The Business End of Missile Site Road

— A Tour of Deer Park’s Former Atlas ICBM Bunker —

 By Wally Lee Parker

 

First published October 2008 in the Clayton/Deer Park Historical Society’s Newsletter,

"The Mortarboard."

August 18, 1961: Atlas Launch Complex 567-1, Deer Park, Washington, missile elevated for dual-propellant loading exercise.   Photo courtesy of Dick Mellor, former USAF Ballistic Missile Analyst Technician, 567^th Strategic Missile Squadron, Fairchild Air Force Base.

It was Thursday, the 21^st day of August 2008.  It was cool.  After a hot, bright summer, the last several days of rain-soaked thunderstorms had moved on, leaving a thin, humid, afternoon overcast.  I was piloting my Toyota pickup eastward on Crawford Street — out of Deer Park.  Bill Sebright, president of the Clayton/Deer Park Historical Society, was riding shotgun.

We rolled pass the turnoff to the high school, pass the Evergreen Truss Company, pass the eastward creep of something we thought we’d never live long enough to see — a suburb to the town.  We passed all this on our way to our 13:00 hour meeting at the north end of Missile Site Road.  We were about to tour Deer Park’s former missile base — now an explosive’s storage bunker for a company called Northwest Energetic Services.

Bill Sebright had made the arrangements.  As Bill explained, “While I was substitute teaching at the Deer Park Middle School this last spring, I was talking with Dan Huffman about some of the society’s local history projects.  Dan’s a music and computer teacher at the school.  The discussion got around to the Clayton/Deer Park Historical Society’s book about Deer Park’s cold-war-era missile base.”

I know something about the society’s book — Standing Watch: The Story of Deer Park’s Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.  I wrote it.

Bill continued, “Dan knows Lori Lipke.  She works for the explosives company now operating at the former missile site.  Dan suggested I contact Lori to see if I could arrange for a tour of the old missile bunker.”

Lori, who works in the company’s office, was really nice about attempting to accommodate us.  One of her superiors was concerned about us taking photographs of the ‘product’ and the ‘storage bunker’.  There also seemed to be a feeling that there was a lot of misinformation about what the company was doing at the site, and the managers were concerned as to whether our visit might compound that even more.

After all was said, we reluctantly agreed to leave our cameras behind, and the tour was on.

Down a narrow asphalt road, crowded by pines, we rolled to a stop by the portable building used as the company’s office.  Dan Huffman was waiting for us.

After introductions and a short conference, we entered the office.  Lori met us.  She assured us the tour was still on, and we waited a few minutes until she was able to arrange for someone to cover for her at the office.

Bill, Dan, and I piled into the Toyota and followed Lori’s car onto the base proper.  The area was singularly unimpressive — since most everything of interest was underground.

We were now driving over what was once some of the most sensitive national security ground in the entire nation. I pointed this out by saying, “Gentlemen, I hope you realize that if this was forty-five years ago, and we were here, by now we would likely either be lying face down with an M-1 pointed at the backs of our heads, or quite dead.”  After all, missile site security guards were well known for being rather humorless in so far as intruders were concerned.

Standing on the north side of the missile base proper were several large sheds.  Another metal shed stood alone, several hundred yards away against the southeastern tree line.  Lori pulled to a stop and stepped out onto the gravel roadway.  I rolled down my window.  “Pull your truck down the ramp and park along the right retaining wall — by the small entry door.  Wait there while I get Walter Dukes, one of our drivers, to come unlock the bunker for us.”

The bunker was two buildings — to the southeast the larger complex containing the missile bay — to the northwest the smaller command and power generation complex.  The two were connected by a tunnel and separated by a blast door.

The area under which the bunker was buried was somewhat elevated compared to the surrounding land.  Burying the bunker wasn’t intended to obscure its location.  It was buried to offer it some protection from a conventional or nuclear blast.  Otherwise, the ground above was marked by numerous pipes, ventilation stacks, and several large, horizontal slab doors — including the massive one covering the missile bay itself.  From our location I couldn’t see to what degree the bunker hatch had been covered over with soil in the years since the site was deactivated. 

