Well, not exactly SAGE...LOL!
My Dad was a nuc wpns tech and spent some time at Cheyenne Mountain and what was then Ent AFB (now the U.S. Olympic Training Center.
For those of you who, like me, had no idea what SAGE was...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi_Automatic_Ground_Environment
God bless your Dad, we owe so much we have today to guys like him. (I hope we aren’t remembered as the generation that squandered it all!)
FRegards
I did a little bit of time on the DEW line, but not SAGE. They both were early warning radar detection fences. DEW protected the continent from the North and SAGE from the NE. A lot of manual work that most kids currently in the service wouldn’t even have the math skills to comprehend.
Yeah, SAGE is going back in time.
God bless you and your family, and my condolences.
Your father worked in an under-appreciated field during the warm part of the Cold War.
His duty was not flashy and glamorous, but often difficult and frustrating. He protected me and mine when I was a child and teen. I thank God for your father's service.
As an Airman, I salute him.
/johnny
Sorry for your loss......your Dad as were many in the military back then keenly aware of what secrets were worth back then. I traveled to many of the DEW line sites . Yet I was assigned to SAC back then.
Such as your fathers efforts and silence won the cold war !
Stay safe !
Those darned Russians kept us keen on our technology.
When I was in high school in Kingston, I went to the IBM facility where the SAGE system computer was located. It was row after row of racks from floor to as high as a man could reach - all filled with vacuum tubes. The building was enormous, had more than one story, and had chutes for down units to be dropped into, where they landed in the repair area.
It was the ultimate “space heater”, in that it took up a lot of space and the power consumption must have been gargantuan.
All in all, it was a sight guaranteed to impress a student. Your father worked on a most remarkable system, the cutting edge computer of its time.
My brother worked on the network back in the 60’s.
Sorry for your loss, and thanks for your dad’s service. Mine was on the other end, flying Voodoos and Delta Darts & Daggers for NORAD from mid-50s to early 60s. Kings of the orange flight suit!
Colonel, USAFR
I’m a 407L FACP guy (TPS-43). I’m sorry for your loss and may your father rest peacefully. I didn’t get the chance to work the line.
Well, not exactly SAGE...LOL!
My Dad was a nuc wpns tech and spent some time at Cheyenne Mountain and what was then Ent AFB (now the U.S. Olympic Training Center.
Operated a SAGE terminal during an exercise in Virginia in the 74-75 time frame. We used it to flight follow aircraft participating in the exercise. I think it was Ft Lee, VA the only thing I remember other than the NORAD site was the Army Quartermaster School. Don’t know if it is true but they told us they didn’t need to heat the bldg with all those tubes going 24/7.
Sorry about your Dad.
We used SAGE on the U2 Flights.
I was the voice of “SKY KING” which we operated out of Turkey.
That was the only experience I had with SAGE. The rest was automated and my voice was only used as a time hack to tell pilots where they should make turn if their flight patterns.
I’m sure we used it in Viet Nam but wasn’t involved with it there but there were lots of bombing going on there and the name was mentioned from time to time.
One of the coolest things about SAGE were the operator consoles, each of which came with its own built-in cigarette lighter and ashtray.
There were men in those days...
I worked the SAGE and BUIC systems in the early 60’s. There is a group on Yahoo that has a lot of pictures and information about Radar sites. The URL is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AFRSV/?yguid=247236443
There are a lot of personal photos and stories about live on these sites.
Various telephone companies provided voice and data communications, the USAF and RCAF manned the radar and radio sites, USAF and RCAF provided fighter interceptors and manned Bomarc missile interceptors in the NE US and eastern Canada. Originally IBM maintained the AN/FSQ-7 and -8 computers and Blue Suit maintenance took over in the early 1960s. System Development Corp (an out growth of Rand) wrote the computer programs and did program maintenance till the USAF took over that job. All centers originally had self contained diesel generators for power and cooling. The US Army provided air defense with Nike missile sites. It was said that the Army's IFF system was ‘shoot em down, and sort them out on the ground’ LOL.
Most of the 24 SAGE buildings are still standing but at least several have been demolished. Many have been converted to office complexes, the SPADS (Spokane Air Defense Sector), Moses Lake, WA is a data storage facility.
The mission of SAGE as part of the Air Defense Command was to discourage a Soviet bomber attack, and to defend against such an attack if deterrence was not successful. During President John Kennedy's ‘Cuber’ missile crises in Oct 1962, I manned the C & E battle staff position (usually nights as the Chief outranked me) the months we were on high alert.
Many of us enjoyed the assignments to the air defense mission, it may not have been as glamorous as a fighter pilot, but it was on the edge of technology. It was a gold mine for the telephone companies and a pioneer system for interactive computing and later the Internet. It would be interesting to have had your father's perspective on his life in SAGE, perhaps he was in operations where functions were surveillance and directing intercepts.
Like most such installations, it's long been closed and gutted, but unlike the others, the *big dish* radar antenna is still up, as it's a visual aid to navigation by local boaters.
If you ever get out that way, stop by and say howdy to one of your dad's old [cold] war buddies:
Active Duty/Retiree ping.