Engineer Memoirs
They have had a lot of underground tests at the Nevada test site and, of course, still do.
And these are done in deep holes. They had a couple of infamous cases where the
stemming, that is, the plug that they put in the hole, failed. They got leakage, and the
radioactive debris from that went all over the place. Then there was a huge argument
about whether it had crossed the U.S. border in detectable amounts or not.
I'm only amplifying the point that the layman would have said, "If you have a treaty like
that, you're never going to be able to do this." But the people doing the program kept
it going. I think they were able to do that, to a substantial extent, because of the
Panama situation.
Q:
Did you really think for a minute there that you might be getting into civil works in
1961 when you went to L.A.?
A:
Yes, I did, although it became evident that I probably wasn't. What happened was, I
went there as the deputy district engineer. Then after I got there, I learned that they
planned to assign a more senior guy in the fall, and he was going to be the deputy
district engineer.
While [Major General William T.] Bill Bradley may have had the other plan, the main
thing he wanted me to work on was the ICBM program. That was going to be very
interesting. As the Air Force got going on the ICBM program, they first worked
primarily with the Los Angeles District.
Q:
Was there a Los Angeles field office, or was that already a thing of the past?
A:
They had the Los Angeles field office. Then that became CEBMCO.
The Air Force was having the Los Angeles District build the pilot facilities at
Vandenberg. For most of the facilities that were being built all over the United States
by CEBMCO, there was a pilot facility built first at Vandenberg--to work out the bugs
before they did mass production for the operational missile field. It also was to provide
a facility to be used at Vandenberg for training. So the Los Angeles District was
involved in building one of each type of launch facility at Vandenberg.
Q:
Atlas and was Minuteman already--
A:
No. Minuteman came at the end. We started with Atlas. That was the first. The Atlas
missile at the beginning was launched from a pad on the surface. Then they did a certain
amount of protective work. It wasn't until they got into Titan that they really went
underground. Then, of course, Minuteman again was underground.
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