Major Locales of the Titan I Complex

This is a log of changes and updates to the web site listed in descending order from newest to oldest.  This site is very much a Work in Progress and my work on it is ever on-going though updates may be slow.

If you are looking for what's new, you've come to the right place!  Links are provided to updated material when applicable, and postings are organized by date.  Check back often, you never know when I'll add something new!

Site Updates 2025

05/24/2025 - Blueprints for Mountain Home AFB now online, changes to the navigation of the blueprints pages and other small updates.

The blueprints for Mountain Home 569th SMS are now "complete". I say "complete" because the set of drawings at this time is in fact woefully "incomplete" as of this posting, but what I have is now online. You can skip all my tedious typing and view the Mt. Home blueprints here.

 

This is not to diminish the good news that these drawings are now more widely available, but instead to underscore how much is left to discover, and with luck, to spread word of the hundreds of missing pages with the intent of perhaps seeing more pages come to the fore.

 

I'll keep this update notice short, and avoid my usual blathering so I can move on the the next update. Next I'll be working on some more documents, reviewing more photos to add to the archive, and of course, I'll be starting in on the onerous task of getting the next set of blueprints ready for posting. NEXT UP: Ellsworth. This is another set that is drastically truncated, but as with things of this nature, read: decades old,

 

NEXT UP: Ellsworth 850th SMS blueprints. This is another set that is drastically truncated, but as with things of this nature, read decades old, a large portion of the drawings in the set are absent for now. Those that are available are beautiful in their clarity and quality having come directly from well-preserved microfiche. But once again, the existence or location of the missing pages, and even the exact source of the blueprints available, is somewhat murky. If that source is out there, I beg them to digitize the rest of the set and help to see their inclusion here.

 

03/23/2025 - A LONG-OVERDUE document finally appears, more tweaks etc.

 

Scanned around 2000, this document finally arrives!

 

At long last, The Titan I Targeting Program document

It has been over 25 years since I scanned the document I am posting today. It is only part of a large multi-volume document that describes the process by which the real-world targets selected for the missiles were calculated to create the guidance data to get the missile to those targets. I should point out that, none of this data is sensitive, or makes references to actual named targets. Sorry, no sexy Cold War secrets like that will be found within.

 

This document, titled "Titan I Integrated Targeting and Simulation Program Document" is a manuscript and only part of a much larger document comprised of multiple volumes, one of which will follow in future updates.

 

As a manuscript, the document was still under review and annotations and changes are present throughout. It is a dense text, and very technical at times, and therefore may be unpalatable for most casual readers, but perhaps anyone can appreciate many aspects outside of the computer code, physics formulas and alphabet soup that can render much of it unintelligible to many.

 

I repeat, this is an esoteric, technical document describing the inner workings of a simulation program written in FORTRAN II, and it can take a bit of effort to follow even the plain text as it explains a complex web of control programs, sub-programs and modules that comprise the Titan I Targeting Simulation Program (title truncated). It appears likely the authors struggled to describe the program's function in simple phraseology and I found it quite mirthful as I read the following words that took a first stab at explaining it:

 

The major purpose of the targeting program is to determine, for a given ground guidance complex and for up to ten possible real targets, the corresponding ideal-earth aim points which are used by the ground guidance computer so that the actual impact points will coincide with the real targets. This is necessary since the guidance computer, when performing missile guidance computations, ignores the non-sphericity of the earth's gravitational field and the effects of atmospheric drag on re-entry. Hence in such an ideal earth, the missile is guided to a psuedo[sic] target or target aim point which is so offset from the real-earth target location, that the missile when aimed to this target aim point, actually impacts the real earth at the desired target.

 

To me, those words above are an astonishing feat of roundabout definition, nearly circular logic, and an impressively overly-wordy way of stating the kind of obvious. I should point out that this is not peculiar to the Titan I guidance system, and I see that other weapon systems are surrounded by a similar stuggle to make sense of it all in a concise manner. I noticed in an online video that a description of the guidance for the Tomahawk cruise missile was strikingly paralell in explaining how targeting offsets are painstakingly produced. The aforementioned video was far more verbose in trying to articulate how the Tomahawk finds its way than the text cited above. A LOT more. I suspect this is quite common with missile guidance systems.

 

The link to the new document is under the Other Contractor Documents section and is at the bottom of that section. In the synopsis to the document, I confess I didn't really try to craft my own interpretation and instead I swiped the first brief and general description in the introduction of Section I. That will have to do!

Documents Library overhaul

Since most of the code for this site is ancient, and no longer represents best practices (if ever it did), lacks responsiveness and employs stone age formatting practices, I set about to upgrade things in a piecemeal fashion. First in line was the Documents Library which has been completely re-written but retains a very similar look and function and got some navigation upgrades. It's hard to describe just how laborious re-coding old crap can be and that effort pushed back this document release along with the blueprints for Mountain Home. Now that the upgrade is done, I can get back on track.

 

There were also a few formatting and navigation changes to the new blueprints pages. I realized I hadn't provided a good way to navigate about in the Beale blueprints pages so I added a menu to make getting to sections (hopefully) easier and more straightforward. When I look at it however, things seem a bit of a mess so I'm not sure what I think of it.

 

If you have any feedback regarding the way things are set up so far, please let me know. I may well continue to tinker with things as I work to get the next blueprints posted.

 

 

01/07/2025 - First post of the New Year and the conclusion of the Beale blueprints section. Also, my usual begging and some minor tweaks to the site.

January 2025 sees the completion of the Beale blueprints section after months of work. Two new sections rounded out the drawings with the addition of the Propellant Terminal and Tunnels sections that add a couple hundred more blueprints to the set. Also, some stats and other info have been included about the set.

Another Plea for History

 

A new motto for the digital age!

 

As always, I hope to encourage anyone with additional drawings that may be missing from the set, or really, anything of relevance to Titan I history, to please, Please, PLEASE contact me and hopefully I can find a way to include it on the web site. Going forward I urge folks to adopt a policy of PRESERVATION, PRESERVATION, PRESERVATION as Silo Man of www.siloworld.net, and Dave, site owner of www.allthingsatlas.com have adopted as a major priority.

 

I encourage anyone with photos or materials of historical significance-- even if it doesn't seem important, and no matter the subject, to do their best to scan, reproduce or otherwise preserve such items from loss over the years. The history of the Titan I program from inception to now, spans the confines of a single human life-span, and yet, so much has already been lost. The people who planned, developed, designed and built the system; the people who protected, operated and manned the system, have been departing us quietly over the decades, and with them, each a library in their own right, a bit more of the history-- their legacy, is lost.

 

I've said a lot about the subject, so I won't go on much more, but if you can do anything to ensure the preservation of anything historical, please do. Scan it, duplicate it, protect it. So much is lost in just one lifetime, imagine what 200 years could do.

In other, minor news

Some little tweaks were made to the site that will likely escape notice, but just some small improvements and updates to formatting and correction of some little goofs here and there. I have yet to hear any complaints or suggestions to the site or it's interface so that's good I guess.

Until Next Time

The next update will likely see blueprints for Mountain Home or Lowry begin to appear, and more information on photos already posted to the Overpressure Archive will likely be added in the background without notice. Adding captions is quite laborious so it can proceed rather glacially.