All this aside, it was with some wonder that I guided the Toyota down the tarmac loading ramp to the missile bay.  This was the ramp down which Atlas E missiles were backed.  This was the ramp down which (estimated) 3.75 megaton thermonuclear warheads were transported.  And at the end of this ramp was the huge door leading into a missile bay bunker that once contained an early version of the world’s ultimate weapon combination.

At the bottom of the ramp, built flush into the surface of the ramp’s right side retaining wall, was the solid steel personnel entry door — looking uncommonly small and insignificant compared to the mammoth launch bay entry door just beyond.  Unlike the overhead hatches, both these doors were still quite functional.

If it’s possible to think of a nuclear weapons system as primitive, in certain ways the Atlas E would fit that description.  For example, at least several times a year, on clear evenings, the huge missile bay door would be cranked to the side so an airman with a theodolite — a sophisticated surveyor’s transit — could take sightings of the North Star from the bottom of this ramp (probably the reason all Atlas E missile bunkers were laid out with the entry ramp on the north side of the complex).  Those readings would be used for line-of-sight fine-tuning of the mechanics of the missile’s guidance system.

The most advanced part of the missile — the eight cubic feet of solid-state on-board computer — was less intelligent than a modern wristwatch calculator.  But at that moment it was state of the art — and top secret (and as with most top secrets, probably unknown to almost everyone except the Russians, Chinese, and Israelis).  And even as primitive as the state of the art was, it could still rain unstoppable destruction down on a target many thousands of miles away — and do so with all necessary accuracy.

Although I had written a booklet for the society about this bunker, I hadn’t been able to arrange a tour of the site while writing the story — probably due to the same concerns the explosives company’s management had recently expressed.  Instead, I had depended on declassified government documents and the memories of several dozen former missileers.  I was anxious to find out how closely those diagrams, photos, and descriptions — after being reconstructed inside my imagination — meshed with the physical reality.

As Walt pulled up, Lori asked us, “Did you bring flashlights?  There’s lots of dark corners and holes.”

Bill, always the diplomat, replied, “I hadn’t realized we were supposed to.”

Lori, waving her flashlight, returned, “Just don’t step out of the light without one of us along.”

Walt unlocked the metal personnel entry door and swung it outward.  Beyond this door was a small vestibule perhaps four feet deep, then a second door.  This second door of heavy plate steel also opened toward the outside.

This vestibule was originally a security containment area.  It was much smaller than it had appeared on the diagrams — so small that two men secured between the doors would have had difficulty pulling the inner door open and squeezing around the edge.  Watching the five of us walk through the portal, I couldn’t see how a five man launch crew would manage.

Spokane’s Bob Lemley had been a Ballistic Missile Analyst Technician with Fairchild Air Force Base’s 567^th Strategic Missile Squadron — and an Atlas E launch crew member.  He was also one of my most valuable consultants while I was writing our booklet — ‘Standing Watch’.  I asked him to explain how security protocol passing through such a cramped impoundment was possible for a five-man crew.

“The entire missile complex was being monitored by a closed-circuit television system,” Bob replied.  “Most of the cameras were fixed, though there was a movable camera topside that turned 360 degrees to sweep the entire complex.  Other fixed cameras were located strategically throughout the exterior complex — among those was one over the large launch bay door, observing the entire loading ramp, and one over the personnel entry door, giving a detailed view of anyone requesting entry.

“Views from all these cameras could be displayed on monitors in the launch control room.

“Incoming airmen would have identified themselves at the main gate by telephone link to the bunker before that gate would have been unlocked.  Once inside the perimeter fence, they were under constant observation as they approached the personnel door.  If protocol had not been followed to that point, the approaching airmen would be challenged by the outside guards.

“Inside, the missile bay had several cameras, the warhead was under constant watch by a camera, the long tunnel leading to the launch control room had its camera, and the impoundment area between the outer and inner personnel entry doors had a camera.

“The impoundment area was very small — really designed for only one person at a time.  But there was sufficient room for that one person to pull the outer door shut behind, then pull the inner door open into the impoundment area.

