S1E14 - Arizona Titan II Tour (1of3) - Owning a Titan II Missile Silo
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
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So yeah..... we bought an LGM-25C Titan 2 missile silo. The site was on alert from 23 November 1963 - 20 June 1985. After decommissioning the Air Force and Army Corps of Engineers exploded the top of the Access Portal and Launch Silo in 1987. The Access Portal and Launch Control Center were opened again around 2012 but were reflooded and abandoned after a pump failure. Beginning in May 2019 we have begun the task of renovating the complex and bringing new life into it. Wont you join us in the Atomic Underground?
That will be one awesome fortress of a home. I can’t think of anything cooler than that.
Thank you!
@@ArizonaTitan I like that you got the hydraulic pins functional again. You should do a video of the repair of the broken one, Id like to get a better Idea of how those function. I noticed the big turnbuckle hoop on the blast door, are you going to replace the turnbuckle for when thew zombies come?
@@SteveStoltz Yes, I was going to replace the turnbuckle just for looks, the museum has one hanging and I like it. Yes, I plan to do a video of the door lock details.
Owning 2!
I visited this site when it was being decommissioned many times. Working at the time for Ma Bell I worked this area between Catalina and Marana and was somewhat involved in the decommissioning. We had a lot of communication huts that supplied data and phone lines to all of these sites. The job required tearing down connections in these huts as the sites went off line. I was also just living down the street off Tangerine in the Tortolita Mountains. On one of my visits I had the opportunity to explore the tunnel they had removed and left sitting on the ground. Inside I did find one souvenir in a box. It was the blue prints for the silo phone wiring by Stromberg Carlson. Maybe i will stop by and add this to your collection.
I would love to meet you Ed! I have uncovered bundles of phone wire in the desert and it would be cool to understand where it came from!
I was thinking, while watching this, that those were probably some pretty simple phone lines between the capsule and topside, and could probably be rewired as easily as those old field telephone sets.
Not gonna lie, seeing this without all the water damage and muck is amazing. Love this stuff cause it appeals to my inner 6 year old, who used to conspire with my little brother and our friends on the awesome underground clubhouse/base we were gonna build someday ( no idea what we would use it for, just that an underground base would be the coolest thing ever ). Love that this is shared.
love the idea of the scissor lift for access as you can find them relatively cheap used as they age out of insurance coverage from rental places.
How the hell did they drop it in there??? Lol
@@tortoiseoverland They have lift points as they often need to be picked up by crane to put onto a floor of a building under construction.
Hey. I hope you read this. I'm an old Titan 2 guy who spent 17 years at DM. Getting HS-3 (your blast door locking pins was operated by a hydraulic pump called HS-3) is cool. But please remember this. Never ever put anything on the door sealing surfaces and then lock the pins. The pins will wedge and those connecting pins you're having to repair will break. A guy duct taped a penny then closed and locked blast door 6. The crews worked a day to jack open the door pin. The guys trapped inside were pissed.
Keep those surfaces clean and do not paint them. You will regret it.
What about adding a good lubricant, to ensure smooth operation/movement of the locking pins?
They won’t be hydraulic on ours. Planning an electric actuator.
@@atomicunderground9971 Well, just make sure you have a well. Maintained manual back-up method to open the blast door. Otherwise, that's freaking awesome and I'm totally envious!
@@hrdknox2000 Escape shaft!
You might want to checkout the video on ssgtmyway channel. I was at DM from 80-84. 390MIMS MK 6 Reentry Vehicle shop. Had alot of good times at DM and ended up making a video about it.
Just sub'd! I'm envious! I built my own little bomb shelter, but MAN! To have one of THESE, restored and fully stocked with survival supplies, I would be in heaven underground!
Ok, this is absolutely the best thing I've seen all day...thanks so much for sharing! Can't wait to see the Command Center!
Tomorrow!
Part three to this series is online now... th-cam.com/video/d8M1WGx3IEg/w-d-xo.html
You sir have it all figured out. Nice man.
At 15:45. Those are called blast dampers and are designed to close if there is an overpressure event from the silo (similar to the blast valves from outside). They are NOT one way air valves, since air can go backwards through them if the Air conditioning in the control center failed. We would actually have to manually close them if the control center AC went down to prevent negative airflow. In fact it was part of our daily checks to measure the air flow to make sure that there was higher air pressure in the control center than in the blast lock and between the blast lock and the silo.
