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On the East side of a field boundary 150 yards South of A1067. All surface features remain intact. The hatch is open. Internally the post has been completely stripped. The walls have been covered in polystyrene tiles that are now falling away.
An Orlit 'A' stands ten yards to the south. The external door is missing but the internal sliding door is intact. The wooden instrument mounting is still in place but in poor condition otherwise the building is in fair condition. Opened in 1958 and closed in 1968.
Launch Control Center, exterior side of blast door
Minuteman Missile National Historic Site
(#01000275)
Off of Interstate 90, north of Rapid City
Rapid City, SD
A National Historic Site; extends into Pennington County
On the East side of a field boundary 150 yards South of A1067. All surface features remain intact. The hatch is open. Internally the post has been completely stripped. The walls have been covered in polystyrene tiles that are now falling away.
An Orlit 'A' stands ten yards to the south. The external door is missing but the internal sliding door is intact. The wooden instrument mounting is still in place but in poor condition otherwise the building is in fair condition. Opened in 1958 and closed in 1968.
Construction of the Special Weapon Stores began in around 1953 and was conmpleted by 1955. They were designed to house the new free-fall nuclear bomb; BLUE DANUBE. The first British operational nuclear weapon. This site on the outskirts of Barnham was one of two storage sites of this era, the other being at RAF Faldingworth in Lincolnshire. Developments in weapon systems resulted in the site being emptied by 1963 and it was sold off.
Tours of the site are possible, and on this instance I booked through Hidden History Tours.
An Orlit B in good condition stands 10 yards to the east at the right angle bend in the hedgerow. It is heavily overgrown. Two wooden shelves remain inside. Opened in 1961 and closed in 1968.
Captured at the Swedish Air Force Museum (Flyvapenmuseum) in Linköping, Sweden:
The picture is a visualisation of a very dramatic episode in the relation between Sweden and the Soviet Union in 1952, in the midst of the Cold War, when Soviet jet fighters shot down two Swedish aircraft over international waters in the Baltic sea.
The museum is well worth a visit!
From Wikipedia:
The Catalina affair (Swedish: Catalinaaffären) was a military confrontation and Cold War-era diplomatic crisis in June 1952, in which Soviet Air Force fighter jets shot down two Swedish aircraft over international waters in the Baltic Sea.
The first aircraft to be shot down was an unarmed Swedish Air Force Tp 79, a derivative of the Douglas DC-3, carrying out radio and radar signals intelligence-gathering for the National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets radioanstalt, FRA). None of the crew of eight survived.
The second aircraft to be shot down was a Swedish Air Force Tp 47, a Catalina flying boat, involved in the search and rescue operation for the missing DC-3. The Catalina's crew of seven were saved.
The Soviet Union publicly denied involvement until its dissolution in 1991. Both aircraft were located in 2003; the DC-3 was salvaged.
After 52 years, the remains of the DC-3 were lifted to the surface on 19 March 2004. Debris from the area was also recovered by freeze dredging—200 m3 (7,100 cu ft) of surrounding sediment was frozen and lifted together with the object on and in it. The wreck was transferred to Muskö naval base for investigation and preservation; it was finally put on display at the Swedish Air Force Museum, Linköping on 13 May 2009.