“Missile crews consisted of five men.  The missile crew commander was the first person through the door system — the outside door being unlocked remotely from the launch control room.  He would pull the exterior door shut behind, and it was relocked from the control room.

“Confined in the vestibule, and under observation, the crew commander used the impoundment area’s telephone to talk to the onsite crew commander — giving him the day’s password.  Once the incoming commander’s identity was confirmed, and it was clear he was not under duress from the outside, both interior and exterior doors were remotely unlocked, and the entire crew was allowed to enter.

“Crew officers knew each other by sight and voice.  Other incoming airmen, such as maintenance personnel, would be left in the impoundment area until one of the inside personnel was able to meet them at the second door and escort them directly to the commander for identification.  After that, one of the missile crew — often me — would have to babysit the maintenance crewman — keep him under constant observation — as he did his work.”

Bob’s explanation solved the extra small impoundment area problem.

Entering the bunker, we moved westward down the 20 some foot long access tunnel.  The site’s two tunnels were both made from corrugated metal pipe.  Enough concrete had been poured and leveled on the bottoms of these pipes to form a walkway several feet wide.  At the end of this first tunnel was a landing.  From this dividing point the second tunnel ran north toward the launch control bunker.  A doorway and a few steps down in the opposite direction took us into the launch bay equipment area.  This large space — approximately forty-five by one-hundred and some odd feet — at one time contained the logic units used to monitor the missile’s preflight condition and store its flight program.  In the southern portion of this room were all the pumps, engines, tanks, and control devises needed for retracting the overhead launch bay hatch, elevating the missile, and pumping the petroleum part of the rocket’s propellant into the missile from storage tanks buried outside the bunker's walls.  The room had long since been stripped of every vestige of its original purpose.  Scattered across the floor were pallets stacked with sacks of Northwest Energetic Services’ product.

A doorway through the thick concrete eastern wall led into the missile’s launch bay.  At the north end of this bay was the huge metal entry door — just outside of which my Toyota sat.

The missile would have rested in this twenty-foot wide, twenty-foot high, and one-hundred and ten-foot long bay — would have rested slung under its erection tower.  The missile’s engines would have been on the south end of the bay.  When the missile was erected and launched, the rocket’s blast would have been directed down a flame tunnel which curved to the south and reemerged at the surface some distance beyond.  This tunnel’s exit was capped with a sliding hatch that would retract at the same time the launch bay’s overhead hatch was withdrawn.  For safety, the opening dropping into the flame tunnel was now covered with wooden planks. 

Again, almost everything metal had been salvaged from this area.

Overhead was four-hundred tons of hatch.  When operational, that four-hundred tons could be jolted upward six inches by pressurized nitrogen gas, and then winched away to the west — all in thirty seconds.  Without the original equipment, the only practical way to remove the hatch was jackhammers and dump trucks.

Walt Dukes stated that on numerous occasions he has parked two fully loaded semi-trailers and their trucks side by side in the bay, with plenty of room to spare.

We moved on into the most easterly section of the bunker — the liquid oxygen room.  This area was roughly eighteen feet wide and seventy some feet long.  The floor level varied, some section being four or more feet lower than others.  The east wall was pierced by a corrugated tunnel that once housed the liquid oxygen tank.  The entire area had been packed with the machinery necessary to maintain and pump the volatile three hundred plus degrees below zero liquefied gas.  Most everything metal had now been stripped away.

We retreated to the landing at the west end of the entry tunnel, then walked north along the long tunnel to the command section.  This corrugated metal shaft had once been lined with power and communication conduits.  Now a single plastic retrofit conduit carried electrical wires to that section of the bunker.

The wall at the end of the tunnel still carried the painted Strategic Air Command shield.  Around that wall to the left was a door leading to the launch command room.  And straight on was a half dozen steps leading down to the bunker’s kitchen, and then on into the power room.

The small kitchen, except for a missing refrigerator, was exactly as it had looked when the site was decommissioned in the spring of 1965.  The range was enameled in a not quite pleasing shade of Autumn Gold — an upscale choice for consumers when the site was activated in 1961. 

