Anatomy of a UFO Story: F.E Warren AFB 2010

The Genesis of a UFO Story, In Real Time

What are the origins of the common UFO story?  Most, if not all, of my blog postings have been about events that happened well over 40 years ago.  Facts tend to be blurred as direct witness recall abilities tend to fade over time.  The possibility of confabulatory ideations effecting the thought process becomes real and all too apparent.  In a lot of cases, direct witnesses are now deceased and we're left to decipher what it was that they saw or heard which is often hampered by the "soot" covered by the numerous speculations that have that uncanny ability to morph into "fact" and leaving the witnesses' original intent lost to the present day observer.

Now we have the opportunity to look at a case in "real time."  The recent event at FE Warren AFB that occurred back in October 2010 allows us to witness the machinations of the UFO lore from its birth to its ongoing and ever changing evolution from fact to fiction. 

The Incident, As Reported by the Media

The Atlantic, "Failure Shuts Down Squadron of Nuclear Missiles"  This was the original article that disclosed the incident.  Marc Ambinder, White House correspondent for the National Journal/contributing editor for Atlantic broke the story on Oct 26, 2010.  As you can see, the original reports appeared to list the incident as a "power outage" but was amended to that of a communication outage.  Soon after this report, various television outlets began to broadcast news segments concerning the incident (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc) (The Atlantic link is from http://www.ufohastings.com/)

"According to the official, engineers believe that a launch control center computer (LCC), responsible for a package of at least five missiles, usually ten of them, began to "ping" out of sequence, resulting in a surge of "noise" through the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence, so if they begin to send signals out when they're not supposed to, receivers on the missiles themselves will notice this and send out error codes."

The Air Force Times, "Computer Failure Disrupts Missiles at Warren"  The Air Force times ran a short on-line article on Oct 26, 2010.

"According to the official, engineers believe that a launch control center computer (LCC), responsible for a package of at least five missiles, usually ten of them, began to "ping" out of sequence, resulting in a surge of "noise" through the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence, so if they begin to send signals out when they're not supposed to, receivers on the missiles themselves will notice this and send out error codes."

"Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said the break occurred early Saturday and lasted less than one hour. The White House was briefed about the failure Tuesday morning."

"The equipment failure disrupted “communication between the control center and the missiles, but during that time they were still able to monitor the security of the affected missiles,” Vician said. “The missiles were always protected. We have multiple redundancies and security features, and control features.”

"One military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident publicly, said the equipment in the launch control center has been the subject of unspecified communications problems in the past"

"Pentagon Cites Hardware Glitch in ICBM Outage" The Los Angeles Times article describing the event October 27, 2010:

"... A communications malfunction at a Wyoming Air Force base knocked 50 intercontinental ballistic missiles offline for 45 minutes last weekend as technicians scrambled to diagnose the problem, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.  The glitch in the underground cable system linking launch control centers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base to the missile silos affected one-ninth of the U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force, a key part of the nation's nuclear arsenal, officials said..."

"Equipment Failure Cited in Warren Incident" 
The Air Force Times reporting of the findings of the operational review board pertaining the the causation of the incident (March 3, 2011)

"Equipment failure — not human error — caused the nearly hourlong communications outage that affected 50 nuclear missiles last fall at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., service officials said."

"A circuit card in a weapons-system processor knocked out of place by heat and vibration generated by regular operations caused the Oct. 23 disruption, according to an operations review board investigating the incident."

"The card had not been essentially locked into place after maintenance work had been done, but the weapons-system processor had worked for more than nine hours before the card came loose, according to a redacted copy of the board’s report, released Wednesday by Global Strike Command. Nuclear deterrence is a mission of the command."

The above news reports are one of many.  If you Google using the key words: FE Warren AFB, missile communication outage, numerous news articles appear describing the incident, many piggy backing off of the original Atlantic story.  Yet, all basically tell the same story based on the "facts" as provided by Air Force, DoD and Pentagon sources.  In fact key portions of the reporting are parroting one main source.  To the casual observer, the original medial report appears complete and concise, yet all are filled with numerous errors concerning how the Minuteman weapon system actually operates.  These errors are not the fault of the media reporters, but  the fault of the original sources.  Amazingly, the Air Force Times equally carried these errors in their original story.  Who are these sources and did they provided factual information?

Government agencies dealing with military operations employ the use of public affairs officers or spokespersons to provide information to the news media and the general public.  Most public affairs officers have no clue or direct knowledge of what they are disseminating and this generally is the cause of conflicting/disjointed information and why official stances change over a period of time especially when dealing with an incident such as FE Warren where the story is not static but dynamic by its nature.  Combine this with a news reporter trying to understand the information that is being given to him/her, who has no experience with the weapon system involved,  it inevitably becomes a foregone conclusion that confusion will develop and suspicions will arise.

