HISTORIAN'S CORNER - March 2006
BY:
Matt Grogan
Those of you who have
not yet
obtained your TITAN DVD set, go get it.
It’s terrific. It gives a great
perspective of the legacy of the Titan program from Titan I to the last
Titan
IV and is a must have for all Denver retirees, even for guys like me
who never
worked on the Program! When I was
viewing the DVDs, I was reminded of a Titan II story that Dabby
Dabkowski
mentioned to me while I was researching the X-24B, and thought it might
be
appropriate to tell at this time, as it demonstrates the dedication and
sacrifices made by many Denver
retirees that worked on Titan.
Dabby told me that in
his 47-year
career with Martin Marietta, the most stressful time he had experienced
was the
seven months he spent in 1963 on the Titan II Operation Wrap Up
Project here in Denver. This project was the result of leaks in the
oxidizer tank welds and mechanical joints that were discovered after
the first
missiles had been initially loaded with liquid propellants at their
operational
sites in Arkansas, Kansas,
and Arizona starting in
December
1962 (Ref 1). The oxidizer used on Titan
II was nitrogen tetroxide, a room temperature storable propellant, with
a nasty
habit of finding extremely minute, undetected flaws in containment
tanks and fluid
delivery or service lines which results in small leaks of vapor or
liquid. These leaks would then combine
with moisture
in the air surrounding the Titan vehicle. This combination resulted in
highly
corrosive nitric acid, which further
compounded the problem
by back-etching the leak paths resulting in larger leaks, thereby
rendering the
vehicle operationally unsuitable. As a result, “Seventeen missiles of
the 60
deployed or waiting deployment were recalled to Martin Marietta’s
Denver plant
for inspection and rewelding” (Ref. 2).
The urgency of this intense effort, which Vern Selby remembers
starting
in the late spring/early summer of 1963, was due to the strategic
importance of
the new fast response Titan II ICBM during the Cold War days of the
early 60’s. Indeed, the Cuban missile
crisis had just
happened in October of 1962, so the US
needed the Titan II. All 18 missile
launch complexes were back on alert as of 30 November 1963 (Ref. 3), after the
completion of Wrap
Up.
Operation Wrap Up operated 24 hours/day,
7-days/week at Denver,
with most people working 12-hour shifts for about seven months. Joe Marcus remembers the missiles being
brought to the I-Building for processing and trailers being set up on
the north
side of the factory where meetings were held to manage the effort. Dabby remembers the discussions were
frequently “heated”! The Denver
work involved reexamining each oxidizer tank weld, “and the problem
areas were
rewelded and then tested by pressurizing the tanks with helium and
using a helium
detector to evaluate each rewelded area” (Ref.2). Dabby
also remembers using hair dryers to dry
out the welds and at one point they didn’t have enough dryers so they
sent a
procurement specialist to May D&F in the middle of the night to
acquire a
couple of cartons of hair dryers! Dabby
and others clearly remember the lack of any social life or time with
family
during these seven months.
As part of Operation Wrap Up, Buck Reynolds
remembers going
to Little Rock Air Force Base with a team of 9 Missile
Mechanics, Tooling Mechanics & Supervisory
Personnel for 17 days and working 12 hour shifts to perform the
repairs
that could be done on site. He tells
about making a plaster-of-paris cast of a tank area that needed a patch
to
supplement a field weld repair. This
plaster cast was then taken 90 miles to a Little
Rock
machine shop where the shop duplicated the shape of the plaster
contours using
a plate of full strength aluminum. Buck
waited for the shop to do this work and then drove back to the site to
install
the new aluminum patch using Huck-bolt fasteners. He also remembers
that the
Air Force would only let them work on two missiles at a time in order
to keep
as many missiles on alert as possible.
Buck said that other teams went to the other Titan II locations
to
perform on-site modifications.
In addition to the welds inspection and repair,
Joe Marcus
recalled that problems with seals, bolted joints, manhole covers, and
pressure
caps were also discovered and repaired during Operation Wrap Up. Toward the completion of the project, a
Mechanical Joint Improvement Team was formed under Joe’s leadership to
re-engineer the mechanical joints. The
Team’s goal was to find a more permanent solution to the Titan II
leakage
issues and the effort was funded under a Development Study Request
approved by
the Air Force. The results of this study
were utilized on Titan II as the missiles were refurbished over the
life of the
program and adapted for the subsequent Titan versions up to the last
Titan IV
that flew this past October.
I would like to thank
Dabby Dabkowski, Joe Marcus, Buck
Reynolds, and Vern Selby for sharing their memories and their time. Other names mentioned as involved in
Titan II Operation Wrap Up were Al Kullas (who had just taken over as
Chief
Engineer for Denver), Walt Lowrie, George Rodney, Nevin Palley, Ron
Drobnik,
Bill Day, Pete Krause, Hans Rheinheimer, Dan Tuschar, Joe Borgerding,
John
Adamoli, Gene Sobke, Keith Wanklyn, Gene Horack, and Art Welch. I am sure there are many missing names so my
apologies to those I left off. Anyone
who can add to the list please let me know and I will mention the new
names in
the next issue. Anyone who wants to add
their memories to the story, please send them to me and I will see that
they
are published.
References:
- Stumpf, David, “Titan II”, (University
of Arkansas Press, 2000),
pg 134
- Ibid. pg 51
- Ibid. pg 135