It looks low key and underwhelming when you arrive, but the promise of cool and interesting things is beyond the blue façade and underground.
This is the Titan Missile Museum in Green Valley, AZ near Tucson. Inside the building is a small museum, but the real reason to visit is underground behind the fence. This museum is dedicated to the Cold War Era Titan II Missile and its history.
When you arrive you can purchase your tour ticket. The tour requires masks and they provided plastic gloves when I visited in April 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The tour participants were spaced out to watch a short film about the history of the missile and the idea of “peace through deterrence”. In case you’re not familiar with that concept, “peace through deterrence” is when both sides agree to peace since both sides have nuclear weapons. If one fires then the other will enact “mutually assured destruction”, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to stick to peace.
The tour heads outside and you learn about some of the safety measures that were in place when it was once an actual missile site from where the Titan II Missile could be fired.
If you were an employee at the missile site back then, didn’t need a special code to get through the first gate (pictured below); just a phone call that you were there for your shift or “alert” as it was called. You then had three minutes to get from the gate to the entry hatch (second picture below) to make your second phone call. If you didn’t make your call within three minutes, security was deployed. That meant that if you were compromised at all, you just had to drag your feet for three minutes before backup arrived.
You have to watch for desert critters, but thankfully we didn’t see any.
This led to the location of the fourth security phone call for those coming to work. This one included pressing two buttons within two seconds of each other to get the main door to open, allowing the team to enter the “hard” part of the site. This part is safe from earthquakes, tornadoes and direct hits from one or more miles away, even nuclear strikes. The giant spring in the fifth picture below is part of that hard system allowing for movement to keep the area secure but flexible.
We then went through to the Launch Control Center. This was a “no lone zone” meaning no one could be there by themselves. This is where the missile would be launched from if mutually assured destruction was enacted by the President. The missile could be launched in 58 seconds. The tour is so interesting and you go through the process as if it were a real missile launch.
You take the hallway (pictured below) to see the deactivated missile in its silo.
Once you finish seeing the missile in the silo you head above ground to see other parts like engines and fuel tanks. You can then look at the missile from above since its silo doors are always open as a condition of the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) Treaty. The US can keep this missile on display as a museum, but it has to be kept to certain standards as per the stipulations of the treaty.
Once the tour was over I had a look around the small museum and gift shop. There’s a replica of the nose cone; this was the only part of the Titan II Missile that would reach a target as it held the nuclear bomb. The bomb the Titan II Missile was armed with was 900 megatons – 600x stronger than the bombs dropped in Japan in 1945.
The Titan II Missile Museum in Green Valley, AZ near Tucson was a really interesting place and definitely worth a visit. The tour was interactive and fun, with facts and experiences that most of us don’t know or have.
The cost for adults at the time of writing this post was $13.50 for the 45 minute tour, plus more time to look around the site and museum. I was in a bit of a hurry and did it all in 1 hour 15 minutes, so if you’re just passing through it’s still a great place to stop and stretch your legs while learning something cool.
Address
Titan Missile Museum, 1580 W Duval Mine Rd, Green Valley, AZ 85614
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