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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.
“Seattle”11 pages
two different types have been introduced into the Squadron. The only major difference between the vehicles is the weight. This causes a problem in the operational data on the targeting tapes fed into the G&Cs. The present tapes have operational data for a lighter weighing G&C vehicle, therefore, they can not compensate for the additional weight of the heavier G&C vehicle in navigation. This means that the tapes now in use would not be able to correctly guide the missile equipped with a heavy G&C vehicle. Theoretically, a missile equipped with a heavier G&C and with the wrong type of computer tape would fall short of its' target and therefore, be useless. SAC has started a schedule to replace the tapes of the heavy G&Cs with a corrected tape (MOTP-607) which would compensate for the weight difference. The SAC schedule for replacement is as follows: Papa flight, 18 Jul 67, Quebec flight, 21 July 67; Romeo flight, 25 July 67, and Tango flight, 31 July 67. 41,42 (U) As stated in the last history, studies of the Echo flight incident were to be conducted at the contractors plant. (U) A task group meeting convened at ODAFA, Hill AFB, Utah on 28 March 67, to review the results of the investigation to date.
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