Did the Air Force want the public to know about FE Warren's missile incident?  The answer is a resounding NO.  The day to day operational status of a missile wing is generally classified for obvious reasons.  In the case of FE Warren where there was an unusual problem,  the Air Force would have been perfectly content to quietly assess, correct, and evaluate the causation of the incident and return back to normal operations which for all practical purposes they did.  But it is the inherent nature of this "flying below the radar" approach that results in the propagation of conspiracy ideations by certain segments of the population.

The last report from the Air Force Times provides what actually occurred.  A circuit card was loosely placed in the Weapon System Processor in the LCC in question.  This had been done some nine hours prior to the outage by a maintenance team on site.  And of course, from the review board's report, the issue lasted less than an hour.

Robert Hastings" UFO "Mining" Operations

In all of the main stream media reports, not one word is mentioned of any strange sightings during the Weapon System Processor (WSP) problems affecting the 319th's five Launch Control Centers.  Tim Printy, who writes the SUNlite on-line news letter, relayed to me that when he had checked on the MUFON and NUFORC websites there was no listing of any reports coming from the Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska areas associated the FE Warren's missile wing.  Tim had wrote a short segment in SUNlite about FE Warren.   I did a check myself and found Printy's observations to be accurate.  I even checked for any reports that may have been filed between October 20 through October 30 and found no reporting of any UFOs in the affected vicinity.nor did I see any references to "cigar" or blimp-like objects. 

Yet not to be discouraged, UFO "researcher", Robert Hastings took it upon himself to pay a visit to the Cheyenne, WY area to get to the bottom of things.  The following are articles that Hastings had written and posted on various UFO websites documented his "investigation."  Even by the time that Hastings had decided to personally "wildcat" for UFOs, there had not been one report listing UFO activity.  I had wondered at the time if Hastings was going to, at his own personal expense, be willing to come up empty handed.  As the reader can see, Hastings did not disappoint me.  Being that not one word of UFOs had been uttered, Hastings had "amazingly" appeared to have produced UFOs out of thin air!

Robert Hastings' "Huge UFO Sighted Near Nuclear Missiles During October 2010 Launch System Disruption"

This dramatic story was leaked to Mark Ambinder, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, which published it three days later.1 The Air Force then quickly acknowledged the problem, saying that a back-up system could have launched the missiles and claiming that the breakdown had lasted a mere 59 minutes.

James Carlson had asked me if I really believed that Ambinder's article sparked Hastings attention and the above confirms my suspicion.  For some reason Hastings appeared to be perseverating about whether the official 59 minute outage was correct because (see below) he was told by two "anonymous" sources that the outage lasted over several hours (Hastings would later settle for 24 plus hours).  And my response is...so what?  It made no difference what so ever concerning the ability to launch the ICBMs. 

However, the latter statement was untrue, according to two missile technicians stationed at F.E. Warren, who say that the communications problem, while intermittent, actually persisted over several hours.

Significantly, these same individuals report multiple sightings by "numerous [Air Force] teams" of an enormous cigar-shaped craft maneuvering high above the missile field on the day of the disruption, as well as the following day. The huge UFO was described as appearing similar to a World War I German Zeppelin, but had no passenger gondola or advertising on its hull, as would a commercial blimp.

I do recall seeing a segment on the television series "Fringe" where this actually occurred, depicting a "zeppelin" over modern day Boston.  I wonder if Hastings' sources saw the same segment?

The confidential Air Force sources further report that the commander of their squadron has sternly warned its members not to talk to journalists or researchers about "the things they may or may not have seen" in the sky near the missiles in recent months and have threatened severe penalties for anyone violating security. Consequently, these persons must remain anonymous at this time.

Back in the early 1980s, newspaper columnist Jack Anderson was attempting to contact and interview ICBM crews by calling directly the Launch Control Center.  We were briefed not to engage in conversation with Mr. Anderson.  Robert Hastings apparently has not quiet grasped the concept of OPSEC.  But the last sentence is important for the birth of this UFO lore..."Consequently, these persons must remain anonymous at this time."  With total anonymity, Hastings "witnesses" can provide unlimited information with out the hassle of being vetted for factual content.  Throw in the government persecution threats and Hastings now has a nice conspiracy angle to boost an Air Force cover-up scheme.  And this is all had from the use of anonymous sources.

This is the crux of James Carlson's article over at Realityuncovered.net, "By Their Works Shall Ye Know Them" where he exposes the self-serving use of anonymous sources.  James makes the observation that it's entirely possible that these anonymous sources may not exists.  Its a good read and well worth the time spent reading his four part expose.  Personally, this is Carlson at his best uncovering such journalistic incontinence.

If the mysterious cigar-shaped object repeatedly sighted on October 23–24 was somehow involved with the 50-missile launch system disruption, it wouldn't be the first time that a UFO interfered with the functionality of nuclear missiles, according to several U.S. Air Force veterans who have courageously gone public with their own, still-classified close encounters at various ICBM bases during the Cold War era.

