Titan Missile Silo

[jtaylor23]

Titan Missile Silo Kennewick Wa

The video that talked me into this insane dive can be found here: http://vimeo.com/19172657

Lets start off with my response to the popular question: When are you going back?
Wow, um, never. Ever. I'll play tender to your dive there. Climb down into the hole, assist with gear and have lunch ready. All the things a good tender should do. But go back in those tunnels? Nope.

My adventure quotient is pretty high. Cavern/cave diving, skydiving, bungee jumping, backcountry skiing. Probably my age is kicking in a little too much (51). It's a 'bucket list' thing. Marked off and moving on. If I was younger, a return trip would be a given. But it was a little heavy for me, nowadays. I only got one hole in my drysuit and feel lucky. Watch the video carefully, look for the steel posts, angle iron and other rippers. Btw- as far as I know no-one else got holed.

Do I recommend the dive. Oh, yeah! But be ready. It's not for the faint of heart, claustrophobic or those allergic to rust. Did I mention the rust? Everything not thoroughly painted back in the day is fully rusted.It was a truly amazing visit to the reality of nuclear war. Very spooky how close you get to what is must have been like. Stairways, elevators, doors with knobs that still work. You are diving inside a very human built space. I pushed open a door in the Equipment room and was able to close it behind me. Very strange feeling.

It was a long day for me. Showed me how out of shape I am. the whole tunnel walk in, dive the silo and equipment room and walk out. Lunch. Back in for the walk, silo 2 and back out. All while fully geared up. I was beat. Post dive exploring in the dry sections was amazing also. Nasty and toxic, but amazing. My little 'buy a missile silo as a retreat bunker' fantasy was truly exposed for what it was.

Overall, I highly recommend the experience. Don't go just for the diving, but the experience taken as a whole. Worth every penny. I paid $200 thru Capitol Divers.

Gear: Black Diamond BC, Steel 80, Dacor Extreme regs, Bare NexGen Pro, Split fins (not recommended, too much silt), D8 light, Ultramax light.

Take the warning about the 20 inch space from the video seriously, I watched a guy get hung up and almost panic. This dive has very tight spaces, have a very tight gear setup. Also, currents created by bubbles get very real, have your buoyancy and situational awareness at it highest. I tried to bail to the center of the silo at @ 50 ft to get some space, and was almost piked on a cutoff angle iron at the edge of the cribwork.

Mea Culpa- If all this just shows my butt @ my dive skills, ok. I welcome other, more positive, writeups of the dive. Like I said, I recommend it, I'm just not going back in there!

[Waynne Fowler]

J. I'm glad you made the trip but really sorry that you didn't have as much fun as I did on the dive's. I'm with you that it really was somewhat of a 'workout'. I'm certainly not the epitome of an 'in shape' diver and while it was a bit of work I did not find it a grueling trudge thru the tunnels. Shane V. the young boy that was with you all walked away with much the same take as you. Personally I, for the most part, floated the tunnels in that I inflated, bent at the knee's and sort of 'crab walked' the tunnels quite slowly, we had a very good crew that communicated well as to approaching suit grabbers and I think that made the whole trip thru the tunnels much easier for our group. After the dives the DM told our group that we'd made the traverse with fewer problems than they'd seen so far. We had no holes, no banged shins or ankles.

If you bring me your suit John I'll take a look at it and if I can fix it in house I'll do so at no cost.

Stay in touch John it sure was a pleasure working with you during the setup of the trip..

[BASSMAN]

$200.00 Huh?


It would be one to check off the list.

But $200.00? Seems kind of steep.

Are there ways to do it cheaper?

[airsix]

Are there ways to do it cheaper?

Undersea Adventures has a lease on it. All trips are arranged by other shops through them. UA has a base price structure. Visiting shops have their own, and they vary. I've seen a significant range. UA doesn't charge for the guest "DM" who acts as the trip coordinator. Some trip coordinators pay anyway so the group individual cost is lower. Others don't.

[Scuba Scott]

Good report. I had the same opinion when I went about 10 years ago. A dive to say I did it, but a weekend of diving from a charter boat is where I would spend my money. Glad I went, would not go back even for a freebie.

[BASSMAN]

Good report. I had the same opinion when I went about 10 years ago. A dive to say I did it, but a weekend of diving from a charter boat is where I would spend my money. Glad I went, would not go back even for a freebie.

Scott!

How come you don't dive on Thursdays with me?

[Mateo1147]

My take is the same as J's. Very glad I made the trip and got to see the place. I feel lucky not to have holed my suit. There were lots of things just waiting for the chance.
The DM said that this was the largest group they had taken in and that we did have more silt problems because of it. I would make sure if I ever do it again that I was with a group of six or less. We had eight divers, two DM's and one of the DM's son along.

