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Duty Stations


m1ashooter
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Many veterans have pictures of their duty stations which truely are historical treasures. This was my home for every 4th day of my life for 42 months. You are looking at a Boeing Minuteman III ICBM Launch Control Center. I'll glady answer any questions about the equipment you are seeing.

Lets share other work stations.

(BROKEN LINK REMOVED)

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The bunk in the rear of the picture so how many hours did you sleep down there and second questin is did you guy stash food items down into the place because one day fearing that the launch order might be given

 

also how much snack items did you bring into the place for the overnights stays down there inside your bag or did your bring another bag down there for you to carry the snacks and drinks

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The two man crew slept rotating shifts. We slept when ever we could as you never knew if you were going to have mx in the flight area or LCC that would require you to be awake. As for chow each site had a cook that would heat up pre cooked frozen food for you and bring it down to you. They were called foil packs. Like most GI food you found something you liked and stayed with it. I found the roast beef, meatloaf and mac and cheese dinners ok, but the roast beef did have a sheen to it.

 

Each site had a couple of pallets of MRE's stashed in the equipment room in case we survived the nuclear strikes against the sites. Fat chance of that happening.

 

Most of never brought snacks or drinks from home. It was a pain to carry with you as most of the time we traveled with winter gear and the normal very large bag of TO's etc.

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Most of never brought snacks or drinks from home. It was a pain to carry with you as most of the time we traveled with winter gear and the normal very large bag of TO's etc

 

One could only live on foil packs for so long....outside snack food was a must....my favorite was one prior service officer who brought an electric heating plate and a wok down and would cook fried rice. He would just plug the burner into one of the racks and cook away....a big no no, but he did not care. Those less creative would augment their meals by stuffing their flight bags with snack food from either home or from those little grocery stores on the way to the fields. One site was lucky in that it had a DQ several miles away and the SP's would sometimes make a run for the crew guys under the guise of an outside alarm detected on one of the launch sites.

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One could only live on foil packs for so long....outside snack food was a must....my favorite was one prior service officer who brought an electric heating plate and a wok down and would cook fried rice. He would just plug the burner into one of the racks and cook away....a big no no, but he did not care. Those less creative would augment their meals by stuffing their flight bags with snack food from either home or from those little grocery stores on the way to the fields. One site was lucky in that it had a DQ several miles away and the SP's would sometimes make a run for the crew guys under the guise of an outside alarm detected on one of the launch sites.

 

A couple of the site in Germany i worked as a Mp we had we want called the snack bag that we bought from home ..My wife would bake up a bunch of cookies and pie and cake for those weekend duty shifts we had there ..It was funny for the guys who went out the site on the weekend shift there bags where overflowing with snack and drinks and meals items we bought from home

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El Bibliotecario

Since you invited questions...

 

Were you allowed to take such photos, or did you sneak that one? Not that I care. (Alas, during my time on a tactical site I was a good little troopie and obeyed the 'no cameras' rule.)

 

What weapon did you carry?

 

You may be amused to know I was surprised to read your photo was taken during the MRE era--because the equipment has the same clunky, vacuum tube era appearance as the '50s era electronic consoles used with the Nike system.

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Cool shot 67 Rally

 

 

Thanks...I am digging your shot as well. Taking photos in CIC was forbidden and this shot was staged (meaning we had to ensure that all classified information was concealed from view) and was used for All Hands/Surface Warfare magazine articles, promoting the new (at that time) Aegis program.

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Taking pictures were not allowed. If we could you see all forms of crew attire and other unauthorized field modifications to LCC.

 

You are correct in the age of the equipment. Mr Boeing designed the system in the late 50's or early 60's. The computer system was basic but it worked. Most of the racks you see housed comm gear. The racks in the left foreground held the computer system and a few of the racks were empty. The racks on the right and left rear are comm gear. Each site had a UHF radio, harded voice system hard wired to SAC and the NMCC, low freq data system, AFSATCOM and finally a print sytem like a teletype.

 

We had a small TV for local channels if you could get them. Pre cable days and a car radio for music. The toilet is the same combo unit you see in prison cells.

 

It was lore that the radio systems were surplus. Our HF radios were od and the UHF were painted gray. Their was a floor panel that housed emergency supplies. On day we were tasked to pull up the panel and take out the water. We found 1962 data gray cans of civil defense water. At the time they were over 20 years old.

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Since you invited questions...

 

Were you allowed to take such photos, or did you sneak that one? Not that I care. (Alas, during my time on a tactical site I was a good little troopie and obeyed the 'no cameras' rule.)

 

What weapon did you carry?

 

You may be amused to know I was surprised to read your photo was taken during the MRE era--because the equipment has the same clunky, vacuum tube era appearance as the '50s era electronic consoles used with the Nike system.

 

If we where caught with a camera on your person on a Tactical site you would have been sent back to the states in handcuffs ad faceing multi charges of anything that they can find and use on you so it was better not to have then cameras in the area ..

 

One young gentleman assigned to the one place thought he could get away with takeing picture of the place where he worked and he found out how bad it can be when one morning a pair of CID agents showed up at the morning formation and took him away in silver bracelets because of finding pictures in his locker dureing a search of the barracks rooms and they came that morning and took him away to be charged with multi charges

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