Here Hastings shamelessly uses "slight of hand" techniques propagating a story line that a UFO affected 50 ICBMs launch capabilities.  True, five LCCs were out of sync with each of their 10 ICBMs, but the sorties were still alert ready and could have been launched by other means.  This was strictly an LCC event, not an LF event.  As far as this "not being the first time...", Hastings should review my "Case Closed" post concerning the Echo Flight myth that he and others had home spun.  I also had mentioned in my recent FE Warren post that this issue had occurred at Malmstrom AFB in the 1990s.

Here from a Hastings "safe-house," UFO Digest rehashing  the event.  Yet now we are told that there are "other" sightings as of March 26, 2011.  Evidently mitosis and cytokinesis is not strictly limited to the cellular process.

Over the past three months, even more reports have come in and I now know of other sightings by civilians and law enforcement personnel in the larger, tri-state area of Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado, where F.E. Warren’s 9,600 square-mile missile field is located.

Cigar, cylinder, spherical and triangular-shaped aerial objects—many of them silently maneuvering or hovering at very low altitude—have been reported in the region as early as mid-September 2010 and as recently as March 18, 2011...

Given the large area covered by the 319th, 320th, and 321st Missile Squadrons, you would have thought that the hovering "objects" would have been noticed and reported by hundreds of observers, especially since it was broad daylight.  Yet despite the optimum view conditions very little is shown on the MUFON and NUFORC data bases.  Why is that?

Billy Cox, DeVoid, 22 June 2011, "A Vaccum of Names" 

Hastings says he got the latest leads in December from a “retired missile maintenance technician with contacts at F.E. Warren” and that two additional USAF retirees verified the reports of UFO activity

Hastings initial source?  This anonymous individual provides Hastings with the names of the anonymous active duty missile maintenance personnel, who in turn provide Hastings with the "details" of the LCC communication outage and the alleged UFO sightings.  As of this time, Hastings sources still remain anonymous.  Difficult to follow?

...The problem is, this story has been saturated with unnamed sources from the get-go, even from an unusually skittish civilian sector, as The Western Nebraska Observer discovered in April. Without names, this one can’t go anywhere because it has no legs

And Billy Cox squarely hits the nail on the head.  And this from a Hastings supporter!  And Cox is being kind, but the underlining meaning is clear...how can you be absolutely sure that what Hastings is telling us is factual?

This is the first of two parts.  The second part will look at the "witnesses" of the UFO sightings in and around FE Warren.

Titan II Complex 373-4: Was It Really Haunted?

"As far as 3-4, apart from the soot on the walls around the switchgear, there are two things that stand out in my memory.


Firstly, I remember when out in the silo, I would from time to time see something out of the corner of my eye, which when I looked was nothing out of the ordinary. I know some people will put that down to paying too much attention to the stories about the site, but that's the only site I ever noticed that at, even compared to the other site where a death had occurred, 373-5, which was pretty much like every other site; no reputation, and nothing unusual happening.


The second happened late one afternoon when I accompanied the crew chief out to the silo while he completed some task he needed to do before he could head back to the base that day. Seems to me we had to go down to level 3, or it may have been level 4. It was a long time ago, and my memory is not clear on what level exactly we went down to, only that it was below level 2 but not more than a couple of levels.


All the maintenance people had already finished their tasks and left the silo before we went out (which makes me now think he may have wanted to doublecheck their work) . Anyway, he had accomplished whatever he needed to do/check on, and we had boarded the silo elevator to return to level 2. When we got there, I raised the wire mesh internal gate, and was just opening the bi-parting doors when the elevator call bell started ringing. I remember being very annoyed that the crew commander hadn't let me know that someone else had come out to the silo after we had left the control center (something very uncharacteristic for him to do) so I plugged in the WTMN headset and called the Control Center to see who else was out there in the hole. The crew commander answered, and after hearing my question about who else was in the silo, told me there was no one else out there except us. Now I'm wondering wtf was going on, so after discussing my intentions with the crew commander, I tell the crew chief there's no one else out there but us, and we're going to find out what's going on.


Of course, as all this is happening, the elevator call bell continues to ring. We get back on the elevator, close the doors, and the elevator goes down to level 8. We get out, walk around the launch duct, open the launch duct access door and check out the deflector, open each of the floor hatches to check out the silo sumps, and of course find absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.


The ride back up to level 2 and on through to the control center is uneventful, as was the rest of that alert. Of course the rest of the crew wanted me to fill them in on what was going on. All I could tell them was what had happened, I had no other explanation to offer.


Before anybody suggests the crew chief was pulling a joke on me, I was the one driving the elevator, standing on that side of the elevator where the elevator control panel was. He never had the chance to push another level's button without it being obvious to me what was going on. And I never considered him to be the jokester type.