West of the kitchen was the doorway into the empty power generation room.  When operational, the entire missile site was totally isolated from the outside world.  Not a single power line entered the site — and not a single phone line entered or left the site.  All power used by the base was created by the huge diesel generators situated in this room.  One of those two generators was always running.  During launch drills both would be activated.

As we walked around the remains of the pillars on which the motors had set, we noted a dark patch covering the floor.  A flashlight across the dark revealed the patch to be a mirror calm surface of startlingly clear water, areas of which were a centimeter or two deep, and other areas of which dropped at least four feet down into a maze of concrete trenches and open pipes.

“Okay”, Bill said.  “Safety hint.  Let’s do exactly what Lori said and not walk into dark corners.”

In the northeast corner of this room was the command bunker’s escape hatch.  Opened by a cable attached to the wall some distance away, the ceiling hatch consisted of a bottom door — now hanging down by its hinges — then perhaps four feet of circular pipe, the side nearest the wall lined with metal bars intended for hand and foot grips.  This section of pipe would originally have been filled with sand to cushion against outside blast and radiation.  Pulling the cable released the lower hatch, allowing the sand to drop to the floor.  Metal bars cast into the wall below the hatch allowed the airmen to climb through the bottom hatch.  Once inside the pipe, they’d open the outer hatch and climb out of the bunker.

A hallway to the east side of the crew’s kitchen led to the crew quarters, shower room, and such.

The red door first seen when rounding the wall from the access tunnel led into launch control.  Signs indicated that this was an area in which the ‘two-man rule’ applied.  No less than two authorized members of the crew were to be in this section at one time.  No one should have ever been alone in this area — not out of concern that they might launch the missile by themselves (a possibility that the layout of the launch system made physically impossible), but rather because of the top-secret codebooks always accessible in the area.

The space below the elevated wooden floor of this area was used to thread webs of cables to and from the machines in the room above.

At one time this dim and dusty room was the potential launch point for World War III.  Now it sits as still and lifeless as the tombs containing the bones of the two men, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, who once came within a breath of ordering the death of an entire planet.

Once back into the sunlight, we all commented that the complex was smaller than we had expected — expectations probably inflated by our recognition of the site’s historic importance.

On the way out of the site we drove by the microwave pillbox — a rectangular concrete box with an opaque fiberglass dome on its southwest wall through which microwaves were beamed toward Lookout Mountain.  This was part of the secure communication web connecting all nine Atlas missile bases with the 567^th Missile Squadron's headquarters at Fairchild.  After the site had passed into civilian hands, a metal building had been built over part of the pillbox.

As we left Northwest Energetic Services’ property, I consider to what extent my booklet about the missile site might have differed if I’d had access to the site while writing.  I’d have used a tape measure to get accurate measurements.  I’d have had a much better sense of the scale of the place.  But since the bulk of the story was drawn from original government documents, and the recollections on the missileers who served at Deer Park and the other Atlas E bunkers around the area and around the nation, there’s little I feel I would want to change.

Over the years inaccuracies and misunderstandings about the weapon systems have become commonplace.  The Atlas E bunkers are often described as silos — which they obviously were not.  People envision the missiles sitting upright, fueled, and just a push-button away from launch during the first several weeks of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The nature of the Atlas E missile’s mechanical systems would have made that exceedingly dangerous for both the missile and crew.  Besides which, the missileers manning Fairchild’s bunkers during the crisis have indicated such did not happen.  And then there are suggestions that the Deer Park bunker is the nexus of a vast, underground, cold war survival complex.  But for those entertaining that X-file style theory, there’s little point in suggesting otherwise.

Bill, Dan, and I want to thank the management of Northwest Energetic Services for allowing us to view the remains of Deer Park’s missile base.  Due to the nature of the business being carried out on the property, public tours, though likely popular, would be extremely problematic.

And we especially want to thank Lori Lipke and Walter Dukes for quite literally shining some light into several exceedingly dark corners of Deer Park’s history.

 ———  end  ———