I enlisted in 1976 and left to finish my college degree in 1981. Since I was five years old my best friend is a gentleman who happens to be black. We never thought about it and I never went through any type of race crap until I got to my Permanent Party base and was introduced to two black guys from Philly. They said they would never shake the hand of a Cracker. The only other black people I found were racist were the ones in the EEO office. They were black and some of the most racist people I ever have seen.
As far as duty during the awful Carter years: We had no funding. I was on Missile Combat Crew and we lived 40 feet underground with the keys to the Titan II ICBM’s and their nine megaton weapon. That idiot came up on the Primary Alerting System (from the NMCC) on a 4th of July and told us how much he supported us and had ensured we had everything we needed to do our duties. We were sitting down in the Launch Control Center in the middle of some Kansas farmer’s field, and the temps were around 100 degrees down there. While Carter was jabbering I was watching our propellant tank monitor hover around the pressure that would take our missile off Alert and this was because there was no money to upgrade the water chiller system that kept the complex, especially the Launch Duct, cool.
My whole crew was laughing and rolling our eyes while Carter lied to us and all the Alert forces.
It was a different time.
Crazy job you had. I was watching a documentary about that Atlas explosion...the way the guy talked about seeing that socket fall. As he talked about it, you could see from his face it was clearly replaying in his mind.
Falling in slow motion...clink....smack, hitting the rocket. I swear, I could almost see that happening in my own mind.