Mom and Greg at Oscar LCC, August 1974

Mom flew up to Minot in August of 1974, my first summer as a Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander (DMCCC).

Here we are at the Oscar Launch Control Facility (LCF).  Oscar is the missile site closest to Minot AFB, so this is where friends and family could be taken, as well as visiting dignitaries.  It was directly north of the front gate and took about a half hour to drive there.  There were a total of fifteen LCFs in the 91st Strategic Missile Wing (Alpha through Oscar).  Oscar was my first Launch Control Center (LCC) as a deputy crewed with Bill Graham. 

Most of the other LCFs were a hour's drive or more away from the main base.  The 15 LCF's and the 150 LF's (the launch facilities where the 150 individual missiles were connected to each LCC--ten directly to one LCC and 50 indirectly to the other four LCC's in a squadron) were no closer than ten nautical miles from each other.  All were typically farther than that from the main Minot AFB.  The missile fields with all 15 LCF's and 150 LF's were laid out in a huge horseshoe shape around Minot AFB.   Oscar's northern missiles were buried close to the Canadian border.  The missiles for Alpha and Beta were south of the town of Minot and about half-way to Bismark.

You cannot see it in this picture, but there is a basketball net to the left of those red and white posts in the background.  Bill and I were playing basketball one afternoon before we had to go back downstairs for our final night shift.  I wasn't paying attention when he tossed the ball at my face.  It hit and chipped a front tooth.

I remember when someone in the Wing mentioned that whenever anyone visited an LCC below ground, all of the visitors would appear to huddle near the center of the acoustic enclosure for fear that if they backed up against any of the humming equipment, ten missiles would launch.

No chance of that, but it all must have seemed intimidating to anyone unfamiliar with how it worked.

Conventional defensive philosophy was that the missiles were there to protect the nation, but that they were the primary targets of any Soviet First Strike missile launch.  However, in those days, the U.S. was always selling to the U.S.S.R. tons of wheat, wheat that was grown in North Dakota and elsewhere where the missiles were located.  Typical Soviet harvests were rarely enough to feed their growing populace, so they often turned to the United States.  In the following poem, I looked at the conventional philosophy the other way around, that the existence of the wheat growing all around actually was protecting the missiles:

To the Field
 
Where we arrange the targets
amid a food to feed our world.
Stubbornly we interval protected growth
through barren plants.
A dispersal
that is a lesser raging of weapons,
unharvested as sacred grain
for fear,
for hunger.

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