Launch Control Facility Support Building

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The Launch Control Facility support building is the most prominent surface feature at the site. Located inside the sliding security gate, the support building provided accommodations for eight Air Force personnel, served as a security control center for the entire flight, and housed environmental, mechanical, and electrical systems for the underground Launch Control Center where the two-man missile combat crew pulled their duty. Two missile combat crew members were stationed in the underground Launch Control Center. Initially the missile combat crew members served a thirty-six to forty hour alert tour with two eight to twelve-hour shifts on alert in the Launch Control Center, separated by rest periods in the Launch Control Facility support building. In 1977 the shift was changed to a single twenty-four hour shift, with the crew being replaced by a new missile combat crew dispatched from Ellsworth Air Force Base. Eight additional crew members, including two flight security controllers, two two-person armed alert response teams, a cook, and a facility manager, worked three-day shifts in this topside support building.

The Launch Control Facility support building remains largely as it did when Air Force personnel left the site following deactivation of the Minuteman II missiles. The interior remains fully furnished and looks almost as if personnel just left and locked the doors – magazines from the early 1990s remain in the magazine rack, salt shakers are on the table of the dining booth, and the EMDAS (Expanded Minuteman Data Analysis System) log remains on the desk in the facility manager’s bedroom.

www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/mimi/hrsab.pdf