15 Minutes by L. Douglas Keeney

Author:L. Douglas Keeney [Keeney, L. Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429992824
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

1957

AN ENGINEERING NIGHTMARE

THE COLD WAR press called Tower Four a “marvel of engineering.” Not only would it provide earlier warning of a Soviet surprise attack, but it was an object unlike anything seen before. Rifle-shot straight lines depicted a tower of architectural beauty standing on three powerful legs that rose through the ocean and stood sixty-five feet high, on top of which was perched a steel platform that bristled with antennas and microwave disks that would send and receive telemetry and bounce radio signals off the atmosphere. Storm winds might claw waves out of the Atlantic that would grow into mountains of water sixty-feet high, but they’d pass unobstructed between the broad legs as if nothing were in the sea. Winds as powerful as 125 miles per hour would be shrugged off as if mere gusts.

There was a helicopter pad as large as any on a naval ship and a twenty-three-ton tracked crane that ran the length of the platform. Three radomes crowned the platform, rising another fifty-five feet high. Red and green lights winked through the night and spotlights illuminated her weather deck.

Architectural renderings appeared in newspapers the nation over. Across the legs was drawn a water level as smooth as a millpond.

But the North Atlantic was rarely as smooth as a millpond. And Tower Four was rarely immune to the vicissitudes of the Atlantic. Indeed, on a calm day with a bright sun, to lean against the railing, perched above a sea that stretched as far as the naked eye could see—on such days the ocean glimmered with sparkles of reflected light and the air was pleasingly perfumed with the smell of salt water and there were few places on Earth more beautiful to be. There would be barbecues on the weather deck with rows of chairs brought out so the men could read or nap in the sun. In the evenings, a long, lazy sunset spilled a shimmering red across the sky in a postcard-worthy display of colors unlike anything the men had seen before. On a clear night, one could reach up and grab a clump of stars; Doldrums would leave the surface of the Atlantic so still that a whisper could be heard a dozen miles away.

But when the winds stiffened over the open fetches and the waves made up, the towers became living things. Life on a Texas Tower required “fortitude,” said an air force brochure handed out to new arrivals. “If you have it, fine; if you do not, you will have an opportunity to learn something of it on the tower.” In heavy seas, the legs flexed and the tower tilted and shuddered and rocked. Wind would thump against the exposed platform with sledgehammerlike blows. Against a cresting wave, the towers lurched, not unlike the way a train lurches in its tracks.

Seasickness was common. “I was sitting in the dining hall watching a movie and I thought I was sick because I was getting dizzy,” said a noncommissioned officer. “It was the movement on the tower that I was feeling.

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