Forbe’s Field and Atlas ICBM’s
by Bobosan on Mar.12, 2007, under Main
Danyale and I ended up driving all around Topeka friday night. We ended up at Forbe’s Field, a former Army Airbase, and current Kansas ANG/Municipal airport. I didn’t get anything except a quick peak at the military aircraft stationed there (they ended up being KC-135 refuleing tankers based with the 190th Air Refueling Wing (ANG.)) So as soon as I had a free minute, I popped on my favorite defense site, GlobalSecurity to check out what the base was about.
I wasn’t really interested in the base too much, until I read that Forbe’s Field was a site chosen to deploy nine or so Atlas Missle’s back in the 60’s. That really caught my attention then! So, after some more googling, I managed to find links for surrounding missile sites, and it ends up there’s one in Royal Valley, KS and Holton,KS; both of which are reasonably close.
I haven’t been able to locate the sites on Google Maps quite yet, but if they’re still in reasonable condition, and close to a public access road, I might just drive by them on the way back to Topeka one day. I’m sure however, they’re still far off public access roads and the only way I’ll be able to see them is on Google Maps.
Missile’s have interested me for years. Something about the might of this country being deployed so few miles from my house is awe inspiring. This missiles formed the backbone of our national defense for years, and may well have prevented World War III. Mutually Assured Destruction was the only true defense against the numerical quanity of the Soviet Bloc.
All this information is kind of ironic, because Danyale commented the other day that Kansas would be a bad place for a terrorist attack, because of a few nuclear plants in the surrounding area. And just days later, I found out that nuclear weapons were stationed merely 15 to 50 miles away.