EP. 13 - Titan 1 Control Dome and Antenna Radar Station Exploration 

Thank you for the support. As you can see, the former abandoned Titan 1 Nuclear Bunker continues to surprise with its labyrinth of domes and radar silos. The Titan 1 is bustling now with heaps of activity and rehab work. Lots of footage to be shared soon. Be sure to catch up on all episodes of "Nuclear Bunker Living'.

No. The radars were not for communication with other agencies - the radars guided the missiles. Inertial navigation was in its infancy; the first sets were just becoming available, intended and developed for ICBM guidance; but the Atlas missiles, the E's and F's, were the operational standby's at the time. The Titan 1's, being still "developmental", sat further back in the queue. So the Atlases got the INS's and the Titan 1's were radar guided; the radars plotted the missile's position in the sky and relayed it back to the computer in the control dome, which sent microwaved course corrections up the radar beam until the missile's boost phase was complete. You have two small tower structures as part of the complex, one for each radar silo; those were used to collimate the radars to the best accuracy that could be produced; the result was not ideal, but with a 3.8 Mt warhead (the same one the Atlases used), "within a mile or two" is good enough. But your movie clip shows the radar dishes wrapped in inflatable canvas balloons - with any sort of breeze on the ground, a bare radar dish would wobble, destroying accuracy. Launching Titan 1's was a leisurely process, despite their best efforts. The computer and radars could only guide one missile at a time; and needless to say, since missiles exploding on the launchpad was a distressingly common occurrence, the first missile would have to be launched before the second one was elevated out of the silo. A fun read is missile V-2, which was being tested at Vandenberg AFB; they elevated it, fuelled it and then set-out to lower it back into the silo, at which point the elevator catastrophically failed and the missile fell back down into the silo and exploded; I find it ironic that "missile V-2" was the one that did this, considering the WW2 V2 rockets. But anyways, you elevate the first missile; it's fuelled already, the RP-1 could be stored onboard, although there's a big fuel tank halfway down the main hallway for when you wished to remove fuel from a missile. The LOX (liquid oxygen) could not be stored onboard; it would just boil-off. So it would be pumped into the missile just before launch; one of the complexities was a system to continually top-up the LOX tanks in first & second stages, because it was going to boil-off anyway. So ~21 minutes was the best you could hope-for to get three missiles away. The LOX was stored in massive (and unbelievably expensive) thermoses in the back bottom of the fuelling silos. I'm interested to find out if yours are still there; I imagine they were really valuable scrap (as was the stainless steel pipe the LOX was transferred through). Once the LOX was full and the "go" was received, the missile was launched - and I imagine the second missile would be raised above ground once the first was a mile-or-so away, but it'll be seven minutes before the radars are available to guide the next missile, which would be time spent pumping LOX. There were two radars, for redundancy; as well, in the event a nearby Base was trying to launch and its radars had been fried by a counterstrike, the Base's radars could swivel to control the other Base's missiles once they were above the horizon. But the people down below only had a month's food, BTW; after that they were on their own. This is still how the other land-Based ICBM's do it today. The Titan 2 did everything better. It had a 9+ Mt warhead, the largest ever put on a missile; they were inertially guided, and the guidance system ran continuously; and they used hypergolic fuels that were liquid at room temperature, and thus could be stored in the missile. The launch standard for a Titan 2 was 58 seconds from turning the keys to missile leaving the silo. But the Titan 2's were a lot heavier; there was a desire to Base them in the Titan 1 sites, but they weighed too much for the missile elevators (which missile V-2 had demonstrated, was "just" adequate). So they looked-at "fixing" the silos so the Titan 2's could be launched from inside them, but the realization dawned that it would cost more than just building other Bases. And besides, the USSR knew where the Titan 1 Bases were - which might just be the REAL legacy of the Titan 1 - and Atlas. Because, what happened in 1962, just as the Titan 1 was operational? - the Cuban Missile Crisis. I've read somewhere that at the height of the crisis, when fingers were hovering near buttons, "somebody" (whose name might just've been "Kennedy") passed a slip of paper to his opposite number in the USSR, with all the Base locations; and Soviet spy satellites could verify that Uncle Sam was indeed packing heat, and it was loaded and ready. Vladimir Lenin put it well; "Probe with a bayonet. If you find steel, stop - if you find mush, then keep pushing." So if the vastly expensive Titan 1's were only operational for ~three years, I still hesitate to call it "money wasted". All this info, and lots of good pictures, can be found on chromehooves (dot) net; including a "Dash-1" which is the USAF's couple-hundred-page overview of the Titan 1 missile system, and budgetary descriptions of the sites' construction. As an example, three people died during the construction of 725-C in Elizabeth, Colorado; a pipefitter who crushed his thumb between two lengths of pipe and died of shock, a postal worker whose van was t-boned by a dump truck 20 miles off-site, and a guy working at the bottom of a silo who heard yelling at the silo top and - quite contrary to orders - ran out from under the reinforced shelter that was down there for that purpose, and was struck on the head by the falling 12' 2x10 they were yelling about. Safety harnesses were de rigeur; one guy forgot to clip-on and fell 90' into the silo, landing in the safety net that was also de rigeur, walking away with hurt ankles and, I imagine, a biblical @$$-chewing from his foreman. LOVE your site - watching with deepest interest - would love to museum a Titan 1 site myself but I can't imagine what the whole thing is gonna' end-up costing you. All the very best!

