I decided one afternoon on the way home from the umpteenth trip to the VA with hubs, that the following “Flight” might be interesting to some Thursday Doors enthusiasts. But it was not easy getting a photo. The entrance seemed to be a spot where some unknown person used to make his phone calls. I didn’t want him in the photo or his vehicle. I don’t mean for this to sound suspicious because terrible cell phone signals are a thing in rural areas here. But after a few different attempts, we managed to find a day with sun and a decent view of this site.

My personal experience with these missile silos go back to my early teen years when my father was employed by the government to paint stripes in each of the silo holes. In the map I’ll share, you can see there were quite a few to keep him busy for a couple years. One story he relayed while I was in earshot was of the platform they had to stand on while suspended some 90 feet or so above the missile hole. He described it as a flat circular platform held by a cable in the center. I have to imagine there were extra cables but then again he noted how the safety harness fit him. He felt that if he had ever fallen, his legs would not have been attached once he reached the end of the fall. I’m trying to say this as delicately as possible because he used many colorful metaphors in his description. I’m quite sure he didn’t think I was in earshot. oops.

But I always had the question of ‘Why?’ on earth did there need to be stripes painted inside these silos. While I’m grateful for the income it provided to feed our family when we were normally scrapping by, I was so puzzled by it all. Who would see it other than the Air Force personel and politicians perhaps? I figured once one of these missilles was fired up, all paint would burn off, not to mention all of us who were clearly dispensible rural citizens. And one more thing, why did we as children have to worry with such things like world leaders playing with our lives. Fast forward to today, I suppose the worry was truly the end of childhood innocence for me in my world views. And why I’ve balked at photographing these images until now. But it’s a story we need to be told and hopefully a life lesson the world will pay attention to. I don’t have high hopes there, but regardless, here is one Minuteman Control Facility just off of US Highway 65 in northern Pettis County.

An interesting paragraph from online:

The Air Force wanted to deploy Minuteman as a single, immense, “missile farm,” equipped with as many as 1,500 missiles. However, the Air Force soon determined that “for reasons of economy 150 launchers should be concentrated in a single area, whenever possible, and that no area should contain fewer than 50 missiles.” Consequently, the Air Force organized the Minuteman force into a series of administrative units called “wings,” each comprised of three or four 50-missile squadrons. Each squadron was further subdivided into five smaller units, called “flights.” A flight consisted of a single, manned, launch control facility, linked to ten, unmanned, underground, missile silos. The silos were separated from the launch control facility and from each other by a distance of several miles.

https://www.nps.gov/

Hope you enjoyed this ‘blast’ *pun intended, from the past. Please take a peek at Dan’s No Facilities for more wonderful doors from around the world.