I just love information like this...so cool you were there!
Thank you! I was under the understanding they would close automatically if air flow failed (in addition to blast), thus the 1-way story I was told. I have the pistons and connectors intact, but have not got around to seeing if they work. Maybe a future video? ;)
Anytime, friend. I hope you really enjoy your new place. I was at McConnell in Kansas, but have some really great memories in those complexes.
@@sparc77 Thank you for your service. Drop in if you are ever in the Tucson area.
Thank you for the great tour, looks like one hell of a project! I thought all of the escape hatches were filled in with cement? Was this one not? Or did you have to break thru it. Or am I wrong thinking the escape hatch and ventilation were the same thing? Thanks!
Glad you could make it out to Tucson! Next time you're out, let me know and we'll have ya over to 571-3 :)
Doug's got a sweet setup over there! He had us over a month or so back
Will do
Atomic Rancher if you ever need help, I work for free.
I will be going to the Pima Air & Space Museum this coming weekend...
Thank you for sharing Doug.
Holy Shit Balls, HD video and no black bars encoded, THANK YOU.
About the light fixtures....Something I mentioned to Death Wears Bunny Slippers was that when we would pull alert, after hours we would turn off the fluorescent lights and turn on the incandescent lights. It allowed us to simulate day vs night. It seemed to help psychologically to keep our biological clocks in sync with the day.
Like at night in the navy we use red lights and they help with that as well
Very cool! Thank you for sharing!
@@grahamburgdorf8397 The red lights on Navy ships were in the hatchways leading to the outside and used at night for "Darken Ship", so the enemy could not see the ship from a distance. Any white light could be seen for miles. USS Preble DDG-46 84-87
@@moparmike2535 well that's true. I found it helped me when I've been working crazy hours lol.
You were there? Incredible.
Doug you Rock! Nice Work Brother! Thank you for sharing your beautiful piece of American History!
More than likely I'll never see one of these things in person, so I love these walk throughs - incredibly cool stuff. I just wish there was some sort of small interactive picture of the silo as you move through it. But Still Love This!
I like the walk thru also and the work there doing but its not it was when I worked on them and brings back a lot of memories. FYI I worked on the ones in Kansas
No worries when S.H.T.F. Nothing short of a bunker buster getting in there. That is badass👍🏼👍🏼
Being from Arizona, I can't personally thank you enough for this amazing video. You are seriously the luckiest person for being invited to film this video. Thanks to the owner as well. I still can't figure out why the Arizona tunnels were removed.
I know, right? The Air Force decommissioning plans called for them to be filled with grout, no mention of removal.
What were the arizona tunnels or what were they used for???
I absolutely love these videos!
Keep them coming!
Wooo.... 👍👍👍
That's pretty cool. Thanks for sharing..
Replacing the long cable way is the perfect job for a hydraulically propelled digging shield A arch shaped shield larger then the finished tunnel to hold back the soil above as the tunnel is dug out a few feet at a time and a new tunnel is cast in place before the shield gets pushed ahead letting the tunnel come in contact with the soil above. He could make the tunnel flat bottomed and any size he wanted so not limited to the original metal tunnel size.
As for how to get the concrete all the way around the new tunnel the answer is shotcrete as you can get smaller machines easily so just need to place the rebar/mesh in place then spray the walls and trowel finish.
I've seen your site from the air many times.i fly out of Marana and do most of my training in the desert there.never knew what it was though.so cool,history every where,good luck in your build.
"Half a million acres that no one can build on, thats where im gonna build my house"
Very very awesome! I haven't seen any site with the emergency shaft cleared out. Can't wait to see more! Best wishes and work safe!
Look at Death Wears Bunny Slippers Instagram
I will post a short video of climbing out of the escape shaft. Really cool at night!
@@atomicunderground9971 I didn't think his was cleared out, but I don't follow them on Instagram, only on TH-cam. I'll have to change that. Thanks for the heads up!
@@ArizonaTitan that sounds amazing! Keep up the great work!
The hydraulic door... and the lift in the beginning awesome...
while he was showing off the portal access roof, an idea came to me. Once his new house is built, put a "solar tube" through the roof to the access portal roof. It will be like a ray of sunshine all the way down there. They use them in some fancy houses. I'm sure it would be cool to have there to.
