Old/current military installations in MO (1 Viewer)

[Poriomania]

Saw this on an seriously outdated website (survival info on Y2K). Supposedly a FEMA map of projected nuclear targets.

Are there/were there really that many military sites such as ICBM silos and the like in MO? Apart from Whiteman I just thought that was a whole lot of cows and hills out there.

 

[Bob_Garrett]

Whiteman used to be a Minuteman Missile base. The Minuteman missile was an ICBM with a nuclear warhead. They were located in underground silos scattered throughout the southern half of MO along with the LCFs (launch control facility), which were mostly underground as well. Each LCF controlled 10 missiles. Didn't work at Whiteman, so I don't know the exact number of missiles that were housed there, but it was parobably at least a 100 or so.

They have all been decommissioned with the missiles removed and the silos filled with concrete as part of the missile reduction treaty with Russia. You can still see the locations of the sites, if you know what to look for. (I worked on 'em for over 2 yrs so I do!). There was some talk of trying to get permission to keep one of the sites with an dummy missile and a LCF as a tourist attraction, but not sure what happened with that, since there was no provision for that in the treaty.

Interesting that St Joseph is one of the targets. There were no missile sites that far north. There only targets there would have been the Air National Guard unit and possibly the rail and road bridges spanning the Missouri river.

Ok, that concludes your Cold War history lesson for today...

Bob

 

[Poriomania]

Thanks, I hadn't known we had those kind of installations around here.