Vacation-Day 6

Well kids today we went to the Titan Museum just outside of Tucson.  For those of you who don't know about the Titan program I will give you a brief history lesson.

Back in the late 50's early 60's there was a lot of tension between Russia and America with constant threats of nuclear attacks.  In order to stop the threat each country built missile sites aimed at each other.  If Russia fired a nuclear missile towards America we would fire back and neither side would win...there would just be millions of casualties on both sides or complete destruction of the world.  This was referred to as a "Retaliatory Deterrent".  There were 54 silo's built with 18 in Tucson, 18 in Wichita, KS and 18 in Little Rock, AR.

The first program was called Titan 1 but it took too long to get the missiles fired up and launched (15 minutes) so they developed Titan 2.  Once the command was given to fire a Titan 2 missile, it would be launched within 5 minutes and hit its target 6,000 miles away in 35 minutes!  It seems crazy to me what things must have been like back then and the pressure on both governments.

During the Regan years the "Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty" (SALT) was signed to dismantle all the sites in both countries.  All 54 location in the US were destroyed with the exception of this one.  Once the missiles were removed they set off dynamite that blew a hole 28' deep.  Then they had to keep that open for approximately 3 months so the Russian satellites could verify it was destroyed. After that they sold the silo's to the public which some are used for storage and others were made into homes.  Just in case you are curious we replaced them with the Minuteman missiles which are located in 1,000 silo's across the center part of the country.

Down we go

There were two 6,000lb doors to get in

 

You can see the doors back to back

 

 

Still talking!

 The Titan museum was very good and should be added to your Bucket List.  We left there and went to a place called Tubac...you won't see a lot of pictures from here since it was all shopping...you guessed it your grandfather and I sat in the car while the ladies went shopping...3 hours worth as you can see by the expression on my face!