As best as I can recall, this was early fall of 1972"  Former Titan II crew member "Sherwood" as posted on themissileforums.com

Missileers tend to refer to launch complexes with their own designations.  The 308th Strategic Missile Wing's Titan II complex 373-4 was referred to as 3-4 for those who routinely manned it and pulled nuclear alert duty.  Sometimes, these sites took on the name of the local geographical area.  In the case of 373-4, its forever tagged as...Searcy.  I've tried to recall worst events in SAC's ICBM history, but fail to come up with anything that rivals the tragedy that occurred at complex 373-4 on August 9, 1965.

THE SENTINEL-RECORD Wednesday, August 11, 1965, By Al Schay
SEARCY, Ark. (AP) - Air force investigators swarmed the scorched launch tube of a Titan 11 missile complex Tuesday to find the cause of an explosion and fire that killed 53 civilians in the "gun barrel" of America's mightiest ballistic missile. The tragedy was the first in the history of the Titan system, which includes 54 complexes that have been fully operational since December 1963.   Read more at techbastard.com 

I suspect that most of my readers have never heard of the accident at Searcy.  With exception of a few individuals, Searcy has receded from the Air Force's memory.  For those few who still remember...

"... He told me he was MCCC on duty the day of the fire. He saw smoke coming up one side of the long cableway, with clear air going down the other side. In about '74, I got an MFT (name escapes me, and he's not in either of my two crew pix) on my crew who told he was there, in casual status, and was detailed to help carry out the bodies and clean up after the fire. Said he saw an ear stuck to the emergency ladder, and finger scratches in the sooty silo walls."

"I also worked relief in the site that burned in 1965 killing 53 people. There were some who refused to work 373-4 because they thought it was haunted. It did have a morning mist that was waist high. The gravel would settle after you walked across it and sounded a bit like someone was following you across the compound to the entrance. They never got the soot off the walls in most of the silo or the long passage from the blast door to the silo."

"During an evaluation in the simulator two years later they threw a "fire in the diesel engine area" at the crew that was on duty. The commander almost lost it. I don't think he ever fully recovered."  Former Titan II crew member

A complete recounting and investigation of the accident can be found on techbastard.com.


Searcy, Arkansas provides a good example for my theory detailing the passing on of personal experiences by missile crew members.  The above statements by the former Titan II crew members were posted in a forum back in 2010 and 45 years has elapsed since the incident's occurrence.  The memories still appear "fresh" for it was a life-changing event for those that were actually on alert and those that assisted in the recovery operations back on August 9, 1965.

Was complex 373-4 haunted?  As far as ghosts are concerned, I really can't say with any degree of certainty, but Searcy does haunt those who lost love ones and members of the military that were there.

Addendum 3/26/2012:  I've added a follow-on based on contact with one of the individuals that was quoted in this post.  Sherwood, on-line moniker, contacted me via themissileforums.com with the following:

"I see you used my 373-4 story on your blog. Not annoyed, just surprised to see it show up elsewhere. I found it while searching for Titan II pictures, something I repeat from time to time.

Follow-on: On our next alert out at the site, I opened up and inspected the silo elevator control relay cabinet. I wanted to see if there was anything there that could explain the previous alert's experience.

I didn't see anything at all out of the ordinary there. It was clean, with no evidence of any sooting. I didn't really expect to see anything, because all switches and cabinets in the silo were explosion proof, but I wanted to rule that possibility out.

The other thing that happened (though not to me personally) was that the other two members on the crew reported the WireTypeMaintenanceNet call signal went off in the wee hours when my half of the crew was sleeping. Whether that was before or after the elevator incident I don't really remember.

There was not a WTMN headset station in the bedroom of the Titan II control center. I think there was one on that level by the site pressurized water tank, but you'd have to open the bedroom door to access it, and I'm a very light sleeper so I know that scenario doesn't fly. We were all business on that crew - no jokers, totally unlike a crew I was on later."

Thanks Sherwood for the follow-on story.  Should you recall other experiences, please let me know.

FE Warren: The New Echo Flight?...Not Hardly

For the past few months, I've been following, off and on, the speculations surrounding FE Warren's  319th Missile Squadron's loss of communications with all 50 of it's Minuteman III ICBMs back on 23 Oct 2010.  Robert Hastings has apparently been in the fore front driving the most wildest of those speculations citing from the obligatory "anonymous sources" that a cigar-shaped object was seen hovering in the vicinity of the 319th's flight area.  Hastings "exhaustive" quasi-conclusions can be read on numerous blog sites including Frank Warren's UFOChronicles website. Hastings latest can be accessed at Frank's site using the provided link:  http://www.theufochronicles.com/2012/01/james-carlson-gets-it-wrong-again.html   Hastings has proven an old James Carville axiom to be aptly valid:  "If you drag a fifty dollar bill through a trailer park, there's no telling what you'll come up with." (I'm paraphrasing here, but it's fairly accurate from Carville).