Agreed. I don't know why we don't see more of these, nor even a discussion, like they aren't aware they exist? It would be a must have for me. He had best position his house away from the silo "tunnel" for future excavation, or build his house over a post-tensioned slab so the 'house' cannot be undermined. I'm afraid once the house is positioned he'll have to put off digging out that tunnel, or plan on it becoming a tomb.
@@Gumdaar1 Tunnel installation has been accounted for... ;)
damn that's cool. I can't wait to see the restoration
Very cool. Thanks for sharing the part of my job I never got to see.
Congrats to this guy! Gorgeous view and 10 minutes from town. Fantastic camouflaging too! 👌🏻👏🏻
Was this sarcastic?
i was worried this wasn't going to get re uploaded! i got half way though it and stopped playing. hahaha
Sorry about that. I didn't want to hear about the 30 minutes of darkness until the end of time.
@@atomicunderground9971 if it would make you feel better I can still complain about it if you desire me to. :p
I would absolutely die to go see this place, I don’t know why this has been a passion of mine since I was a teenager and saw my first missile silo in Chico California. Would do anything to go see this
the ultimate smoking spot.
It would be so awesome to own that. This one looks to be in pretty good shape compared to some of them I've seen.
There was one of those sites for sale fairly near me here in Az a while back... I'd LOVE to be able to afford to do that, but at my age and fixed income, it would turn out to be nothing more than a VERY expensive tomb! ;) Love to see these videos... Oh if I'd only known about these 30 years ago!
Its definitely wierd seeing one of those empty and abandoned.
Super cool thanks for sharing
The scissor lift is genius
What you see here is a Fiebinger developed underground ICBM silo, the first very similar one was built in Nazi Germany during late 1944 by MAKO near Arnstadt where the Germans started a large Skoda V101 (V4) 3 stage solid fuel rocket sucessfully from such a silo called Polte 2. (16.03.1945) Unarmed test flight went from Arnstadt to North Polar region radio guided.
Cool tour
Dang I'm pretty sure you live real close to my Boss Jay out off of ₩!$!£% Base Rd so lucky to own that bunker, so badass. Congrats brotha
Excellent! Truly love watching your videos
I really enjoy the videos surrounding the resurrection of these sites. Maybe one day if I can get together enough $$$ I'd like to purchase and do the same to my old home site just outside of Augusta, Kansas.
Great video, thanks for all the great content!
Awesome place
That's a cool idea of building a regular house over a silo.
In 1966 i was in the airforce assigned to the 390sms at davis-monthan afb. I worked with a SGT Brewer, we were both electricians and good friends. I'd like very much to know where he lives now.
Bad ass bro.. Might install another hydraulic ram on the steel door.. Should increase open and close times, redundancy, and why not!!
Looks just like Bullhead City. Rocks and Desert.
This is awesome. You are lucky to get one in AZ. I'd love to get one in CA, AZ, WY or NV
CA would require so many permits you would go broke before you finished even thinking about starting any work: Another reason. Why I’m leaving CA
I would have put a Quonset hut over the entrances instead of a standard house, keep the military look. Then I would build a fire watch tower as high as possible with a small house on top to take advantage of the views. Good luck with your project.
Everybody needs one of those in his basement. I want one......
This is freaking awesome!! Totally jealous haha
So very cool
I was in an Atlas site in TX in 1969, four years after decommissioning. All the electronics, hydraulics, etc. had been removed, but the crib was intact and the electricity was on so going down from the surface to the crew quarters and silo was easy. I'm puzzled why with Titan they blasted and filled whereas with Atlas they didn't bother to do anything other than lock things up and flood the entry to the blast doors. All you need do is excavate the fill, not that it will be quick and easy! Thanks for this video.
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty requirements. Although never ratified we did it anyway.
If I was a betting man I bet this pipe dream will never come to fruition. It's a nice project if you have unlimited money and you can live 200 years old to get it all done but there's a thousand things working against him but good luck.
Wondering what site this was? As a former crew member (MFT) in the early 70’s, I pulled lots of alerts at these incredible silos! The museum site1-7 was my home site. Thank you so much for sharing!!
3-6
Whoops sorry didn’t see which video. I think I said his in the description
Dan, I think you mean 1-6
I pulled many alerts at 1-6!
