Bird in the Pit

Hard by a strip of wild, windblown Pacific shore near Lompoc, Calif., construction workers at Vandenberg Air Force Base last week were digging a 15-story hole in the ground. Within weeks, the deep cylindrical pit will be paved with concrete so thick that months must pass before it cures. Then the U.S. Air Force will slide a 90-ft., 117-ton monster into its perpendicular den and seal it with heavy concrete doors against the megaton shocks of man-made thermonuclear quakes. The monster is the Titan intercontinental ballistic missile, the first weapon in Air Force history to go underground.

As such, Titan presages the day when all long-range missiles will lurk beneath the earth, invisible and well-nigh invulnerable to enemy attack. The sunken silo at Vandenberg is only one part of a subterranean complex under construction as Titan's first "hard base." Adjoining the missile tank are other sunken cylinders (see diagram), housing air-conditioning and hydraulic equipment, a power station, liquid oxygen and fuel tanks, and a command control center for the launch crew. Tunnels connect the widely dispersed elements, but after the alert, only the control center will be occupied. Remotely controlled, the monster, fueled and armed, will rise majestically to the surface as the massive doors open, go through a brief countdown as a radar-tracking dome some distance away rises from its chamber.

Then, when the button is pressed, the missile will surge thunderously spaceward. Time for launching: 20 minutes or less.

Brobdingnagian Cartridge. Conceived in 1955 as a backstop to the Atlas ICBM, which is a surface or "soft-base" missile, the Titan program began with a one-year handicap, has since lost ground as the lion's share of money, engineers and steam poured into Atlas. But Titan shows signs of becoming a system with superior potential range, invincibility and kill.

Unlike Atlas, whose three engines ignite on the ground, Titan is a two-stage missile, resembling a Brobdingnagian rifle cartridge. About 130 seconds up--where Atlas sloughs off its twin booster engines --Titan sheds its first stage, 53 ft. of 10-ft.-thick shell and both booster engines. Thus unburdened, the 37-ft. second stage is expected to reach out beyond 9,500 statute miles--3,000 miles farther than Atlas--to deliver a massive warhead weighing better than three tons.

One Billion Dollars. The first Titan was air-shipped to Cape Canaveral in August for components testing. A test launch, using another Titan, has been tentatively scheduled for late next month. The Air Force has firmly programed four Titan squadrons of nine birds each, will start building the first of the four new Titan hard bases soon after the first of the year. Base construction near existing Air Force installations: $50 million per squadron. Titan development costs : $1 billion to date. Target date for an operational Titan: 1960.

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