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GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE, MISSILE ALERT FACILITY OSCAR-ZERO, HAER No

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GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE, MISSILE ALERT FACILITY OSCAR-ZERO, HAER No GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE, MISSILE ALERT FACILITY OSCAR-ZERO, HAER No. ND-12-A LAUNCH CONTROL SUPPORT BUILDING State Highway 45 Cooperstown vicinity Griggs County North Dakota PHOTOGRAPHS WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD MIDWEST REGIONAL OFFICE National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior 1709 Jackson Street Omaha, NE 68102 HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE Missile Alert Facility Oscar-Zero Launch Control Support Building HAER No. ND-12-A Location: East-central Griggs County, North Dakota; 4 1/2 miles north of Cooperstown and 1/4 mile west of North Dakota State Highway 45 UTM: 14.565750.5260615 Date of Construction: 1964-1965 as part of Minuteman II; converted to Minuteman III in 1973 Designer: Ralph M. Parsons Company, Los Angeles, California Builder: Morrison-Perini-Leavell Company, South Gate, California Present Owner: United States Air Force, Grand Forks Air Force Base {AFB), North Dakota Present Use: vacant Significance: Beginning with the end of World War II and \ continuing to the present, the Cold War and the resulting arms race between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics {USSR) has formed an overarching theme for the cultures of both countries. The United States has based its foreign policy of strategic deterrence on an arsenal of nuclear weapons based from submarines, airborne bombers, and on land. As the land-based leg of the United States Triad, intercontinental ballistic missiles {ICBMs) armed with nuclear warheads represent the definitive technological refinement for weapons of mass destruction. They reflect the philosophy of a contemporary military establishment that GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE Missile Alert Facility Oscar-Zero Launch Control Support Building BAER No. ND-12-A (P.age 2) holds high technology, rather than brute force, as the ultimate extension of military power. Since their inception in the 1950s, ICBMs have undergone a continuing evolution of form and function, as the Air Force has refined both the warheads and the delivery systems to make them more lethal and more accurate. The liquid-fueled Atlas and Titan missiles and the solid-fueled Minuteman missiles each represented technological improvements over their predecessors. The missiles themselves, and the ancillary facilities built to maintain and launch them, display a level of technological sophistication that is unrivaled in the built environment. Administered by Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota, Wing VI is the last cluster of Minuteman missile sites built by the Air Force, and it represents the conclusive step in design and construction of this unique architectural and technological form. As one of fifteen Missile Alert Facilities (MAFs) associated with the 150-missile wing, MAF Oscar-Zero has formed an integral part of the Minuteman system. Originally built in the 1960s to control ten unmanned Minuteman II launch facilities, it was modified in the 1970s to accommodate Minuteman III missiles. Longer and more powerful than its predecessors, Minuteman III was equipped with improved propulsion and guidance systems. The missile's most noteworthy feature was its multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle (MIRV). This new warhead could deliver three nuclear bombs to widely scattered targets, a capacity that would thrust the world into a new era of weapons for mass destruction. GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE Missile Alert Facility Oscar-Zero Launch Control Support Building HAER No. ND-12-A {Page 3) Historians: Clayton B. Fraser, November 2000, revised by Andrea Urbas, July 2001 Description The most prominent feature at the Launch Control Facility is the Launch Control Support Building. Structurally, the building is the aboveground extension of a blast-hardened, subterranean complex consisting of the Launch Control Center (LCC) and the Launch Control Equipment Building (see descriptions in following sections). The Launch Control Support Building served as a security center for the entire Oscar Flight and provided living accommodations for the eight­ person contingent assigned to the premises in three-day shifts. The staff consisted of two flight security controllers, two two-person armed security teams, a cook, and a facility manager. The Support Building is a one-story, front-gabled, ranch-style building with a low-pitched roof and an asymmetrical el-shaped footprint. The 75-foot-wide, gabled facade faces the sliding entrance gate to the east. The 150-foot-long side faces south, overlooking a paved parking area. The Support Building is built of light wood frame construction on a concrete-slab