A new coffee table book pays tribute to generations of Airmen by recording the art they created in nuclear missile facilities across the country.
Released late last year, “The Silent Sentinels” is a 324-page feast of murals, patches, cartoons, poems, painted ceiling tiles, and even song lyrics that capture the lives of thousands of missileers, maintainers, security forces, chefs, and other Airmen who have kept a 24/7 watch over America’s Minuteman nuclear missile fleet since 1958.
The watch continues to this day, but the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile is due to replace the Minuteman III—already more than 40 years past its initial planned service life—within the next decade. The new weapon will require a massive infrastructure refresh, so the replacement plan included an agreement to preserve cultural resources in and around the old Minuteman sites.
The Association of Air Force Missileers took up the cause, which was a chance to preserve the art not only at the three active Minuteman bases, but also at installations that shuttered their silos over the years.
“The purpose of this book was not just for us in the association to gather our history, but to share that story with the rest of our country and for generations to come,” said retired Col. Jim Warner, executive director of AAFM and the author of “The Silent Sentinels.”
Warner hopes to get the book out to ROTC detachments and other places where Air Force hopefuls can learn more about a career in missiles. Warner would have benefited from a book like that when he first became a missileer in 1974.
“I had no clue what the job was,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Now I look back at it as one of the best things I ever did. We want to share that story with the American public and with the Air Force.”
The book starts with a history of the Minuteman stretching back to 1958, when the missile was first conceived as a “simple, low-maintenance, reliable, and highly survivable ICBM capable of maintaining alert status for long periods of time” and hitting targets more than 5,000 nautical miles away.
The first Minuteman wing stood up at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., in 1962, followed by Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., and Minot Air Force Base, N.D., in 1963, then Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., and F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., in 1964, the same year a sixth wing began construction at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D.
By 1967, about 1,000 Minuteman missiles were on alert across the five wings, but by then the Minuteman II was already on alert at Grand Forks. The Minuteman II had better range, accuracy, and onboard memory than the first version. The Minuteman III, which first went on alert in 1970, was even better.
The wings at Ellsworth, Whiteman, and Grand Forks have since closed down, but about 400 missiles remain operational at Minot, Malmstrom, and F.E. Warren. The missiles are stored in underground silos called launch facilities. Every 10 launch facilities are controlled by a Launch Control Center (LCC), an underground capsule where missileers serve 24-hour shifts. About 60 to 70 feet above them is the missile alert facility (MAF), where missile crews and support staff live and rest when not on duty. Many take remote college classes on their down time there.
It can take hours to drive from the main base to a MAF, especially when snowfall makes driving over the dirt roads treacherous. The isolated conditions turn MAFs into heavily-fortified homes away from home, complete with chefs, security guards, and a facility manager who serves as a kind of den mother, handyman, and groundskeeper.
It’s not clear exactly when art first appeared on the walls of these facilities. Warner remembered art was not allowed during the early days of his career in the 1970s, so it may have first appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Pride in the unit is a common theme; Squadron emblems and mascots, including Red Dawgs, Screaming Eagles, and Wolf Packs, appeared on blast doors, blank LCC surfaces, and tunnel junction walls, often with American flags, missiles, skulls, or ruined Soviet flags in the background.
MAF-specific art tends to be light-hearted. The MAFs are designated by radio alphabet, such as Hotel 01, Oscar 01, and Golf 01, a prosaic system that nonetheless inspired generations of artist-Airmen. Oscar 01 at Whiteman, for example, featured Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch on one of its blast doors, and Hotel 01 at Minot has a “no vacancy” sign on the wall of its LCC.
Elsewhere are pop culture references, including Star Wars, Looney Tunes, and Super Mario Bros. Life imitates art at F.E. Warren’s Golf 01, whose elevator shaft mural was inspired by the video game series Fallout, where players emerge from underground vaults into a world devastated by nuclear war.
On the blast door of an LCC at Ellsworth is a reference to a Domino’s pizza ad promising delivery in 30 minutes or less, about the same amount of time it takes a Minuteman missile to reach its target. Originally the artist wanted to paint an American flag, but when he realized his shade of blue was off, he corrected with a Domino’s-style pizza box.
“A good artist knows when to pivot to get the job done!” Warner wrote.
Slice of Life
Several cartoons capture the headaches of working with decades-old technology, which Warner could personally relate to. The LCCs are suspended on shock isolators meant to keep the capsule level in case of attack. Warner recalled one of the isolators gave way during an alert, so all of the maintainers and missileers stood on one corner of the capsule and jumped to try to level it out again.
“You do what you’ve got to do because the mission is so important,” he said.
Another theme was the long drive out to the MAF through wind and snow. Several MAF murals billed their locations as “over the edge” of the world or “to the end of the Earth … then left.”
“Every picture came with a story about the time they were stuck on alert because of a snowstorm, or the long drive over dirt roads to get to the middle of nowhere in North or South Dakota,” Warner said. “Life in that part of the country is very interesting, and when people get together to talk about it, it’s always those fun stories.”
Several such stories were captured by The Groobers, a group of missileers assigned to F.E. Warren who started a folk-rock band in the mid-1970s. Their songs depict life in the missile fields, from boredom in the capsule to the hard work of missile maintainers.
“I don’t think we’ll ever forget playing an afternoon show in the rec center … and seeing two young wives of maintenance troops in the front row wiping away tears,” wrote one of The Groobers about performing their maintainer song.
Bringing the book together also helped bring the missileer community together, as alumni dug through their archives to find images to contribute.
“It was a great ‘walking down memory lane’ kind of experience.” Warner said.
The retired colonel still gets images that he wishes he could have included in the book. But the archival effort continues as AAFM’s core mission.
“Our purpose is to retain the heritage of all of the nuclear missile systems in the Air Force, to keep that community telling their stories, and then to educate the public about what our missileers have done and do today,” he said.
More information about “The Silent Sentinels” and where to buy it can be found here.