Putting speculation aside, lets look at the actual facts as currently known.  The Air Force Times gives a description of the incident (yes, I realize that some in ufology equates the AF Times to a version of Pravda) and the article is found here:  http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2011/03/air-force-warren-equipment-failure-cited-030511w/  So here is the classic match-up:  UFO vs circuit card, or possibility vs probability.  I suggest folks dust off and review their text books on Inferential Analysis to assist with making a decision on this one.

As for Hastings "anonymous" sources, let's look at the opinions of those "young guns" actually familiar with the situation, ie those lads/lasses that are actually pulling the nuclear alerts in the defense of our country:

"The article didn't mention why maintenance was done on the card, so I won't either. But as the article says, yeah. Maintenance removed the card, and it wasn't properly locked back in.  The report also mentions changes to the WSP hardware and T.O.s, so it's not a simple "They obviously didn't lock in it place."  Minot crew member

'I believe the original maintenance on the WSP wasn't due to a bad card, but due to RIVET MILE scheduled periodic maintenance."  Malmstrom crew member

"I already forgot most of what they said in T3 last month when they explained it, but yeah, the original maintenance wasn't related to the comm problem."  FE Warren crew member

"hard to figure out what one can say, but bravo was down for a contracted set of tests that isolated it and tests were performed on the site (not rivit mile), when that was done, things were not quite right so it was mmoc was changing cards thinking that was what was wrong."  FE Warren crew member

As can be gleaned from the above statements, it appears that the LCC in question may have experienced maintenance early on prior to the problem occurring, yet in the end, it all boils down to a circuit card not properly inserted into the Weapon System Processor causing an interface issue with the other four squadron LCCs.  Is this a new occurrence that has never happened before, or to use a Hastings term "unprecedented"?  I'm afraid that I'm going to burst the Hastings Bubble:

"Had a similar incident in the late 90's. Two LCCs down for mnx. One came up with a new WSP. As soon as they told us they turned it on we started losing comms and eventually 17 of my LFs (and most of the rest) went LFDN in the 6 or so minutes it took us to convince the crew to 'damn the T.O. and just pull power' from the new WSP. Despite not even getting to the point where the crew could select a time slot the new drawer was transmitting on it's own continuously. The next few days were long ones for the cops."  Former missile crew/maintenance

Whats forgotten due to all of the "noise" being generated by Hastings is that all 50 ICBMs remained on alert and were monitored by back-up systems such as...ALCC, the air borne platforms that are a secondary monitoring platform for any and all of our ICBMs.

Daily Report eNewsletter Air Force Magazine.Com

Thursday October 28, 2010

Missile Unit Experienced Communications Disruption: The 319th Missile Squadron headquartered at FE Warren AFB, Wyo., overseer of 50 Minuteman III ICBMs, experienced "a disruption of communications" between its five launch control centers and the missiles this past Saturday, Lt. Col. John Thomas, Air Force Global Strike Command spokesman, told the Daily Report Wednesday. He said the evidence so far points to a mechanical part failure associated with the missile complex's primary communications system. Somehow the electronic queries that the LCCs send out to each missile to verify its health and status got out of sync and created a transmissions logjam, kind of like 50 people trying to speak simultaneously on the same walkie-talkie frequency. Thomas said it took the missileers about 45 minutes to diagnose and isolate the issue. They switched control of all 50 missiles to one of the LCCs. (Normally each LCC controls 10 missiles.) In short order, all but one of the LCCs were back in the network. However, one of the squadron's LCCs remains offline for additional study of the anomaly, he said. Thomas said there's no evidence of tampering or malicious conduct. USAF technical experts think the issue is similar to ones that occurred in the late 1990s at Malmstrom AFB, Mont., and Minot AFB, N.D., he said. The missile crews at FE Warren had multiple safety, security, and command and control systems that were available throughout this event. Thomas said there was never any danger of unauthorized missile launch and the missiles' wartime capability "was never affected." And there was no outright outage of communications or power as some press reports have indicated. (See also Associated Press report and AFPS report by Terri Moon Cronk.)

So, there you have it...and...Did It Really Happen?

Sources cited from:  The Mercinary Missileer-Association of Air Force Missileers

Tim Printy Tackles the 1957 RB-47 UFO Case!

A few days ago, Tim Printy published a very detailed review of the famous 1957 UFO case involving an RB-47 and what UFO proponents believe to be UFOs tracking the aircraft as it performed a training mission out of Forbes AFB, KS.

Well over six months ago, Tim was issued a challenge to "solve" the case once and for all as the RB-47 case is considered "Ufology's Best Evidence."  As Tim explains in his article his work is nowhere conclusive, yet does raise numerous questions concerning the original research conducted by Brad Sparks and the late Phillip Klass.

