Here in lies the rub. I was in high school in Albuquerque at the time and well aware of the existence of our backyard defense systems, but I don't ever remember hearing about this. I'm in my early 50's now, and can't seem to find many people my age that remembered hearing of the incident.
Do any of you over 50 recall this when it happened? Or did they do that good of a job hiding it from us? Perhaps I was too busy playing in the woods to pay attention...am I the only one that missed it?
Every so often..usually right in the middle of a game, those Nike missiles would raise up from their hidden platforms and point themselves skyward. I remember asking my dad what they were for, and he told me they were there to shoot down Russian bombers, but that they were just running a practice drill to make sure they would operate correctly when needed. First time it scared the crap outta me...after that we just ignored them.
Interesting side note. The town of Damascus where the silos were hidden (not much more than off the main highway if I remember right), has become famous in Arkansas now not for the accident but for writing a few million dollars of speeding tickets over the last several years. The courts just ruled that because the revenue of the tickets exceeded 30% of the town's expenditures, they cannot write speeding tickets for a full year.
At 9:05 a.m., in the harbor of Halifax in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the most devastating manmade explosion in the pre-atomic age occurs when the Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship, explodes 20 minutes after colliding with another vessel.
As World War I raged in Europe, the port city of Halifax bustled with ships carrying troops, relief supplies, and munitions across the Atlantic Ocean. On the morning of December 6, the Norwegian vessel Imo left its mooring in Halifax harbor for New York City. At the same time, the French freighter Mont Blanc, its cargo hold packed with highly explosive munitions–2,300 tons of picric acid, 200 tons of TNT, 35 tons of high-octane gasoline, and 10 tons of gun cotton–was forging through the harbor’s narrows to join a military convoy that would escort it across the Atlantic.
At approximately 8:45 a.m., the two ships collided, setting the picric acid ablaze. The Mont Blanc was propelled toward the shore by its collision with the Imo, and the crew rapidly abandoned the ship, attempting without success to alert the harbor of the peril of the burning ship. Spectators gathered along the waterfront to witness the spectacle of the blazing ship, and minutes later it brushed by a harbor pier, setting it ablaze. The Halifax Fire Department responded quickly and was positioning its engine next to the nearest hydrant when the Mont Blanc exploded at 9:05 a.m. in a blinding white flash.
The massive explosion killed more than 1,800 people, injured another 9,000–including blinding 200–and destroyed almost the entire north end of the city of Halifax, including more than 1,600 homes. The resulting shock wave shattered windows 50 miles away, and the sound of the explosion could be heard hundreds of miles away.
Salagi's Link
Gray Ghost's Link
I was just entering my first year of college when this happened. So, my mind was on sports and women (not necessarily in that order).
A quick search shows that the story did go out over the AP and UPI wires, however. I found this 1980 article from the St. Petersburg Times about it. See link.
There was also a movie made about it in 1988, called Disaster in Silo 7.
Matt
And that's the way it is Thursday, September 18, 1980.
If Walter didn't say it, it didn't happen.
If my memory serves correct, they gave one of the Air Force Sergeants a Medal for saving lives, then gave him an Article 15 Non Judicial Punishment a short time later.