S.L. Sanger
Conversations, part 2
HARLOWTON, A CENTRAL MONTANA TOWN OF 1,000, is a quiet place, the dramatic Crazy Mountains to the southwest. The pretty Musselshell River is in sight at the edge of town. Empty, boarded up and burned out buildings are prominent on the main street, but the town is not comatose. The city library is busy and so is the Snowy Mountain coffee shop and bakery. Ditto the post office and a couple of taverns, a hardware store and a flour mill. Ray’s Sports and Western Wear (cowboy boots to hunting rifles and ammo) is connected to a convenience store and a large Conoco gas station at the intersection of highways 12 and 191.
The Graves Hotel, Harlowton
The weathered and very popular Sportsman’s Bar & Steakhouse is across the intersection. It is not unusual to notice a customer bellied up to the Sportsman bar with a pistol on his belt. He’s not a deputy sheriff, just a guy having a beer. The Corral Motel is next door.
Sportsman's Bar & Steakhouse,, Harlowton
The almost-majestic not quite abandoned Graves Hotel sits at one end of the main drag, a place with a magnificent view, where it is a pleasure to sit on the wide porch and watch thunderstorms move in from the Crazies. Once, the Milwaukee Road operated a large and active roundhouse operation at the south end of town, now the location of a railroad museum. An odd little park with scattered old farm implements and deer antlers nailed to trees is located near the railroad museum on the south edge of town.
Out of town, prosperous Hutterite farm colonies and rows of giant electricity-generating turbine windmills are seen from the highway. Down U.S. 12 west is Two Dot, almost a ghost town. and Martinsdale, closer yet to ghost town status.
SOMETHING ELSE TOO. Along with grazing cattle and sheep and mountain ranges – Little Belt, Snowy, Crazy and Castle – Harlowton is surrounded by misleadingly benign and substantially-fenced installations with peculiar characteristics. A thin white fiberglass pole, some peculiar metal forms scattered about, a utility pole with three electrical transformers attached. Standing close to the chain-link fence a visitor may hear a whirring sound like an air conditioner and, occasionally, a sudden loud and rumbling noise underground that sounds like a big diesel engine. The centerpiece behind the fence is a concrete form that looks vaguely like an industrial-sized septic tank with an unusually heavy lid. Three rails that look like train rails extend from the lid. The whirring sound is an air-conditioning system. The rumbling noise from underground is a standby diesel engine for emergency electricity generation that comes to life occasionally to test its reliability. A warning keep out sign on the fence says: “Use of Deadly Force Authorized.”
Barely visible from a distance, the white pole is one of the few distinguishing marks of a missile launch site.
THE MOVEABLE CONCRETE LID, six or seven feet wide and weighing 108 tons, is the top end of a deep concrete silo in which nestles a 60-foot rocket-powered Minuteman III missile loaded with a hydrogen bomb warhead with at least 20 times the explosive force of the atomic bombs which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The concrete lid would be hurled by explosive charges down the rails if launch keys were turned at the launch control center, likely miles away. In seconds the missile would be up and gone.
The 10 missiles around Harlowton make up Kilo Flight of Malmstrom’s 490th Squadron, only about 4,400 miles from the Kremlin, which back in the 1960s was considered conveniently close considering the first Minuteman’s 6,300-mile range. The newer model Minuteman III has a reported range of 8,000 miles. Top speed is 15,000 miles an hour, ceiling is 700 miles. Cost: $7 million each, in 1960s money. These warheads are considered accurate to about 800 feet, probably less, of the target, according to an equation called “circular error probable,” which means half the missiles launched in a strike would land within the C.E.P. An H-bomb of more than 300-kiloton yield does not need pinpoint accuracy to be terribly effective.
All ten of Kilo Flight’s missiles are based in Wheatland County, along with six from Lima Flight. This total of sixteen H-bomb warheads – roughly 300 times more powerful than the Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic bombs -- probably puts this Montana county somewhere in the vicinity of India and Pakistan for nuclear weapon destructive capability. Perhaps even a significantly higher level since Wheatland County’s missiles are armed and ready compared to India and Pakistan, which likely are not immediately operational.
(An ironic aside: In the edition of Time magazine for Sept. 8-15, 2014, the editors decided the residents of Wheatland County, Montana, described as a region of plains, rolling hills, piney mountains and pasturelands have little more to worry about than winter cold. The county was designated America’s third safest county to live in. Apparently, the presence of 16 hydrogen bomb warheads capable of cataclysmic destruction is absolutely nothing to worry about. The safest county in America, said Time magazine, was Sweet Grass County, Montana, adjoining Wheatland County to the south, almost next door to the 16 warheads.)
THE CLOSEST MISSILE LAUNCH SITE to Harlowton is K-8 two miles south of town on U.S. 191, the highway to Big Timber, county seat of Sweet Grass County, the safest place to live in the United States. K-8 is the southernmost launch site in the Malmstrom AFB missile field. The site sits a few hundred yards off 191 to the right. The launch facility itself is identical to hundreds of other Minuteman III launch sites. It’s prosaic, a touch of Doomsday for some, a welcome deterrent to enemies of the U.S. for others. The scene otherwise is also fairly typical of many Montana missile sites. The view is of grazing cattle, the Crazy Mountains on the southwestern horizon, another range farther away to the south and impressive buttes on all sides.