Tim Printy's fine and exhaustive work can be found in his latest edition of SUNlite and I highly encourage you to read the article regardless on what side of the fence which you sit.

I would like to welcome any comments on Tim Printy's article and since Tim visits my site from time to time, maybe he would be willing to engage in discussion.

The Haunting of A-05: The Genesis of ICBM Folklore and Legends

I love a good ghost story.  It's ingrained in my Cajun culture and I suspect that hauntings and ghosts permeate all cultural folklore...and the military is no exception!.  If you have had the patience to read through most of this blog's articles, you would have noticed that I had mentioned Malmstrom's A-05 in a couple of those articles.  I had only mentioned the site in passing and had only used it's story as a contrast to the various UFO stories surrounding Malmstrom's missile wing.  Yet, A-05's story deserves more of an in-depth study.  Let's explore this interesting legend's beginnings and see where it stands as of the present.   I'll also share some of the legends surrounding other missile wings during the SAC era.  All fascinating in their on rights.

I first became aware of the A-05 legend while attending Initial Qualification Training at Vandenberg AFB, CA back in October 1980.   I remember my classroom instructor, Carl Hamlin, tell the class that Malmstrom had a haunted Launch Facility, A-05.  The Launch Facility was supposedly haunted by the spirits of Native Americans as the site was built on an old Indian burial site.  I recalled we all had a good time with the tale and left it at that.  Yet after arriving on station during February 1981, the story would crop up from time to time.  As with all ghost stories there always seem to be different variations depending on who told the story.

Back in the early 1960s, a Camper Security Team was posted on A-05 presumably for a site security issue.  Some time during the night one of the security guards reported seeing a strange glowing ball of light enter onto the premise of the LF settling on top of the security fence.  The guard woke his partner and both described the ball of light eerily morphing into that of the figure of an Indian maiden.  As this version of the story goes,  the "maiden" just stands before the security guards smiling and abruptly vanishes.  Both guards, scared senseless contact wing security control asking to be relieved immediately and refuse to ever camper the site in the future.  This is the version that was told to me while at Vandenberg AFB.

Another version of the story was relayed to me during my first year at Malmstrom, 1981.  I not certain, but it may have been told to me by my first crew commander while driving out on alert.  In this version, a Camper Team is visited by not only the Indian maiden but also by an old man dressed in the usual Native American garb and wearing a feathered head dress.  Both apparitions of the maiden and old man quickly vanish before the security guards scaring both senseless.  In this version, the old man, a chief, is supposedly the father of the maiden and appeared to give off the aura of disapproval of the security team's presence on the site.

Still another version of the legend as told to me by an EWO instructor during the 1982-1983 time frame had a slightly different twist.  In this version, yet again, A-05 was manned by a Camper Team and late at night one of the guards spots the glowing orb and quickly retreats inside of the team's camper waking up his partner.  Both guards experience heavy pounding on the outside of the camper walls and roof.  During daylight, both guards discovered that the camper's outside walls and roof had numerous heavy indentations, some piercing the camper's metal sheeting.  The indentations appear to match that of the blade of a tomahawk.  Allegedly, when the camper was brought back to the base, someone produced an actual tomahawk and the blade matched perfectly with the indentations left on the camper's sides and roof.

Throughout the rest of my tour at Malmstrom, I would hear further different versions of the legend ranging from Armed Response Team's (ART) striking A-05 due to an outer zone security alarm violation and finding a bear lying on the launcher closer door and further repetitions of the old man and maiden sightings.  If anyone is wondering, during my time at Malmstrom, 1981-1985, there were never any claims of any ghostly activities associated with A-05.  Though one person, either maintenance or security cop (difficult to recall exactly) told me that when they were out on the site the "wind blows in only one direction and no birds are heard to be chirping in the surrounding woods."  For what this person meant remained a mystery to me for some months until I would eventually pay the site a visit myself.   Of the handful of alerts that I had pulled at Alpha's Launch Control Center, A-05 was always "green" lighted indicating strategic alert.  I never had a problem with the site, mechanically or security-wise.  Her gyros kept spinning happily within its missile guidance system.