Hey Nik, I love this concept. Don't stop what you're doing here, this could become a hit youtube series. Looking forward to this premier.

I'd give anything to see one of these facilities, especially the antenna silos - really surprising how much the scrappers ended up leaving in there. I think the white thing at about 24:41 is part of the testing/diagnostic system for the antennae when the facility was in the 'hard' condition and not raised to the surface.

The first switch from Rochester Ny is a mini SS5 and they still make telco gear

I Love watching your channel. Always something new and fun.

I meant to mention on one of your earlier videos that train is still in business. Their slogan is “Nothing Stops a Trane” maybe that's why they were used in nuclear facilities...loll

Whooo hooo another episode. I can only image how cool it must be to own a missile silo bunker, you should reconstruct the controller room 😉

Hi! I have been binge watching your videos from the beginning! And loving your vids! But I am wondering if the previous owner had plans for this facility and then later changed his mind? I only ask because toward the end of your video, when you were heading back to the lobby, I noticed that some of the electrical is much newer with the nice shiny conduits, Square D breaker panels and then later stripped of it's copper. Also, in the rooms that you entered, those fluorescent fixtures that were on the walls is much newer than the facilities. Those are the T8 type fixtures, most likely made around 2000 or newer. Wonder if he has been scrapping the place out since the tubes were removed from the energy converter in the communications center....

The Titan 1 complex is so cool. Crazy how large they are. This one seems to be in good shape. What are you going to do with it?

At 24.33 you were looking at an antenna array ,this looks like a microwave limit switch for the platform hydraulic lift. These i believe were used instead of the usual mechanical switches because of the absolute threat of vibration while the system was being used by nuclear tremours and ground shake. A lot of development of 10 gigahertz microwave equipment was being experminted and used in these days.

Amazing to see one so prestine with no graffiti.

That white thing you ask what are you that is a device to wash down the antenna when it comes back down

I can't tell you how excited I am about your project here. Is the goal a restoration or a repurposing? Perhaps a bit of both? I'm also very interested in knowing where I could find the vintage, operational films you use in these videos. Be careful in your explorations and keep up the good work!

What were the two things right at the end of the video on the left you turned and focused on as you walked towards those doors?

Love the channel. Please get a real flashlight and dump the music.

What are you going to do with the site after it’s all cleaned up?

I got to ask, do you in your usual form, just climb and walk on the gangways or do you actually do a safety check? Some look fairly sketchy.

wow the creepy as fakk music.

Dude, get a better light

Dude I love this shit but if you are gonna film at least have better lighting.