Friday, January 14, 2022

Mutually Assured Destruction

Titan Missile Museum
Sahuarita, Arizona

Today we live in an age of vast and growing uncertainty.  When will the brutal Covid-19 pandemic end?  Will Putin send his tanks into the Ukraine?  Will Chinese paratroopers start falling from the skies over Taiwan?  Will North Korea or Iran do something crazy?  No one can really provide satisfactory answers to these questions.  And so we tramp on through a forest of doubt.


During the Cold War, however, things were different.  We enjoyed the certainty of Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD.  All of us, on both sides of the Berlin Wall, knew that a third World War would mean the extinction of humanity.  As Tom Lehrer out it, "We'll all go together when we go."

Commander K at the Control!
Titan Missile Museum
Sahuarita, Arizona

A visit to the Titan Missile Museum near Tucson Arizona demonstrates the hardware that created these Cold War certainties...https://titanmissilemuseum.org.  This abandoned missile silo for a Titan rocket was converted into a museum that gives us a glimpse into the Cold War.  The Strategic Air Command had Missile locations built in three states...Arizona, Kansas and Arkansas.


Titan Missile Museum
Sahuarita, Arizona

Very young men, and later women, manned these bases.  The Air Force tested them on a weekly basis for mental stability.  They worked underground in 24 hour shifts.  Cigarette smoke was ubiquitous.

The Titan missiles were fairly safe though one 1965 accident in Arkansas did claim fifty-three lives.  A welding rod was apparently tossed into a hydraulic line igniting a fire with the oxidizer.  Most of the victims were asphyxiated.

Don't High Five a Cactus!
Green Valley, AZ


Tom Lehrer got it essentially correct in his 1960 song The Wild West is Where I Want to Be.  "'Mid the yucca and the thistles, I'll watch the guided missiles while the old FBI watches me..."


Strategic Air Command
Titan Missile Museum
Sahuarita, Arizona

Eventually the Titan missile program was replaced by the Minuteman ICBM Missile program.  The third iteration of Boeing-built missiles remain in active service in Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.  Each missile can deliver a 300+ kiloton payload (equivalent to about 20 Hiroshimas) around 8,700 miles with an accuracy of around 800 feet.  These are slated for replacement by a new generation of Northrop ICBMs around 2030.

So the air in Arizona is no longer "radioactive," leaving the fortunate residents of nearby Green Valley safe to play pickle ball.  All of the fissionable materials were removed long ago from the Titan missile locations.  Many of these abandoned Titan sites have been purchased by private citizens.  A decommissioned site in Arkansas has been turned into a luxury Cold War hotel...https://www.expedia.com/Vilonia-Hotels-Luxury-Decommissioned-Titan-II-Nuclear-Missile-Complex.h53961576.Hotel-Information!


This may have been MAD but it all seemed to work.  The fear of Mutually Assured Destruction deterred both superpowers from ever pushing the nuclear button.  Nixon bombed Hanoi but he never authorized the use of atomic weapons.  Nor did the Soviets turn Kabul into glass.

Now in 2022 the Nuclear Club is much larger than during the Cold War.  It includes India, Pakistan, North Korea and soon it seems Iran.  Mutually Assured Destruction depended upon the rationality of the participants in order to work.  Can we count upon the rationality of Kim Jung Un and other leaders?  The future is murky and foreboding leaving us nostalgic for the Cold War. 

We live in an age on uncertainty.  Of this we are certain.


You can find signed copies of our books at these web sites...

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Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Battle of Elwood

Commander K at Haskell's Beach
Goleta, California
Near Ritz Carlton Baccara

California, my home state, prides itself upon its peaceful laid back attitudes.  But California has not always been peaceful.  The state was, for example, fought over during the Mexican-American War.  The Battle of San Pascqual, fought near San Diego, featured the legendary frontiersman Kit Carson who walked some thirty miles in his bare feet to call for reinforcements.   I have written earlier invasions of California that have shaped the Golden state in numerous ways...https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4122629330054677829/6084681580602878101.

Many Californians seem to prefer to ignore the state's violent and colorful history.  But we must remember ALL history if we are to truly understand the past -- the good the bad and the ugly.  Everyone knows about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 -- the 1942 Rose Bowl was played in North Carolina as a result!  But many would be astonished to learn that the beautiful California coastline was actually attacked during World War II.  The "Battle of Elwood" was fought almost eighty years ago near the town of Goleta.  This is what we had to say in the California chapter of America Invaded: A State by State Guide to Fighting on American Soil...

"On February 23, 1942, I-17 surfaced near Santa Barbara. The Japanese sub used her 140mm deck guns to shell the Ellwood oil refinery with sixteen to twenty-four rounds. Damage was minimal and no one was killed or injured in the attack, but Radio Tokyo crowed, “Sensible Americans know that the submarine shelling of the Pacific coast was a warning to the nation that the Paradise created by George Washington is on the verge of destruction.”

Battle of Elwood Plaque
Sandpiper Golf Club
Goleta, California

In the early morning hours of February 25, 1942, the air-raid sirens of Los Angeles sounded after an unknown aircraft triggered a blip on the radar. Anti-aircraft guns fired over ten tons of ordnance into the night sky. Eight citizens died during the “raid,” mostly due to heart attacks. The phantom raid had involved no Japanese planes. Panic had swept the West Coast. This incident later inspired Stephen Spielberg’s movie 1941." (Source: www.americainvaded.com).

Oil had been discovered in the Santa Barbara area in 1927.   An ARCO oil refinery was built in Goleta in 1938.  This was the target of the 1942 submarine bombardment.  In 1972 the site ws developed by Ken Hunter as the Sandpiper golf course.  In 2003 billionaire Ty Warner purchased Sandpiper Golf Club...https://www.sandpipergolf.com


Battle of Elwood Plaque
Sandpiper Golf Club
Goleta, California


A plaque by the clubhouse of the Sandpiper golf club reads: "Near this site at 7:07 PM February 23, 1942 the California coast at Elwood received the first naval bombardment of the United States mainland since the War of 1812..."

The bombardment of Elwood, eighty years later, may seem somewhat trivial.  But actions have consequences.  Though no one was killed or even injured by the bombardment, there were consequences.  This attack provided an excuse for media to whip up anti Japanese-American hysteria up and down the West coast.  The incident at Elwood contributed to the subsequent incarceration of thousands of Japanese American citizens in internment camps.   


Visitors to and residents of Santa Barbara can find signed copies of all four of my books at these fine independent book stores...

1) Tecolote Book Shop...https://www.tecolotebookshop.com

2) Chaucer's Books...https://www.chaucersbooks.com



You can find signed copies of our books at these web sites...

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