New Birds for SAC

With scarcely more ceremony than a shuffle of papers, the Air Force's Research and Development Command this week turned over the first operational Atlas-D intercontinental ballistic missiles to the 482 officers and men of the Strategic Air Command's 576th Missile Squadron at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.

On each of the three completed pads forming the base's Launch Complex 65-1, a twelve-story-high missile nestled in its gantry. Two more of the 200-ton silvery rockets, painted for the first time with the SAC insignia, lay in reserve, their H-bomb war heads stored near by, ready for installation in brief minutes. After five test flops followed by four successes in a row at Cape Canaveral, the U.S.'s prime weapon of deterrence seemed ready at last to serve Vandenberg's twin functions as an operational base for the launching of ICBMs against an enemy and a training center for the men who will fire them.

Within months, Vandenberg will add new sets of pads to handle the increasing supply of production-line missiles. Vandenberg-trained SACmen will eventually form nine SAC Atlas squadrons, stationed at seven ICBM bases now under construction in Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska and Washington. Meanwhile, the men in helmets--green for safety, white for command, orange for fuel and brown for the contractors' personnel--are ready to fire their first Atlases from the pads of Complex 65-1.

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