THE HARLOWTON TOWNSFOLK and Wheatland County ranchers are certainly aware of the weapons, but do not seem nervous. More like quietly interested spectators. For instance, Todd Schock, co-owner of the Country Side Inn on U.S. 12-191, the main highway through Harlowton, was blasé. “Part of daily life,” he said. Seldom any contact with Air Force personnel, he added.
A clerk at the city hall in Harlowton said the missiles did not bother her, although some people were troubled. “I would not want to survive a missile attack. Why survive? In all that poisoned air?”
Occasionally, she sees an Air Force airman jogging on the highway near K-1, the launch center for Kilo Flight on the north edge of town. “The airmen don’t fraternize with the town, but everybody knows who they are.” The Air Force does allow occasional tours of the above-ground part of the facility for civilians, but not below ground where the launch officers are on duty, she said.
THE LAUNCH CENTERS, normally close to a road and about six acres in size inside the fence, look like a fairly ordinary ranch with a modest frame house and a few outbuildings. Most ranch sites, however, are not this neat and are not situated inside a high fence with serious warning signs and a couple of towering antennas. A sewage lagoon is another unusual feature. These facilities are staffed at all times by at least 10 persons, usually men, although the assignments are often filled by women.
All personnel have access to weapons, with half a dozen security force airmen assigned to protect the control center and to respond to trouble or suspicious behavior at the launch sites. Each center, which the Air Force calls a “missile alert facility,” has a manager and cook.
A Minuteman III launch control center
"CREEPY," said my traveling companion after she saw her first launch control center.
About 60 feet underground are the two launch officers, buttoned up in their concrete capsule. The launch officers, usually lieutenants or captains, are responsible for the 10 missiles of their flight and in special circumstances could launch all 50 of their squadron’s missiles. The “terminal countdown,” which occurs after the control center receives and verifies an “emergency action order,” takes about 28 seconds.
The next step: Each officer turns his or her launch key to the right, holds it for three seconds and releases. The missile will reach the target in 30 minutes or less, depending on distance. The same schedule applies to an incoming enemy missile. It is usually assumed an attacker would launch two missiles aimed at each U.S. silo.
One fatalistic comment from a former launch officer: “You only have to be close in horseshoes, hand grenades and nukes.”
The control centers are connected to the unstaffed launch sites, at least a few miles from the center, by hardened underground cables. Originally, when these cables were installed, the extensive ditch system was a hazard to cattle and other living things, a major bone of contention at times between ranchers and the Air Force. Of course, the Air Force also improved roads and bridges on rural roads because reliable access to the missile sites was necessary. To back up the cables, a hardened UHF system and a hardened low-frequency electronic system are available. An above ground conical steel antenna and a buried array of electronic elements are part of these systems. In addition, there is another alternative for missile launch: The control center is linked to what is whimsically called “Looking Glass,” nuclear warfare jargon for airborne command control aircraft, basically Boeing 707s. This much-modified Boeing has the ability to launch the Minuteman III via the UHF system.
Central Avenue, downtown Harlowton
HARLOWTON PEOPLE tended to be matter-of-fact about the missile presence with seldom a mention of fear or dread of nuclear war. A chance meeting on a Harlowton sidewalk resulted in a long talk with a man who called himself “Dr. Bob” (full name Robert McNary, an M.D., non-practicing). Dr. Bob, locally known as something of an eccentric, is a believer in the philosophy “love your fellow man, including your enemies.” He was critical of Air Force personnel, mostly because they were standoffish and failed to engage with the local population. He paid close attention to activity related to the missiles, mostly the hustle and bustle when missiles “are swapped out,” meaning when the missile in the silo is removed and a different one replaces it. “You get 10 vehicles front and back in a convoy, armed, bristling with guns. The missiles are crated, but you can see them.”
He knew a woman whose husband had a flat tire near one of the remote sites. The man was walking to find some help when a missile maintenance crew suddenly appeared and asked him what he was doing. When the man without a spare tire asked for a ride to town, the answer was “No.” Use their mobile phone to call his wife? “No.”
“People by now are used to the missiles. They have been here a long time,” he said.
Lack of small talk is a characteristic of the missile airmen, as I found out. A typical encounter at a launch site where something is going on: Silo lid cranked open, large truck parked nearby, helicopter overhead.
“What’s going on?” My question is directed at a sergeant standing next to a security vehicle. “Can’t say.” “Okay if I watch?” “No.”
Another time at the gate to a launch center, an Air Force security vehicle pulled up, a sergeant got out and asked me if he could help. I said, “No, only looking.” In an effort to make small talk I asked him how the food was inside the fence. “Pretty good?” The sergeant rolled his eyes, got back in the blue vehicle and departed.