![]() The Minuteman III tripled the Air Force’s striking power and was more convincing as a war deterrent for the Strategic Air Command. The Air Force then selected Minot’s 91st Strategic Missile Wing to become the first to convert to the Minuteman III in the early 1970s. Considered by many to be the best ICBM wing in the Air Force, the Grand Forks 321st won a string of awards and commendations. Several years later, the 321st Missile Wing at Grand Forks Air Force Base was the very first to deploy the more powerful Minuteman II(s). Interestingly, if the state had decided to split away from the rest of the country, North Dakota would have been the 3rd most powerful nation in the world. While during this period of time, Russian visitors weren’t allowed to visit the state, the missile sites were far from secret in fact, school kids went on field trips to tour their nearest missile silos.īy the next year, 300 Minutemen missiles were fully armed with nuclear warheads. Soon, the North Dakota prairie was spattered with hundreds of missile sites boasting America’s latest technology. At Minot Air Force Base, Strategic Air Command (SAC) activated the 455th Strategic Missile Wing in November, and in less than a year, the first Minuteman arrived from Hill Air Force Base in Utah. School children were taught to hide under their desks in case of Russian attack, and families were putting stores of purified water and non-perishable food in the bunkers they built beneath their lawns.įield construction began in January of 1962 to house the new Minuteman I Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) complex. The Cold War was in full swing, and everywhere people prepared for the worst – nuclear holocaust. ![]() It was feared that a possible strike could come from over the Arctic and down into North Dakota, so the Air Force quickly chose sites across the state and within the year, missile sites were sprouting up in our wheat fields. ![]() One year later, on October 6th, 1961, President Kennedy urged Americans to build bomb shelters to protect them from atomic fallout. In addition to the missile and silo, visitors will see support structures such as antennas and motion sensors.Ī cell-phone guided tour of the site is available for visitors to learn the history of Minuteman Missile silos on the Great Plains and how Delta-09 was operated for thirty years.On this day in 1960, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on his desk and declared to U.S. For safety reasons, tours are not conducted underground. The door to the silo has been welded and fitted with a glass roof, and an unarmed missile placed inside. The launch facility consists of a silo 12 feet in diameter and 80 feet deep made of reinforced concrete with a steel-plate liner. ![]() In total there were 1,000 Minuteman missiles deployed from the 1960's into the early 1990's. The Delta-09 missile silo was one of 150 spread across western South Dakota. As visitors look through the Delta-09 viewing enclosure at a Minuteman II missile, a Park Ranger answers questions.įrom 1963 until the early 1990s, the missile silo at Delta-09 contained a fully operational Minuteman Missile, bearing a 1.2 megaton nuclear warhead.
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