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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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
TESTS ARE BEING CONDUCTED AT KILL ENGINEERING TEST FACILITY (HETF) TO DETERMINE C-53D LOGIC COUPLER VULNERABILITY TO EMP TYPE NOISE. PHASE I TESTS AT HETF HAVE BEEN COMPLETED. PHASE I TESTING CONSISTED OF A CORRELATION OF NOISE INPUTS ON THE C-53D COUPLER INTERFACE TO SYSTEM NOISE RESPONSE. THE PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS OF PHASE I TESTING INDICATE THAT MINUTEMAN II - V SYSTEM IS VULNERABLE TO NOISE ON THE C-53D COUPLER INPUT INTERFACE LINES. FOUR INPUT LINES IN THE C-53D WERE FOUND TO BE SUSCEPTIBLE TO INPUT NOISE INJECTION WHICH RESULTED IN A NON-EVO SYSTEM CONDITION. DETAILED ANALYSIS HAS NOT BEEN FINALIZED TO DATE. COMPLETION EXPECTED WITHIN 30 DAYS. PHASE II TESTING AT THE HETF IS PRESENTLY BEING SCHEDULED TO BEGIN WITHIN 10 DAYS. THE PHASE II TESTING OBJECTIVE IS TO DETERMINE THE PRECENTAGE OF COUPLING FROM THE INPUT OF THE ESA PANEL TO THE INTERFACE OF THE LOGIC COUPLER. THE PROBABILITY OF RECURRANCE OF THIS TYPE CANNOT BE DEFINED UNTIL SUCH TIME AS COAMA PHASE I AND PHASE I AND PHASE II TEST PROGRAM ANALYSIS HAVE FINALIZE AND CORRELATE WITH THE SAMSO EMP TEST RESULTS IN A JOINT CONFERENCE. REFERENCE PARAGRAPH 2. CONFERENCES AT THE WHITEMAN CONFERENCE REVIEWED THE TEST DATA FOR FORCE MOD EMP FIX. THE DATA INDICATED THAT THE PROPOSED FIX WAS EFFECTIVE. A DECISION WAS MADE THAT ADDITIONAL TESTING WOULD BE REQUIRED BY BOEING (1 - 1 WEEKS) TO VERIFY THAT SPECIFIC FREQUENCIES WERE SAFE IN FORCE MOD SYSTEMS. THIS TEST SHOULD BE COMPLETED BY 11 AUG 67. OOAMA ENGINEERING INSPECTION AT MALMSTROM AFB OF THE INTERCONNECTING BOX AND ESA PANEL, MISSILE AWAY DRAWERS AT LCFS A701 AND E-01 ON 27-28 JULY 1967, ARE AS FOLLOWS: (1) INSPECTION INDICATED APPROXIMATELY 5 PERCENT OF THE ESA TERMINALS CHECKED HAD LOOSE CONNECTIONS (A QUALITY CONTROL PROBLEM) APPROXIMATELY 200 WERE CHECKED. NO SET PATTERN OF LOOSE CONNECTIONS NOTED ON SIN LINES OR COMMAND LINES. (2) INSPECTION OF INTERCONNECTING BOX FOR LOOSE CONNECTIONS, ARCING, BURNED AREAS.
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 88 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.