but will never truly understand. The same friendliness through new voices and handshakes though. An honor to actually offer something in return this time, tours of their old haunt.
As one noted in a speech, those men were the vanguard of American nuclear deterrence. The instant retaliatory capability of Minuteman meant their weapons were likely reaching Soviet targets first. Where they sat underground, in Security Control Centers, or maintaining silos, were likely ground zeroes for any Soviet strike. A battlefield that had shifted from places like Gettysburg, the Somme, or Bastogne, to mostly farmland in North Dakota – with much more catastrophic results in much lesser time to non-combatants had World War III occurred.
It’s something to understand that the majority look back at their service with some fond memories, some sour ones, and with a pattern of respect for what they were in charge of. The basic story never changes – some days were very mundane, there were worries of training or inspections, but the mission was always that of deterrence. Perhaps they reflect upon the notions that the weapons they held under their command could kill millions of people, laying waste to much of the Soviet Union, and inflicting terrible amounts of radiation to those downwind – but there’s the simple fact that the other side could have done the same to the United States, and that’s why American nuclear weapons were deployed when and where they were (there are a number of interpretations of this, some less favorable to the Soviets, some less favorable to the Americans). The point was an ongoing arms race, a Cold War, and in the 1980s a slow journey towards the end of Soviet communism and the freeing of Eastern Europe. But no one knew in 1983 that the Soviet Union would disintegrate (mostly) peacefully in eight years, far from it.
Back during the Cold War, most assuredly, the work life of a Minuteman missileer in the 1980s differed significantly from a missileer of the Atlas-F era. I spoke with veterans back in 2003 about their busy service during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as the difficulties of keeping a liquid-fueled Atlas on ready alert. Missiles right down the hall from the LCC that were temperamental and pretty dangerous. Because of these factors, the service life of Atlas was very short (1959-1965) when compared to Minuteman – interestingly beginning alert the same year as Atlas-F, with the evolved Minuteman III still on alert in 2024. An Atlas-F complex carries an immense industrial feel, so does Titan-II, while a Minuteman LCC carries a relatively technological coziness to it – if one could put it that way – with a somewhat normal-looking house above it. Minuteman simplified things, but the stakes were the same. Maintain missiles on alert and prepare to run through checklists that might end in launch, but with a primary mission of credible deterrence. It’s stunning sometimes to realize how rapidly ICBM evolution occurred in the 1960s. From a few fragile Atlas missiles struggling to remain on alert in 1960, to 1,054 Minuteman and Titan-IIs available by the end of 1967.
Back to the present, in much different places – hotel conference rooms, local museums, restaurants, etc., I’ll always get a kick out of old friends recognizing each other, immediately jumping into old stories of that one time when they were changing out LCC batteries, or sweating out inspections. Smiles form on faces you know have seen a lot in their lifetimes, and deep chuckles emerge. You want to learn of course their Air Force story, but you want to know what they did after. Why did they end up living in Grand Forks when they were originally from Louisiana? How did Air Force service influence (or not) their lives? They are, after all, the history makers that were the reason there’s a preserved Missile Alert Facility/Launch Control Facility in Cooperstown in the first place.
And then there’s the little off-the-cuff comments. To the one gentleman who referred remarked “You sir are a gentleman, and a scholar” (if you get the Fallout reference), I won’t soon forget that.
And that’s the thing about covering reunions like this. You go to them long enough and they really begin to get to you. I felt a little bad a while back at an AAFM meeting in Salt Lake City because, with a wealth of stories from different missile systems, I couldn’t help but hang around a table of 556th Strategic Missile Squadron veterans from Plattsburgh AFB, New York (also Atlas-F) much of the time because they were telling such great stories about operations and phase-out. I knew as well that, being some of the older folks at the meeting, those stories wouldn’t last forever. I knew that stories from the Grand Forks field were much more easily at hand – there would be plenty of time to hear from them.
But would there be time?
Certainly not to remark that the recent reunion signified a last hurrah, far from it. Yet the fact remains that these Cold War veterans were aging as well. We all are. It’s very much a “well, duh” statement, but it warrants mention. We might think we have all the time in the world. The fact is, we don’t, and we better make good use of it. At least that’s been my lesson thinking years later of all the questions I should have asked the veterans of the 551st…and the 307th, and the 98th.
Its not hard to grit your teeth at thoughts of “last hurrah” reunions I’ve been fortunate enough to see. The lack of dry eyes in a back conference room of an old airport hotel as men of the 98th Air-Refueling Squadron – some of the last SAC operators of propeller-driven tankers – discussed how to disperse of collected items over the years when museums cannot accession them (it’s a real problem – accessioning can be a long process to ensure careful preservation, but there’s the simple fact that museums don’t have unlimited curators, budgets, or storage space). The men there realizing they’re likely not see others again due to advanced age and distance. It was much the same when I worked with the 307th Bomb Wing Association (also at Lincoln) when it came time to disband in 2015, their board deliberating if to merge with the WWII-era Bomb Group Association now primarily run by descendants. The “That’s it, we’re done” aspect at the end of those reunions is a hard watch. I can’t imagine what it feels like for the veterans themselves, but as a historian(-ish person), it feels like all the stories have just slipped out of your hands like sand.
(On a personal level, it drove a group of us to try to form our own museum back in Nebraska for the sake of Cold War/Aviation history preservation. I’ll tell you, it is HARD, and our effort failed. Money of course helps, but it needs a community to make it work – something to be truly inspired by with the folks at the Griggs County Museum.)
If there is a point to this blog, it might be that. There are some very capable individuals out there – former missileers (or flight crews, or police, or POL personnel, or cooks, or clerks…) ranking from generals to airmen – who have gone well above and beyond, but they need help to make a go of it. The veterans groups that really take off and have reunions that stretch into decades are the ones with men and women who regularly meet and work towards a greater purpose of preservation for their history. At least, that’s what I’ve seen.
With that, it’s always difficult to watch as veterans give their own personal salute (and I mean not actual salutes, but often through choked-up voices) to those who have passed on before them. Some proudly say the names of buddies long passed, others manage whispers of a friend who only passed last month. A loss of friendships, and of course, a loss of memories. You may have no idea of who they’re talking about, and sometimes you remember the individual helping the site a few years back, and it’s always tough. Life moves on, but you hope you can capture a few of the memories at least for the sake of the person, the group, and the history.
For those who carry on, we will enjoy seeing a first-time reunion hopefully flourish into a yearly event. There’ll always be time at Oscar to welcome personnel back home.
Oscar-Zero 