Fantastic
Ahh, can I be your friend? I would help renovate that place. It is absolutely amazing. I'd seen it listed quite awhile ago. It's definitely a lot of work.
We need to crowdfund Doug and have the level 2 (long cableway tunnel) entrance to the silo itself uncovered, so we can get a look inside this thing. We know it's dry...or should be given the condition of the other elements of the site...so let's find out just how 'bad' it is inside! If the generator and other large equipment deemed to cost-prohibitive to remove is still in there...wouldn't THAT be cool!
Having the tunnel removed between the access portal and the silo simply makes this site perfect for this venture! Providing of course Doug is even open to this, lol.
Crowd fund me and I will do it. About 30k
@@atomicunderground9971 You mean for Doug or at your site? Because I thought your silo is flooded...?
We own the heavy equipment necessary. Cost at my site is the actual tube and installing it properly.
We RFHCO folks didn't hang our suits out by the shower. We stayed in the blast lock area between the 3 doors. Used the shower be for we fell back.
How cool
very cool!
Great for shooting
I am still watching the video and it is awesome. Just wondered at 3:23 where the door flexes because it is being hydraulically lifted on only one side, why you didn't install a hydraulic cylinder on the other side as well and just use a splitter to send hydraulic fluid equally to both cylinders. Would be much more solid. Anyway, loving the video and your missile silo! :)
There was a guy helping me build it, and we only had one (big) cylinder. We tried to compensate for the flex with a tension cable on the top. That was 3 years ago and I was a rookie with hydraulics back then. But you are right, it's on my list of thing to redo properly. It does need 2 cylinders and a safety valve to prevent quick drop if there is a failure. Good eye!
Good job!
I see the steel cable on top of the door now. It helped. I love this place you guys have. Any chance of me visiting and taking a tour from you?
@@KingCobra1968 Sure!
I wanna see the silo! No site has yet to get to the silo I have seen !
You aren’t looking hard enough. Two videos inside the silo are on TH-cam
A question for anyone who crewed a Titan site. I lived in Tucson when the sites were active and I recall that there was a green light that could be seen at night when passing by a site. I always assumed this was meant to indicate the status of the site, green meaning in effect that the place was on normal standby and the green would be changed to another color if that changed. Is this correct?
Dam how long will this take to get up and running looks like alot of work and money is needed
More work that money
You need a manual brace for that door!!! 😱
Irony. Owner buys old military base and yet calls those that w@not to check it out (the crazies) 😂🤦♂️
I haven't automated this door yet. More like I stuck a sky jack in a hole and this is what we use.
If you have commercial power to open the door.....what happens if power supplier is knocked out before you get to the door?....do you have an analogue supply as back-up?....anything electrical or digital will be knocked out.....One other small note is that having a door open outwards will inevitably be covered or blocked by something entombing anyone inside and making quick entrance and exit futile.
I thought he said 12Volt power right before Commercial electric so maybe it's being converted and he has battery backup
The latches could be manually opened with a human powered pump. It's not especially fast, and if it were attempted during operation (and you hadn't beed detected long before reaching the door), you would be greeted with a barrage of gunfire when you opened the door. I have taken the museum tour several times, and reaching the blast doors undetected would be incredibly difficult james bond level stuff.
Why did they remove the tunnels? How did they remove them? Did they dig them up?
Why do you have to remove the steel pillars @12:00? They look cool.
Why does the steel have to be cut out
nice and dry
Any chance you would do a Cub Scout tour? We are out of Phoenix.
Yes.
Gold melted into steel the darker the metal the harder to blast arrows heavy but no scale will adjust 9 years in the making imagine that
I wouldn't remove the steel beams outside the decontamination room just to be safe. I'm sure they're in there for one reason or another.
Also if you don't know the name of the suits just call them Hazmat as that's a good umbrella term.
The beams are not structural, they were there to support the pipes extending between the launch control center and the missile silo. And I like the suggestion to call them hazmat suits - that's a term everyone understands these days.
If you guys want a full time property maintain everything guy. I’ll move from Canada tomorrow 😂👌
@@ArizonaTitan room and board and safe lodging for me and my kid when the fall out happens and u got a deal !! lol
@@team416hammertownindustrys8 If the "fallout" happens, there are no toilets down there yet, so you would have to go up top and talk with the zombies whenever you need to use the restroom...
