Titan Missile Museum

David writes....

Also, on my recent trip to Arizona, I managed to visited the Titan Missile Museum.  The museum consists of a missile silo and control room of a deactivated Titan II missile site.  

At one time, the U.S. Air Force had 54 of these in the United States, each missile with a single nuclear warhead.  During the height of the Cold War, the silo was staffed by a crew of four, working 24 hour shifts (called "alerts), 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This particular missile silo was taken out of commission in 1981, and turned into a museum.  Let's take a tour, shall we.  

To enter the control room, one must descent 55 stairs, and then encounter the first of several blast doors.  These large doors weigh several tons each, but swing easily and freely on the hinges.  When closed, both the silo and control room were protected from the shockwaves of a nearby nuclear blast.  

Here, we see the control room.  As you can see in the background, the entire structure is mounted on large coil springs, which allow the control room to move several feet in any direction, to enable the facility to survive a nuclear blast.  We also see the safe, where the launch codes were kept.  During this portion of the tour, we saw a simulated launch sequence, which included the simultaneous turning of two keys, located seven feet apart.  It was eerie to realize that World War III would been fought largely by people pushing buttons and turning keys.  

The next part of the tour consisted of walking down a hallway, also mounted on shock absorbers.  

Finally, we managed to see the Titan II missile and warhead.  This particular one was used as a training missile in Texas before being placed here in place of the in-service missile.  On the top we see the simulated warhead. The staff frowned when I attempted to ride it like Slim Pickens.

Overall, I was impressed at the level of preservation of the facility.  It was clean, and appeared to have just been taken out of service, despite being a museum for nearly 25 years.