Home Of The Nuclear Deterrent Titan Missile That Was Created During The Cold War
Sitting beneath the ground lies a lingering behemoth. Many can feel its presence. Others simply try to place it out of mind. This is the power of the nuclear deterrent Titan Missile and its intention still has resounding effects on society today.
Located in Sahuarita, Arizona, just outside Tuscon, sits just a site. The Titan Missile National Historic Landmark, part of the Titan Missile Museum, houses an exceptional find underneath its surface.
“You can argue that this site had an impact on the life of everybody in the US,” said Director Yvonne Morris. “During the Cold War all of us – no matter where we lived in America – were on the front lines because of ballistic missile technology, which can reach targets anywhere in the world in under 30 minutes. The Titan II played a large role in deterring World War III.”
The Titan II launch complex 571-7, located in this precise spot, is an original part of the 571st Strategic Missile Squadron & 390th Strategic Missile Wing. It's the solo remaining Titan II out of the 54 that were on alert during the Cold War from 1963 to 1987 and is the “best preserved example of the land-based portion of America's strategic deterrent during the Cold War,” said Morris.
The Titan II missile, hidden within the confines of the museum, is 103 feet long and 330,000 pounds. Its nominal yield is nine megatons, or nine million tons of TNT (The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of .015 megatons, or 15 kilotons). The Titan II could travel up to 5,500 nautical miles (over 6,300 miles) and its velocity was 17,000 miles per hour. To reach its destination would take around 30 minutes. [To touch it, means feeling the power of Armageddon?]
A product of war, the Titan II actually had a primary mission of peace through its notoriety of deterrence. During the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet Union employed a strategy known as Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD. Under MAD, explained Morris, both countries had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other country and essentially the planet. This is what prevented the outbreak of World War III between the two countries.
While the mere sight of a 100 foot missile is enough to interest most travelers to stop by the Titan Missile Museum, it's the impact the Titan II, and other missiles, had on their communities – and the US as a whole – that keeps people curious and fascinated.
“At the time that the Titan II was active, most of the communities where they were built didn't have a very high population,” noted Morris. “One of the [main] reasons that the Titan II was finally deactivated was that the population density of the area it was built [inside] had begun to rapidly grow. Basically, people bought homes with a missile site in their backyard and then complained loudly about it. A lot of folks felt that [nearby] Tucson, which had 18 of these missile sites in a giant circle around it, was made to be a bigger target.”
Most people living in the United States during the 50s and 60s were very aware of the threat of a nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union. Schools practiced duck and cover drills. There was a sense of high alert, even paranoia.
According to Morris, Tucson was already a threat before the Titan II came into existence because the air force based located in the area was used by retired military aircraft for storage and maintenance. There was also a “boneyard,” [existing today as Pima] which could be used for spare parts, making it one of the top 10 targets of the Soviet Union at the time. But the unknown, the secrets and the mystery of the missiles and nuclear technology made people from small towns nervous.
On the other side of the coin, the Titan Missile silos began to build up in the Northern part of the country as well.
“If you were living in rural South Dakota in the 1960s your house only got electricity 20 years earlier,” said Eric Leonard, the Superintendent of the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in Cooperstown, ND. “The military was transporting these missiles on trucks through these towns. But the Air Force started improving the electrical grid and putting in large amounts of money to maintain these country roads.”
Some residents in the small towns that surrounded the missile sites began to see these missiles as a positive. The missile complexes staffed 1,000s of people, who came to the area to live. According to Leonard, this could act as a ripple effect for the economy.
“There's a moral part of it too,” he added. “If you have a silo next to your town or farm you feel like you're contributing to the nation's defense, just by having those things nearby.”
People look back at the Cold War with a sense of detachment, even chuckling at the idea of children practicing duck and cover drills, chilled by the thought of the warning sirens echoing throughout the communities. But many experts believe that, while the Cold War is over, we are still in a very similar situation in this day and age, possibly even more dangerous than ever.
“Maybe not for the US, but for the planet in general,” said Morris, pointing out the nuclear threats in India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, North Korea and many, many other nations across the world.
“While the missile we preserve [here] doesn't work anymore, there are still Minuteman missiles on alert now,” said Leonard. “As a society, at some point in the 1990s we thought it was over and were relieved, but it's really not. [With this facility] there's an opportunity to connect the recent past with present day history. Nuclear weapons are in the news a lot more than they have been in a while.”
Like Minuteman, which has a similar deterrence theme, the Titan Missile National Historic Landmark provides content and background information and history on nuclear weapons and what they're capable of doing. The technology may be different, but the end result and the requisite politics continue to proliferate.
“There is that saying, 'you need to understand history if you don't want to repeat history's mistakes'. People who come here get a first-hand look at an actual intercontinental ballistic missile. They get a basic understanding of how it works and the destructive power that it has,” Morris explains.
“It's enormous. It can decimate an area of 900 square miles. It was 600 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima in World War II. Our job is to preserve and interpret the story of this national historic landmark site. [And] that's what we strive to do.”
Visitors to both these sites, open to the public, can foster an understanding and perspective of a past while envisioning a hope for the future, both through their own eyes but also those younger citizens entering into this new changing world.
Olivia Richman
A graduate of East Connecticut State University in Journalism, Olivia has written for Stonebridge Press & Antiques Marketplace among others. She enjoys writing, running and video games.
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