I live in Green Valley about 2 miles from the museum silo, so which one did he buy
Do metal buildings, remodels, concreat id love to come work person like you
Now when the grid goes down and fries the motor, how will you get in?
The escape shaft
Please tell me you have radon detectors.
Update please!
Where do these missile sites that are located in the desert get their water?
Wells
@@atomicunderground9971 Does your site have wells? How many? Did you have to drill wells, or were they there already? How is your supply? What is the well replenishment rate (GPM)? How far down do you have to go to reach water? Have you had yours tested?
The Atlas F Sites in Upstate New York (where I am), each had three (3) wells with a required replenishment rate of 30 GPM. At a couple of sites the wells came up either short or completely dry. These sites then went to the nearest source of water (creek, stream, river), built mini-processing centers, and laid pipe back to the site. They then pumped water to three or four 90,000 gallon tanks. Each site had these water tanks.
@@jefflovejoy2997 the onsite wells were decommissioned & abandoned in a state that may or may not be repairable. The site where I found the well, it was in real bad shape.
@@tl1024 Thanks for the reply. The demos on these sites was so bad I figured as much. Water in the desert is treasure. I had also read where these desert sites had (stainless?) steel underground tanks adjacent to, and accessible from, the silos. The water was brought by tankers to these sites. Thanks again. Good luck.
Where is the command room and the place where the nuke goes
What does acquiring one of these cost, ballpark?
Man I'd love to see a vid of the Silo interior, where they all filled in? Or were the AZ ones exempt due to the removal of the tunnel/cableway that connected the silo to the command center?
They were all filled in and capped.
The one that just sold was open I think. Might be remembering wrong though. Have seen the listing in months
@@grahamburgdorf8397 No access to the silo at that site. However - Where I have a dirt-filled circular hole, that site also has a large sheet of ragged steel hanging down. The new owner is hoping his tunnel was not removed but rather cut and caved in. He needs to dig it out.
Just like exploring an abandoned vault in the games Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas
Pin rusted in the locking mechanism? Aren't these sites build to work forever?
No , only if they are maintained they will work but the sites that are decommissioned were under water and heavily damage by dynamite during the decommissioning stage.
@@josephbennett3482 Ouch.
I want a bunker so bad it's not even ok
unplug the beeper on your scissor lift. those things are so damn annoying and even more so when it echoes.
I TRIED!!!! it's on the circuit board in the controller and there is no wire to it... soldered in and I am afraid to screw up my controller! Must be a reason it's so integrated... maybe workers were unplugging it?
@@ArizonaTitan sounds like you have one of the models that integrates the beeper into the circuit board, most of them are screw terminals or spade connectors. if you follow the circuit board traces you will find the power or ground for the beeper and you can just cut one of those wires. another option is using one side of a pair of cheap ear muffs and taping it over the beeper, this will muffle 80-90% of the noise.
@@crazypete3759 I'll try muffling it, thanks!
@@crazypete3759 ... a small amount of silicone sealer will silence the beeper. Just cover the holes, smear it over, and let dry for an hour.
@@rupe53 I have found you can also use a drill bit and drill out the middle of the beeper and for some reason it stops working. lol. science! I hate that everything have to be retard proofed because people are getting dumber and society wants to coddle them! let them get hurt or killed... they will learn a lesson or have their stupidity removed from the gene pool!
There is one site in Oklahoma I know that wasn't destroyed like this one. Any idea why some sites were dynomited and some weren't?
Oklahoma didn't have Titan II sites. The only sites that were really ever destroyed were the Minuteman and Titan II sites. The others were scrapped then abandoned.
@@atomicunderground9971 Yeah the one I am thinking of is Atlas site. Why did they destroy those type and not the others?
Location of silo site please
How much does a missile silo cost to buy
You need a welder and torch artist?
were yall air force?
Ultimate man cave!
Do you own the nursery?
Yes he does
My dream has always been to have a secret room that was designed like a New York penthouse that James Bond would use.
I'm in Arizona and would love a silo to buy.
Two for sale right now. Only 500K...
@@ArizonaTitan how far north of Tucson?
@@king0cans www.google.com/maps/@32.5973718,-110.8893475,249m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en (570-1) and
www.google.com/maps/@31.982214,-110.185367,532m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en (571-1)
If your a prepper you will get it