Robert Michael O'Connor Interview, 23 February 2005

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MO:	Well, it seemed that way for a while, they had a schedule but my name was on it all the time. I was one of the more qualified electricians and then I was pretty good at trouble shooting and I guess that had something to do with it. They were struggling at that time just to keep everything going. They couldn't find qualified people—
TT:	—with Southeast Asia cooking?
MO:	Right, and then in 1970 I finished up my tour of duty and decided I wanted to get out (chuckles).
TT:	What did you end up as a Staff Sergeant?
MO:	I ended up as a three-striper, Sergeant, yeah.
TT:	In '68 did you have three stripes?
MO:	I did, yeah.
TT:	I just talked with Jablonski, who was the guy that came down and he said when he first got there and saw you guys he saw all the stripes on your arms and he was like "Whoa."
MO:	I didn't have that many (laughs). Yeah, the thing that kept me from getting promoted was I rolled a truck down off a bridge and totaled it. It was a totally icy condition that night and it went from like 70 above down to 25 below and it just turned to glass. The little bridge that went into this town, I forget, Max I think it was, it went over the railroad tracks and then down like this and I knew that, so I slowed down when I got there. But there was a tractor-trailer jackknifed across the bottom so when I tapped the brake pedal the truck just went out of control, and I ended up rolling side-over-side down the embankment about 30 feet. Without any scratches, but there was rash of vehicle accidents that had occurred during that period and anybody who was involved in accidents, they did not look kindly upon after that no matter what the cause was. That's what kept me from getting my Sergeant's stripe.
TT:	OK so you were working for the 862^nd?
MO:	91^st Missile Wing. It was the 455^th Missile Wing then they changed it over to the 91^st Missile Wing
TT:	Yeah, right that was [25 June 1968]. OK so you guys reported to the Commander of the 91^st? Was your boss B.H. Davidson?
MO:	No, the chain of command was my Shop Supervisor at that time. I think it was Sergeant Kenney.
TT:	Then he reported to?
MO:	I think there was a Chief Master Sergeant there. I don't remember his name
TT:	OK, who was running the maintenance operations or in charge?
MO:	I don't remember any of those guys' names. I didn't have much contact with then. We had maintenance crews going out every day to various parts of the quadrant doing maintenance on the missile sites. We went out to investigate and to do maintenance if we found problems, then we would document that, bring that back, order the parts, and when the parts came in they'd send somebody like me out to put 'em in, and that's the way that worked.

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