As mentioned above, my curiosity got the better of me and my wife and I planned a road trip with A-05 as one of our stops.  This trip was done either in the late spring or summer time frame of at least 1982 as I recalled no snow cover on the ground and a fairly pleasant late afternoon.  A-05 is located in the Lewis and Clark National Forest and within the confines of the Little Belt Mountains southeast of Great Falls.  My wife and I took US Hwy 87/89 past Belt to Armington Junction.  Here US Hwy 89 split off from Hwy 87 going due south to Monarch and Niehart.  A short distance out of Monarch, near A-06, we turn on the Hughesville Rd traveling due east.  Hughesville Rd winds its way through the Belt Mountains paralleling Dry Fork Belt Creek for most of its distance to Hughesville.  Approximately 10 miles distance sits A-05 with only the Hughesville Rd separating the LF from the creek bed.  As best as I can recall, I took no photos, A-05 sat in small valley surround by aspens and pine trees.  A serene setting, one of the more picturesque settings of all of the 341st SMW's LFs, barring one or two of the 564th's LFs near the foot hills of the Rockies.  True the wind did indeed appear to blow in only one direction, but that was easily attributed to the fact that the site sat in a small valley and the Hughesville Rd approach, both east and west, basically was a small canyon road in which the wind currents really had no choice but to blow in one direction.  I remember that there were indeed the sound of birds chirping combined with that of the creek's rushing water.  It was pleasant to both the eyes and ears.  If there was one draw back, it would have been that due to it being the late afternoon, the surrounding mountain ridges were blocking the sun causing heavy shadows to fall onto the LF itself.  And not so surprisingly, I saw neither an Indian maiden nor the old Indian chief.  My wife and I soon got back in our car and headed back to Monarch with the intent to look around Niehart.

How did the legend originate and is it true?  Its almost impossible to pinpoint who actually started the story, but if we look at all of the variants as told to me, most if not all of the story centers around a Camper Team that is posted on the site due to issues with the outer zone security system (reset issues).  All of the variants take place in the early 1960s, possibly right after Alpha Flight was operationally activated.
Alpha Flight was the very first operational Minuteman squadron.  The bulk of the 10 SMS was completed around 1963.  Alpha Flight was certainly operational by 1962 as John F. Kennedy hailed the flight as his "Ace in the Hole" during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crises.  What is well documented via Bernard Nalty's ICBM histories is the fact that the early LF security systems were notorious for malfunctioning and/or resetting which necessitated the need for a security camper team at numerous sites.  As far as the actual events taking place on A-05, its far easier and factual to state that during my 4 years on station, I never heard about anything unusual happening on A-05.  This would also include my wife, then a maintenance officer.  She has stated that nothing unusual was ever reported to by her maintenance troops nor did she see anything unusual when on the site itself.  I suspect that the story originated from a bored camper team that invented the tale with the hopes of pranking future teams who would have had to either perform work or provide security for the LF.  Or, maybe one of the guards actually thought he saw something and his imagination got the better of him.  Remember, all of the variants of the story happened in the dead of night (no pun intended).  Could a bear have actually climbed over the LF perimeter fence and on to the launcher closure door as told in one of the versions of the story?  This would have been very plausible as I had seen a bear running across the fields on my way to Lima-01 near Eddies Corner!

Does the legend of A-05 continue to this day?  Surprisingly it does, though not as often mentioned as it was back in the 1980s, it does come to light every now and then.  On one missile forum a year ago, the group was discussing haunted sites.  A current young 10th SMS crew member had posted that "he had heard that A-05 was supposedly haunted."  Unfortunately he never went into any details, yet this may be that all of the different story variants are now fading away only to be recalled my "old heads" such me!

Note:  In a future article, I'll post stories about other missile wing's "haunted" sites.

Interpersonal Transfer of Experiences: A Working Cognitive Theory for the Echo and Oscar Flights Folklore

As mentioned in my very first blog article, over the 4 years that I was assigned to Malmstrom AFB, in the 490th Strategic Missile Squadron, I never ran across the story of the Echo Flight shutdowns. This also included my 4 months of crew training at Vandenberg AFB prior to my arrival on station. And to a certain point, that personal observation is what drives my questioning of the UFO event as the cause of the shutdown, as well as, any event that may have occurred at Oscar. Even my wife, a maintenance officer during the same time period at Malmstrom, never heard of any UFO stories involving Echo or Oscar and she had access to senior enlisted personnel (Master Chiefs) who never hinted about the incidents.

I am curious as to what drives these stories. How is it that a story such as our "haunted" Launch Facility, A-05, has longevity (originated in early 1960s), yet the Echo and Oscar stories were either non-existent, or locked up in some one's memory? Base on this interesting phenomenon, I've coined the term "Theory of Interpersonal Transfer of Experiences." Simply, the "Crew Force Oral Tale."

My theory is loosely based on the word of mouth passing of a rumor. Over a period of time the the rumor changes in its message and context as eventually the final message has no resemblance of the original message. In my exercise a personal experience that someone has is usually passed on in a verbal means of communication to another individual. For all practical purposes, this is similar to the oral tale. The telling of a missile crews' experience is usually a verbal form of communication.  For the purpose of this thought exercise, I use the passing on of a missile crew's experience, a story based in fact or rumor, to a new generation of listeners. A generation, in this context, means a period of 4 years. Four years was the time period that most of the missile crews had to serve before being reassigned to other duties either at the same locale or a new base. Missile maintenance personnel usually where on station for 3 to 4 years, if not longer, depending on the circumstances.

