William E. Smith Interview, 11 July 2001(a)

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thought helicopters is because they were doing some strange things, they were not flying just straight.

JK

They were moving in ways that a fixed-wing aircraft would not move?

WS

Yes. And then they would stop and hover. That's why we thought helicopter, but it bothered us because we could —on a clear night, you could see all the way to the base. We were that close at Oscar.

JK

I don't think that the location of the missile sites was ever classified.

WS

No, they weren't.

JK

They depended on dispersal.

WS

Right. And then being buttoned down hard enough and response times and all that kind of stuff.

JK

Well, right. And the way—I am looking at this map right now. In fact, I have penciled in the names of the people that I know were present at those locations on my map here as a reference, and it looks to me like Oscar-1 was straight up Highway 83 from the base.

WS

Exactly. And you could see the approach of aircraft. We used to watch the approach of the aircraft, B-52s coming in, and so we knew what the general thing was. Having nothing else to do you watch those things.

JK

Sure.

WS

Well, these lights did strange things—they would go back and forth. And B-52s and other aircraft that would come in, you would barely be able to see them on a very clear night. Well, some nights it wasn't very clear and these lights were far too big. We kept saying, why are these lights—and it would be moving back and forth, and so we watched them for a while, and I don't know, several nights. So we discussed it, and then one of my crews saw something that was a little bit strange and we started getting more and more concerned. Well, I finally called my capsule crew. The night of the B-52 incident, I was on the phone with my capsule crew. They were really not believing us. They were a little skeptical, "Ah, come on, you guys."

JK

Right.

WS

Well, then we had a missile targeting crew that was on one of our sites also.

JK

That night?

WS

That night.

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