[jtaylor23]

As to cost, I thought it was well worth it. They put us up in a hotel the night before. The guides went with all of us to dinner the night before and breakfast day of. That gave us alot of time with them to ask questions and get oriented. The lunch could have been little better. We sat down and went thru the $200 and by the time we backed out the hotel room, distance to the dive, two tanks and specialized guides it wasn't too much at all. Worth every penny!

If I could go back in with a much smaller group, I would consider it. Less chaos, less silt-out and most importantly less current action. Current in a closed silo? Oh, yes. And I would take a better camera, my Intova pretty much failed and its not a place to not have a camera, its just too strange in there. But really, that's just talk, I'm not going back down those tunnels!

[fishb0y]

I dove it myself... being a bigger guy and doing it in doubles, I didn't have the problems I thought i would have. I am ready to go again... I feel that I missed out on some of the exploring due to the silt (I think I was in the same group as Mateo1147).

[ArcticDiver]

Even though you are posting about the Titan I that never became fully operational and I was in the Titan II it is fun to read about your adventures. From your descriptions they must have really torn up the place when it was finally abandoned.

Anyone have a postable video or set of images? It would be interesting to compare dry to wet.

[John Rawlings]

Anyone have a postable video or set of images? It would be interesting to compare dry to wet.

Try this link - it's the best I've seen: http://www.dcsfilms.com/Site_4/Diving_Missile_silo.html

[ArcticDiver]

My connection must be bad right now. Video is pretty jerky. I'll try again later. Lighting is poor even by our underwater standards. The guy doing the intro made a comment about the site being there because Hanford was a target which is, as far as I can remember, pure nonsense. Military installation locations are chosen based on military suitability mixed with politics. In the case of early ICBMs one of the considerations was how far the bloody things would go. His comments about MAD were right on if my memory serves me correctly. But the Titan I was never a meaningful part of MAD.

Check my memory but as I recall none of the early ICBMs ever made it to operational status. They were just too complex and took too long to get into launchable condition. The combination of unreliability and slow reaction time doomed them. It wasn't until the Titan II and Minuteman that the US had useable strategic weapons. All of us have seen the Titan II as it was the booster for much of the early manned space program and with the add on of solid state rockets the launch vehicle for satellites.

Talk about Memory Lane? Time to get on with putting my house back together after paint, carpet, etc. And to exercise my body to get rid of these bloody muscle spasms

[jtaylor23]

At work I plow thru hundreds of trouble tickets on cell towers. We have multiple other teams we coordinate with on said tickets. Some of the other teams don't like picking up tickets off me, because I tell them to read the whole thing prior to working it or sending it back.

Did anyone notice that I posted a link to the video in my original post?
If you hit the HD icon in the lower right corner, the resolution will drop and the vid will run alot smoother.

In October 1957, Congress authorized the Air Force to deploy four Titan I squadrons. Later that number increased to 12 squadrons, evenly split between Titan I and Titan II. With their 6,300-mile range, the Air Force based the Titan Is between Colorado and Washington state. The Titan Hs, on the other hand, had a 9,000-mile range and could be based farther south. By locating the Titan II bases in Arizona, Kansas, and Arkansas, the Air Force achieved a wider national dispersal pattern. Other factors that affected the location of the Titan launch facilities were population density under the missile's projected flight path, and the location of existing bases to provide logistical support. ~~ http://www.strategic-air-command.com/mi ... istory.htm

[ArcticDiver]

Interesting comments in the PR release attributed to SAC. The comments on safety were pretty interesting. One accident had nothing to do with the missile system. It was caused, if memory serves, by a welder striking and arc on a metal clad facility hydraulic line causing a fire and subsequent explosion. That prompted a change in fluid. I'm only aware of one other, again not missile system related.

I would need to do some digging but recollection is that the Titan II was designed for a 10 year life. But. unlike the Titan I, it turned out to be so reliable it was both used for other space launch purposes, including the manned space program and kept in service until START shut the system, along with others, down. Last I knew one site remained and is used as a museum. It is just south of Tucson, AZ.

Both systems were manufactured by Martin, later Lockheed-Martin, but that was just about the only thing they shared.

Oh memories of a very stressful time.....

But we digress. The video is really pretty limited. But, I was left with a couple questions. Why access through what looks like some vent tube instead of a normal entrance? I gather from what is visible in the video the structure is pretty well torn up. Look like it was deliberate to make sure it couldn't be used again? Or, just the effects of time?

[jtaylor23]

When your Titan I takes over 15 minutes to fuel and deploy, then, if the winds aren't too high, you can launch, it makes you wonder what they were really spending the money for. General, we can't go to war today, its a little windy. But that was a pretty lucrative contract, tho'!