foundation. The roof is covered with asphalt shingles that terminate at tight, open eaves with metal gutters. A narrow vergeboard trims the gable ends. The building is sheathed with horizontal steel siding in a wide-lap, weatherboard style. Complete with corner boards and stamped with a wood-grain texture, this siding replaced the original asbestos-cementitious (Transite) shingles in the mid-1980s. A recessed entry on the south side of the building shelters the primary entrance. A windbreak wall was added to further enclose the main door in the mid-1980s. All five door openings on the south side are original, as is the rest of the fenestration. Typical window openings hold one-over-one, double-hung, vinyl-clad wood sash glazed with insulating glass. These windows replaced the original one-over­ one, double-hung wood sash in the early 1990s. The windows are grouped in pairs on the north side and in a ribbon of eight on the south side of the security office. On the gabled east front of the building, a partial-width, gabled bay extends 5 feet beyond the main portion of the building. This end contains the security office, a function indicated by a bank of four large windows prominently facing the sliding electric entry gate. The west rear of the building features a simple gabled roof and has no windows or doors. The roof of the Support Building is punctuated by ventilators, a boiler stack, a personnel hatch, and several exhaust fans. Floodlights are attached at the eaves at GRAND FORKS A~R FORCE BASE Missile Alert Facility Oscar-Zero Launch Control Support Building HAER No. ND-12-A (Page 4) various intervals around the building. The Support Building is painted a cream color, with dark brown trim on the doors and eaves. The main entrance of the Support Building opens into a vestibule and short hallway, which provides entrance into the security office to the southeast before terminating at the dining/living room. The dining/living room is large, with eight windows fronting north. The kitchen is situated at the west end of the dining room. Also at the west end is an entrance to a corridor leading to seven bedrooms, a toilet room, and a utility room that contains laundry facilities. Bedrooms and toilet rooms, in these spaces were modified in the mid- 1980s to accommodate the addition of women crew members. In addition, carpet was added and the ceiling was dropped. Behind the south wall of the dining/living room are the water treatment room and the telephone equipment room. A recreation room is situated in the north end of the front el, north of the security office. Immediately north of this is the generator room, beyond which is a weight room for the crew. Well water is stored against the south side of the Launch Control Support Building in underground tanks. Access covers appear directly outside the doors to the water treatment room in the Support Building. The water treatment room contains a pump installation and other water processing equipment. Each missile alert facility requires approximately 2000 gallons of water per day for drinking, cooking, bathing, boiler feed-water, and sanitary purposes. Reserve storage of at least 4500 gallons is maintained at all times for emergency fire fighting. Oscar-Zero, like all of the Grand Forks MAFs, draws water from a deep well to protect the facility from enemy actions. The telephone equipment room contains the telephone termination equipment for the Support Information Network, which is used primarily for the transmission on nonsensitive communications between various locations in the Minuteman wings. Installed and serviced by a commercial telephone company, the network commonly handles traffic dispatch for maintenance, security, housekeeping, and administrative personnel. To the north of the security office is an elevator shaft and an adjoining vestibule. The elevator is the heart of the Support Building. It provides access for the two missile combat crew members pulling their twenty-four-hour shift in the blast-proof Launch Control Center, approximately 50 feet below the surface. Note: Although they share integral construction and function, the Launch Control Support Building aboveground and the LCC and the Launch Control Equipment Building below have been divided for this study into GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE Missile Alert Facility Oscar-Zero Launch Control Support Building BAER No. ND-12-A (Page 5) separate reports. See HAER No. ND-12 for an overview history of the Minuteman Missile program at Grand Forks AFB, and HAER No. ND-12-B for the LCC and intake and exhaust ducts, HAER No. ND-12-C for the Launch Control Equipment Building, and HAER No. ND-12-D for the Vehicle Storage Building. A related site, Missile Launch Facility November- 33, has been similarly subdivided. An overall description of the site and an identical overview history is included as part of HAER No. ND- 11. See HAER No. ND-11-A for the Launcher and ND-11-B for the Launch Facility Equipment Building. .
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