"Airman Mindling, Airman Mindling, you have a phone call," the loudspeaker called out from the ceiling of the Bitburg Air Base NCO
Club. I was totally surprised as I had never been paged before in my life.
The first thing that raced through my mind as I headed for the office that
Saturday afternoon was that something had happened back stateside.
"Hello, this is Airman Mindling!"
"Mindling, this is Major Shaw, get out to Rittersdorf
and see what you can do to fix that damn launch door they jammed open. Get out there as soon as you can!"
"Yes sir, I'm on my way!" I had no idea what he was talking
about as I hung up, just that I had to take my fiancee (and future wife)
back to Bitburg or she would again have to wait on me for yet another site
dispatch.
I raced across the street to our barracks and changed into fatigues in record time, and after dropping Ilse at Number 8, Kyllburgerstrasse, was on my way to Site VII in my green, nearly clapped out 1954 VW.
I was absolutely floored that Major Shaw, Chief
of Maintenance for the 587th Missile Maintenance Squadron, called me, a two
striper, to fix a launch site facility problem. How he had picked me was
a mystery until I got the site, where, sure enough, one of the huge
launch bay doors was stuck about a third of the way up.
"You the hydraulics expert from Flight Controls?" one
of the launch crew members asked as I climbed the steps to inspect the
jammed door.
"Uhhh, yeah, I'm from flight controls," not wanting
to challenge the expert part of the statement. As I crossed to the inside
of the launch bay, I checked the huge pistons, then secondly, the control
arm that ran parallel and directly above the two silver, polished exposed pistons. Sure enough, jammed between the control arm bar, used as a sensing switch bar, and the huge, traveling piston arms, was a bent and thoroughly stuck, metal cased PSM-6 multimeter. Someone had been troubleshooting a circuit during the assembly of the missile that had just been loaded and
had thoughtlessly set the standard Air Force issue multimeter on the closest available shelf, the one that was formed by the pistons and the control arm. Then they forgot it was there.
Hours later, during the final phase of the missile acceptance,
the huge 100 ton door was to be raised and closed. The launch crew members in the launch bay,
usually including the crew chief, are in direct contact by headset with
the Launch officer 60 feet underground in the Launch Control Center. The
innocuous grey PSM-6 apparently escaped detection by the launch crew.
Apparently every thing had gone well until the door simply stopped.
The raising process is as exciting as watching grass grow, and takes almost as long.
It took a few moments to realize it had finally jammed. It was stuck just far enough up to prevent
a launch, and it couldn't be reversed to go back down.
I disconnected the switch leads, but they were for
the launch prevent position indicator and had no effect on the squealing
hydraulic unit. We tried to stop, reset, and even reduce the pressure to
the huge cylinders trying vainly to over power the jammed test set.
I had never seen the door system before, but simply tried to logically
figure out how to satisfy the signal requirements to stop the door drive
system. That didn't work, so we got a bigger hammer.
We tried knocking, then leveraging the case out
from between the arm and the piston to no avail. That was one PSM-6 that
was never going to be used again. Time was running out as a command decision
was made downstairs: blow the pressure and let the door down, one way or
another.
We all stood by on top and waited for the command, every
body standing well clear of the door and it's revetment. At first, it appeared
to be slow motion, but when it hit, it could have been heard all the way
back to base. It cracked the concrete between the two adjacent bays with
its impact. The door was open and the launch and AGE people were trying
to figure out how to straighten the control rod. That bay was out of commission
for a while, but at least the door was open.
When I went to see Major Shaw the next morning in the Chief
of Maintenance's office, he listened intently as I told him what had happened.
After a long pause, he said, "At least it's open!"
He finally managed a wry grin when I told him the PSM-6 wasn't one of
ours.
© George Mindling 1999 - All Rights
Reserved
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I do remember the stuck door and I was there! I certainly don't remember all the details but as I recall we burst a hydraulic line in the power room trying to open that door. Being one of the smaller troops on crew, I got elected to be a gopher and crawl under the steel decking to clean up about 50 gallons of fluid. That actually turned out to be the easy part since everybody else was cleaning red fluid off the walls, ceiling and equipment. What a mess 3,000 psi can make in only a few seconds time..
Now, I'm really guessing here but if memory serves me right, there was a PSM-6 involved and I remember a light haired (maybe blonde), skinny dude (we all were back then..) working feverishly trying to figure out what some dumb-ass launch crew member did to a 100 ton door.....;-) That was you? I'll be damned. That's probably where you remember me from. I was a Mech 1 at the time but being trained in all positions except nukes, I and everyone else was in the bay at some point offering their two cents worth. We had to override the door interlocks so we could get access and that got the guards panties all in a bundle as I remember. When he saw 3 of us in the bay - all armed, he started breathing normal again and stopped hyper-ventilating over the two bay doors being opened (launch and access doors) after you fixed whatever it was.
Bob Sosenko (rsosenk1@twcny.rr.com)
71st TMS
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