Lloyd M. Isley Interview, 23 August 2001
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| MI: | Yeah, I found that to be very interesting. | |
| TT: | You go by Mike? | |
| MI: | Yeah. | |
| TT: | Let's start with how you got into the services to where you ended up at Minot. Where are you from here originally? | |
| MI: | Well, I was from Tulsa and I went to school down at Okmulgee Tech [Oklahoma State University/Okmulgee Tech, Okmulgee, OK] and took heating and air conditioning. And when I got out of school why I'd actually gotten drafted so I joined the Air Force real quick to keep from going into the Army and took a Bypass Specialist— | |
| TT: | What year was that? | |
| MI: | That was in December of '67 when I was inducted into the Air Force and took a Bypass Specialist Test while I was in tech school, or in Basic Training to keep from going to tech school 'cause I'd already had training. I passed that so they sent me straight to Minot, North Dakota to the missile sites, and then missile maintenance as a heating air conditioning technician. We go out on sites and work on the environmental control systems on the missile sites and some of the stuff on the guidance system was cooled by a little chiller, but most of our work was not in the hole where the missile is, some of our equipment was in there but we worked a lot in the support building which was a few feet away from the silo. It was a "Soft Support Building" they called it, and it was just ten feet underground. It wasn't hardened. It had the chiller in it, the diesel generator and some electrical gear was in there. | |
| TT: | So it was just a box in the ground? | |
| MI: | Yeah, just concrete box. | |
| TT: | Was there a Navy hatch to get down into it? | |
| MI: | There was just a hatch with a padlock on it, like a metal door that you just raised up by hand if I remember, or probably—it could have been one of those spring loaded hatches, I don't remember, just a ladder going down to a steel floor. It seemed like that floor might have been on springs or something to give it a little bit of a shock-absorbing—I don't really remember, but that's where a lot of our work was, and if there was only going to be work done in that building then you could go out without the Air Policeman. | |
| TT: | Explain the procedure for getting into the building. When you go out, give us a sort of a day-by-day, what happens you get up in the morning and—? | |
| MI: | Well, at this particular time we were on standby when this event happened, and that means that after 5 in the evening, or somewhere about then, you were supposed to be |
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