Based on the 4 year generation cycle, from 1967 to 1983 there would have been four complete generations.
Since crew/maintenance/security experiences are predominantly verbal (some experiences are written down as I will show later), there are factors that naturally affect the relaying of the initial experience in a story's format:

1) The significance of the experience will determine if the story will be passed on to the next generation.

2) With each succeeding generation, the passed on oral experience is subject to numerous factors. Over a period of time, the story develops "fatigue" and it's interest and importance fades. Details of the original story become blurred with the passage of time and the passing on of the story to succeeding generations. The story may disappear due to the lack of enthusiasm, yet resurface secondary to a trigger mechanism. And most importantly, the loss of first hand knowledge of the original experience degrades the initial significance of the story.

The experience can only survive the passage of time if it has a major impact on the succeeding generations.
I had mentioned previously that the missile crew experience can be in a written format. This usually presented itself by way of the "Captain's Log." Each Launch Control Center traditionally had it's own Captain's Log  which all crew members that pulled an alert at that facility could informally write their personal thoughts and views. This was an unofficial compilation of an individuals thoughts concerning missile crew duty.  At some missile wings, the practice of having the log was heavily frown upon by the wing staff. Its uncertain which missile wing started the tradition of the Captain's Log, as well as, when the first log appeared in use. My recollection for Malmstrom was that some of the earliest existing writings dated back to roughly 1973. Of the fifteen Captain's Logs that I had read and written in, there were never anything in them that mentioned and/or referenced UFOs affecting Echo and Oscar. More to the point, Echo's and Oscar's Captain's Log was a blank slate regarding any mentioning of UFO activity.  Of equal interests is the omission of any UFO sightings/activity over the Kilo Flight in 1978 which has been mentioned by Robert Hastings and others.

1967 - 1971, The First Generation

Based on documentation, both official and unofficial, it's well known that on 16 March 1967, that all ten of Echo's ICBMs dropped off alert.  It's also well known that there were numerous rumors that UFOs had caused the missiles to drop off alert.  This was made clear in the 341st SMW's Unit History.  These rumors evidently spread through out SAC and it's various support agencies.  Based on my past experience with missile related rumors, it is not a far stretch to believe that by the end of the day, most if not all of Malmstrom would have heard of the shutdowns and eventually the UFO rumor.  The UFO story would have been talked about through out the four operations squadrons.  Yet by 1971, the story would have either been fresh or starting to fade via "fatigue."  How much of the story would have been passed on to the next generation, that is, those new crew members newly assigned to Malmstrom?  Admittedly, this is difficult to say with any certainty, but it may be assumed that some of those newly arrived on station would have been told of the Echo story and the UFO angle.

1971-1975, the Second Generation

By mid-way through the second generation what remains of the original Echo story would have started to fade away.  This can be supported by the lack of anything mentioned in the numerous Captain's Logs that had entries dating back to that time period.  Yet our "haunted" LF, A-05, still persist during this time period as evident of some of the contents that I recall from A-01's Captain's Log.

1976-1980, the Third Generation

All traces of Echo and Oscar Flight had now evaporated.  My first and second crew commanders were newly assigned to the 490th SMS during this time period.  Both of these individuals never relay the story to me, nor do I hear of it from others that were assigned to the 10 SMS.  This would have been the time-frame for the allegedly Kilo Flight sightings during 1978, again there is no talk of such an event occurring.  Despite the "loss" of the Echo and Oscar stories, A-05's haunting still flourishes!

1981-1985, the Fourth Generation

This is my time period.  I arrived on station during Jan-Feb, 1981.  Over this time period, I personally never hear of anything occurring at Echo and Oscar Flights, this includes both the actually loss of Echo's sorties and the UFO angle.  By this time Carlson, Figel, Salas and others vanish from any unit memory.  Kilo's 1978 sitings equally evaporated from the wing's combined consciousness.  But...the haunting of A-05 continues to live on, despite anything actually happening on that site for 20 plus years!

Conclusion

What conclusions can be drawn?  Echo's loss of alert status for its 10 sorties was important only for a year or two after the event.  The UFO angle fizzled out about that same length of time because an engineering analysis concluded what actually did, or with high probability, occurred rendering the UFO story strictly a jocular fantasy.  Of note, Oscar's story suffered anonymity due to the total lack of any solid foundation to launch it even into the myth or folklore category.   Both stories had no lasting impact on the actual participants and the follow-on crew generations, yet an old, unsupported, folklore about a LF built over an old Indian burial ground, started by a long forgotten Security Camper team in the early 1960's lives on!  Now, some 40 years after the fact....enter Hastings and Salas...

Echo Flight: The Makings of a UFO Myth

I've added a separate companion piece, "Echo Flight:  The Makings of a UFO Myth."  This is actually a separate stand alone blog with a little bit more background and context for those who stumble across this UFO case for the first time.  But basically it has all of the content of the "Case Close" article on this blog.  Enjoy!