James F. Bond Sr. Interview, 26 February 2005
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| monitoring equipment. There was another smaller building we used for storage back by the garage. The garage was where we could park one of our vehicles, which we used to strike the site if we needed to. By "strike the site," if we had an alarm, we would go out. We also had a Thiokol TrackMaster in there, which you may have seen them in the movies. They use them up in the Alps. It's a big box thing that sets on top of a track vehicle, and you steer it like this (gestures) just like you do a Cat. | ||
| TT: | You guys ever drive that thing? | |
| JB: | Oh yeah. It was fun. They go about 40 miles an hour. | |
| TT: | Really? | |
| JB: | Yeah. And then we had the Launch Control Facility building, which housed, in the front, the office where I would sit, and where weapons were stored, and a couple of lockers for clothes. There was a desk, a radio and all my code packs I would use during a tour of duty. Right beside the desk here (gesturing) was the door leading to the elevator, which went down approximately 62 feet below where the Combat Crew was. And then beside my desk was this box about this big (gestures maybe 18 inches square) with wire mesh in the bottom of it, strong steel mesh. So once you use your code page, you burn it and you put it in this thing and scratch all the ashes so that they are all gone. That's what happened after you authenticate using your code packs. We had a certain code pack and the missile maintenance people had a different kind, but basically all the same. Inside the facility, back to the right where my desk would have been, out to another area, the door going outside, and then a little hallway, and a little recreation area with couches, chairs, a TV set, a pool table—stuff like that. And then down a hallway was sleeping areas and bathroom, bathing facilities, shower. Everything was above ground. There was nothing we had that was underground. | |
| TT: | And your principal responsibility was to the two guys underground? | |
| JB: | My primary responsibility was to respond to any alarms at any of our 15 missiles we had out in the field. | |
| TT: | OK, and those really came through the guys down below? | |
| JB: | Right, the alarms came to them. Mainly it was our Combat Crew, the two officers down in the hole that would alert us. | |
| TT: | Yeah, OK. So you were their eyes and ears above ground essentially? | |
| JB: | Right. | |
| TT: | I mean your procedure was you had six Security Policemen out there, essentially two FSCs and two separate strike teams— two on, two off. Were there times that everybody would be sent out? Like if you had a couple alarms? | |
| JB: | We could, we had done that. But you don't want to keep them out there, and in a case like that you would call the Support Base. The Support Base would send out a camper team. Camper Team would come out, just like you would see a pickup truck going down the road, it's got this thing on its back it was a camper and they had a stove, a microwave oven there to cook their meals in and they literally lived in that. They would go out and relieve |
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