LITTLE ROCK — Today the land is covered with grass and mostly used as pasture by local farmers, but it wasn't that long ago when nuclear-tipped missiles dotted the landscape of central and north-central Arkansas.
Eighteen of the Titan II intercontinental ballistic missiles were spread from Conway County in the west to White County in the east. In between, Faulkner, Cleburne and Van Buren counties all had missiles along with the silos and command control centers, all buried - with one notable exception - beneath the ground and all aimed at what was then the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics, America's enemy during the Cold War.
"We wanted to be in the heartland, away from the coasts," said Jimmie Gray, a retired Air Force colonel and a former vice wing commander at the 308th Strategic Missile Wing based at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville. "The range was considerably improved at the time we went to the Titan II. It could go 5,500 nautical miles, over the pole, to its target."
Arkansas wasn't the only state to have Titan II missile silos; 18 were in Kansas and 18 were in Arizona.
The last missiles left Arkansas in 1987 as part of the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks with the silos being filled in with dirt anddebris and photographed from space by Russian spy satellites.
Gray didn't think that proximity to the base mattered when the 18 sites were selected for the silos.
"I think that the ICBMs would have come in regardless," he said. "I think they were mostly concerned with location and they were concerned with hardness. The actual geological condition of the soil. They looked at 23 sites and they eventually selected 18."
When the first silos became active in 1963, they were treated as more a novelty than anything else.
"Security then wasn't like it was later," said Vince Maes, a retired Air Force major who was active with the Titan II program in Arkansas. "It was a few farmers then, but we co-existed with them pretty well. Back then we'd take groups down to the control center and give them tours. That wouldn't happen now, that's for sure."
In its prime the wing employed about 1,500 people, and more than 4,000 people were involved with the construction of the 18 silos.
Maes started with the Titan IIs in 1963 and got out in 1984, almost the wing's duration in Arkansas.
"I was there for almost all of it," Maes said. "It was something else. I miss it, a little. Just the camaraderie of it. I don't miss the no-notice inspections though."
Maes said a four-man crew would pull a 24-hour tour in the command center eight or nine times a month.
"It would be two officers and two enlisted men," he said. "And we had to go to training all the time, so it wasn't like we had a lot of free time."
But it was only training.
"We never had to turn the key," Gray said. "We never had a situation where we went active," meaning that the missiles, while pointed at targets, were never put in launch mode.
Gray added that the missiles were eventually put into use, though.
"They were repurposed to satellites into orbit," he said. "They were perfect for that and I'd imagine some of the satellites now up were put there by Titan IIs."
The Titan IIs did have their share of mishaps. In 1965, during construction of a silo, 53 civilian workers were killed in an explosion. And then both Maes and Gray were there in 1980 when a missile accidentally exploded.
"I couldn't confirm it then," Gray said. "It was all 'we can neither confirm or deny,' but the nuclear warhead came outof the silo. We found it by accident. We had been looking for it and one of the airmen came over and said he had heard some hissing. Well everything was hydraulic and so we went looking and there it was. But I couldn't say that then."
The Jacksonville Museum of Military History has a display for the Titan II in Arkansas along with other displays about Arkansas's involvement with the military.
More information about the museum's exhibit or the Titan IIs in general can be obtained by calling the museum at (501) 241-1943.
- jpeppas@ arkansasonline.com
Three Rivers, Pages 111, 118 on 10/07/2007