I WAS THERE - part 7
A little trip to Vandenberg AFB in California to sit in the
blockhouse for an actual Atlas firing. I don't remember hearing a
more exciting offer in my life. Virtually none of us working on
off-site bases would ever participate in a launch. I ran to Nolan
for permission to go. I really thought he wasn't going to permit
it. Then I got a sly smile and a remark that it would be good for
our relationship with USAF, so he supposed I could make the trip.
The trip was right then. I got an hour to run home and pack a bag,
get back to the base and board a USAF C-47. We climbed out of
Altus, AFB and headed west. There were four officers and myself. I
was in heaven flying in a military transport going to a live shot.
We landed at Vandenberg and the very next day checked in to the
launch complex. We were accessed into the LCC and given a
briefing.
I was invited to sit with the Range Safety Officer at a console.
We were seeing the Atlas via the closed circuit monitors. The
countdown began and ran down to T-0 without a hitch. The LCC
started to vibrate and a deep rumble came through the concrete
walls into the room. The monitor showed the flames shooting down
and back out of the flame bucket. Atlas started to lift very
slowly out of the gantry. The sustainer and two boosters were
causing all the vibration. The verniers at each side moved back
and forth maintaining the Atlas in the correct attitude.
I sat there transfixed. Everything I had spent two years working
on and reading about was happening out there, on that pad. Atlas
moved slowly up into the atmosphere. I heard someone say mark 2
which meant the boosters had correctly shut down and the single
sustainer engine was now carrying Atlas into space. The camera
caught Atlas becoming a small condensation trail as it moved up
and out of the atmosphere. Everyone was elated as Atlas had come
through some very hard times with several costly and embarrassing
failures. Every successful launch was a very big win.
I came home feeling that if it all ended tomorrow I had now seen
everything I dreamed about, back there in Cheyenne, when the first
Atlas arrived. I came home to start phasing out at Altus,
Oklahoma. We won the Atlas Award again for 1962.
The final phase of the program was to demonstrate to USAF a
capability to fully tank the missile. We would transfer fuel (RP-
1) and Liquid Oxygen from the storage tanks, on the silo to the
onboard tanks of Atlas. This would occur as the missile was raised
from within the silo to a position above ground sitting on the
missile elevator ready to launch. The procedure was called a DPL
for double propellant tanking.
The LCC was sealed and the pad cleared. My Safety crew and I were
"safely" located about 2,500 ft. from the launcher at the Fall
Back Area (FBA). This established a reasonable safety area from
which fire fighting and medical emergency operations could be
launched in the event of a serious incident. I was, as usual,
watching with a hand tightly wrapped around a cup of coffee.
The Atlas began its ascent out of the silo. It's nose showed the
white frost evident as the missile skin reached sub-zero
temperatures. This was caused by the LOX (liquid oxygen) being
pumped into the internal tanks. The missile had risen about a
third of the way out of the silo when it stopped. That was
definitely not part of the DPL procedure. We waited.
The fall back area was in contact with the Test Conductor through
a land line. A look in that direction evidenced that a lot of
discussion was taking place between the Base Manager and the Test
Conductor located under ground at the silo. The site manager
beckoned to me so I put my coffee on top of the car and walked
over. He handed me the mike. The test conductor was on the other
end and wanted me to drive in to the site entrance and come down
to the launch control center which was about 70 ft. below ground.
He said to move fast and he would brief me when I arrived at the
LCC.
No one had ever gone into the 2,500 ft. area before, once a DPL
was in progress, at Altus. I was very aware of that as I made a
very lonely drive through the guard gate and down the road leading
to the Launch Control Center entrance. I reluctantly left the
security of the car. I parked it right in front of the door (for a
quick getaway) and went down the long tunnel stairs to launch
control.
The Test Conductor briefed me that his instruments indicated a
loss of pressure in a liquid oxygen line from the storage vessels
to the Atlas. So he felt sure LOX was pooling on some level of the
silo.
Liquid Oxygen alone is a quick freeze to anything that touches it.
Mixed with any hydrocarbon (oil, grease, RP1 fuel or lubricants),
makes a bluish colored jell that is highly explosive and extremely
pressure sensitive. It can be set off by a foot pressure of 5 to 7
lbs. and has five times the explosive force of a similar amount of
TNT.
They wanted me to take the site foreman on a complete tour of the
silo. The half erected Atlas would be hanging over head boiling
off liquid oxygen into gas as it sat there warming up. We were to
explore the silo for any sign of the LOX jell. Were the Atlas to
move or any machinery activate sufficient energy could be produced
to explode a jell and destroy the missile, systems and in fact the
entire silo. We would have emergency lighting only as they were
afraid of any possibility of an electrical spark. So the Foreman
and I were escorted to the blast doors.
The blast doors were located in the tunnel between the LCC and the
silo. They weighed about 10,000 pounds and were designed to
contain and divert the blast from an explosion inside the silo,
keeping it from reaching the men in the LCC. We then stepped to
the silo side of those doors and the LCC personnel buttoned up by
closing those doors behind us. To this day I can still clearly
remember the sound of those doors closing. We had about 70 ft. to
go through the tunnel and then we were directly under the aft end
of the Atlas sitting on its elevator. The Atlas seemed even larger
from this perspective. On the whole, I would have rather been in
Philadelphia.
We climbed down the silo ladder one deck at a time reaching the
bottom in less than ten minutes. The bottom of the silo held much
of the machinery to move the elevator. In the light of our
flashlights and the low grade illumination of the emergency
lights, we started working our way up one level at a time looking
for a lox jell.
We were also hoping the stressed system would not let go as the
fluids now sitting stagnant and building pressure in the missile
system were meant to be moving at all times into or out of the
missile. We both jumped when a safety relief valve popped off on
one of the liquid oxygen tanks venting excess pressure.
We spent a tense hour in that silo looking for anything that might
explode the missile if it were moved back into the silo. We had
both seen the films of the Cape Canaveral Atlas launches that blew
on the pad so it was not a joyful hour.
We found nothing unusual and were able to go back to those big
blast doors at a walking pace instead of at the speed of sound.
When they opened and I was back in I felt I had paid my dues for
all the times I meant to visit the site but was too busy. I also
paid my dues that day for being in safety, where our job was to
"just watch".
The blast doors were slowly swung open and we were able to rejoin
the living on the safe side. The missile was very slowly lowered
back into the silo and detanked. Another DPL was scheduled and we
finally got Snyder sold off to the Air Force with no further hair
raising incidents.
Soon I would be laying off my men. We had no more off-site
contracts and I would soon follow them to lay off. It was about
over. I really thought it was about over. I was very wrong.