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Declassified 341st SMW unit histories

USAF via The Black Vault · 88 pages · text by OCR

This Black Vault release contains the Air Force's 2001 response from the 341st Space Wing FOIA office at Malmstrom AFB, Montana, to a request about the 16 March 1967 Echo Flight missile shutdown, with excerpts from 341st Strategic Missile Wing histories covering 1967 to early 1968. The histories say all ten Echo Flight launch facilities lost strategic alert almost simultaneously. Investigators could not find a logical cause and found rumors of UFOs near Echo Flight to be unfounded.

  • p. 26 …THE TASK GROUP WILL CONVENE AT BOEING, SEATTLE ON 4 APRIL TO DEVELOP A TEST PLAN…
  • p. 28 …19 C-208 RUNNBAA/AFPRO BOEING CO SEATTLE WASH RUWJABA/BSD NORTON AFB CALIF BT 9…
  • p. 29 …APB MONT RUWMDAA/APPRO THE BOEING CO SEATTLE WASH RUWJABA/BSD NORTON AFB CALIF C GONE…
  • p. 33 …The group was to reconvene at Boeings' Seattle plant on 4 April 67 for development of…
  • p. 42 …DURING TESTING AT BOEING, SEATTLE. A 30 MICRO SECOND PULSE TO 10 TORG VOLT SQUARE WAVE…
  • p. 44 …BOX 1915 - SEATTLE, WASH. 9824 (BOE 720) ENGINEERING CHANGE PROPOSAL FACILITY DATE 27 December 1966 1…
  • p. 68 …BROADWAY SEATTLE 24, WASHINGTON ENGINEERING CHANGE PROPOSAL 1 MODEL OF THE MODEL Figure A 1248 VES…
  • p. 70 …BOX 1955 SEATTLE, WASH. 9824 (BOE 720) ENGINEERING CHANGE PROPOSAL FACILITY DATE 27 December 1966 1…
  • p. 79 …THE TASK GROUP WILL CONVENE AT BOEING, SEATTLE ON 4 APRIL TO DEVELOP A TEST PLAN…
  • p. 80 …AFB MONT RUWMDAA/APPRO THE BOEING CO SEATTLE WASH RUN 4804/NORTH AMERICAN AUTONETICS DIV ANAHEIM…
  • p. 81 …THE TASK GROUP WILL CONVENE AT BOEING, SEATTLE ON 4 APRIL TO DEVELOP A TEST PLAN…
After performing the tests, it was decided that commercial power switching operations were not the cause of the E Flight shutdown. This was based on the following reasons. Other flights fed by the Hilger substation were not affected. Similar shutdowns occurred in A Flight LFs which were supplied by power not only from separated substations, but also, from separate feed lines from the generation station. Shutdown in 1965 or 1966 of missiles do not correlate to any power line switching in the Montana Power System. 94 (U)

Since the only common item determined in this investigation was the LCC. The LCC power fault transmitted to the LFs on the hardened cable was considered the only power fault capable of causing the Echo Flight incident. (U)

The investigation teams at Malmstrom, were unable to determine a logical cause for the incident. Further investigation in the area of shutdown results will be conducted in an effort to determine a possible cause of this incident. These studies will be conducted at the contractors facility and will be included in the next history. 96

On 12 January 1967, at 0905 hours, a potential disaster

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Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 88 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.