~~But we digress. The video is really pretty limited. But, I was left with a couple questions. Why access through what looks like some vent tube instead of a normal entrance? I gather from what is visible in the video the structure is pretty well torn up. Look like it was deliberate to make sure it couldn't be used again? Or, just the effects of time?~~

The tube used for access was exposed when the local farmer was trying to break into the site to store potatoes. He dug a very large trench to reach one of the domes. The tube used for access was an emergency exit. When it was intact it went @ another 20 ft to the original surface. He ripped it open with some farm machinery. There is a very heavy hatch at the bottom of the ladder. The tube was filled with sand to protect it. When the hatch was opened the sand mostly filled the room below creating a fairly dry place to get geared up.

You can't access the underwater sections from the dry domes due to the primary access tunnel be completely blocked. When you tour the upper domes there is a place you can look down the tunnel and see the room the divers use, but it is not accessible from there at all. And as the elevator is no longer working (they removed it during decommission) just using the stairs to get down to tour the domes is a bear. You wouldn't want to carry your gear down there then thru the tunnels to the water. When you use the ripped up emergency pipe the water is right there.

[ArcticDiver]

At the time there were, like always I guess, competing proposals and technologies. Both the Titan II and Minuteman could be on their way in less than a minute from launch commit. Don't recall any wind limitations since the time wind mattered would be measured in the few seconds it took for the missile to clear the launch silo. Lots of clearance on the sides. They both sat in launchable condition with very little maintanance for months, and years at a time. The launch complexes were designed to survive all but a direct nuclear hit. A major part of the site location decision was the geology in each area to enhance survivablilty. Once in awhle for test purposes one wouild be pulled from its' launcher taken to the test range, a dummy warhead mounted and sent on its' way. They always worked and put the dummy warhead on target. That combined with their success in satellite and manned launches pretty well emptied the rice bowls of the other manufacturers.

Thanks for the story on this site. I thought that looked something like a vent tube, or emergency exit. Although, all things considered, it is doubtful there would have been anyone to use it if the balloon had gone up. Thanks also for explaining why divers must use that method of ingress and egress.

It was a time in our history when we, as a nation, were out gunned and overwhelmingly outmanned. These things provided an umbrella under which all other activity between Nation States could be conducted. Sort of like the six shooter of wild west days was the equalizer. As a strategy it worked. Now we are in a much more dangerous time because Nation States are very much less important but they haven't figured out how to deal with what has emerged.

[jtaylor23]

Ok, couple kudo's are in order here. Capitol Divers, the contracting shop, took no profit from the trip according to Waynne. Who also offered to repair my suit for free. Can't really beat that.

Also, Undersea Adventures, the leasing organizer and provider of guides, found my lost wrist computer. In their words "stomped into the sand" down in the tunnel. They found, cleaned, replaced the cover, tested it and sent it back. Free. Amazing! Two seriously great shops!!

[Mateo1147]

+1 to Undersea Adventures. That is top notch service!

[nwffdiver]

Just curious, what is the water temp in the silo? Also, what is the max depth. I like the idea alot.

[Waynne Fowler]

about 56ish degrees, 110' max depth (fresh water)
Personally I had a great time in the silos, my favorite part was the part Jtaylor and some of the others hated the most. Trudgin the tunnels...

[jtaylor23]

Waynne. I didn't hate any part of it. You're kind of tossing me under the bus here. It was rough. I'm out of shape.But I recommended the dive/experience a few times. Cost justified the trip. And gave kudos to the shops involved. As for the tunnel travel, we were all pretty much in the same group, we were communicating just fine also, and I was floating/crabbed when I could. Just like you. The tunnels are one of the best parts of the experience. Like climbing Rainier, its a lot of work and carries objective hazard. That I don't want to go again doesn't mean I didn't get alot out of it. Fun just wasn't the top of the list of benefits for me. It was great. Glad I went.

[ArcticDiver]

As it turns out the June issue of Smithsonian Magazine has two articles that might be interesting to folks.

First, there is a picture of the Titan II in its' silo as it might have looked in its' Alert days. Understand other than the manufacturer it is a totally different machine than the Titan I. But, I thought y'all might find it interesting. To think that monster could have its' 750 ton door open and on its' way in less than a minute from launch command is still mind boggling. At the same time it was reliable enough for the manned space program.

Then, there is a pretty good article on Whale Sharks that might interest many more people. I hope to be able to see one in the flesh someday.

I don't subscribe to many print magazines but this one is, to me, still worth it.

[Waynne Fowler]

Waynne. I didn't hate any part of it. You're kind of tossing me under the bus here.......... Fun just wasn't the top of the list of benefits for me. It was great. Glad I went.

Shoot John, I didn't mean to park on ya Sir. I can see how my poorly worded post might do that.... My apologies John.

[jtaylor23]

Go on this Dive! Here's an article written by Bob McConkey. We did that dive together that day. He's a much better writer than I am!!
http://www.divenewsnetwork.com/componen ... blast.html