![]() In 2001 the Air Force Institute for Operational Health investigated the base after 14 cancers of various types were reported among missileers who had served there, including two cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.īut the review found the base was environmentally safe and that “sometimes illnesses tend to occur by chance alone.” The report lamented that the list of those diagnosed had been collected because it “perpetuates the level of concern.” It’s not the first time the military has been alerted to multiple cancer cases at Malmstrom. Two of the others are in the same Space Force unit with the rank of lieutenant colonel, which is typically reached in a service member’s early 40s. ![]() Officers are often in their 20s when they are assigned duty watch the officer who died, who was not identified, was a Space Force officer assigned to Schreiver Space Force Base in Colorado with the rank of major, a rank typically achieved in a service member’s 30s. The former missileers affected are far younger. The median age for adult non-Hodgkin lymphoma is 67, according to the National Institutes of Health. that operate a total of 400 siloed Minutemen III ICBMs, including fields at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and F.E. Gardner resident Joe McNulty remembers hearing from a farmer whose land adjoined the launch site that he’d been told “if we have to use them, you’re already in bad shape.For comparison, only about 3,300 troops are based at Malmstrom at a time, and only about 400 of those are assigned either as missileers or as support for those operators. Stemm likened the concept to the old video game “Missile Command.” They were essentially anti-aircraft installations whose nuclear payload could take out incoming bombers or missiles, even without a direct hit. Unlike ballistic missiles, the Nikes were not launched from silos. A command center operated out of the Olathe Naval Air Station. It included four bases armed with Nike missiles - Pleasant Hill and Lawson to the east, with Fort Leavenworth and Gardner on the Kansas side. One such result was the creation of the Kansas City Defense Area in 1959. By the late 1950s, as tensions with the Soviets grew, cities across the country sought ways to fortify themselves. These were, according to Stemm, “armed with nuclear warheads.” Credit: Gardner Historical Museumīut an earlier generation of missiles - the Nike-Hercules, once crept even closer to the edge of the metro. Now, Nike Elementary School carries the name. ![]() ![]() In the early 2000s, Nike Middle School was remodeled. ![]() In 2015, The Star chronicled one such entrepreneur, Russ Nielsen, excavating a silo he’d purchased near Holden, Missouri. As that chapter in the Cold War ended, it brought opportunities for creative use of the underground spaces left behind. They held powerful Titan II and Minutemen missiles, the kind that scared everyone in the 1983 movie “The Day After.”Įventually, those installations were phased out and relocated to more remote spots across Wyoming and the Dakotas. James Stemm, director of collections at the Titan Missile Museum in Green Valley, Arizona, confirmed that if nuclear weapons were ever there, “the Army and Navy didn’t know about them.”īut he pointed out there were some stashed nearby.įor years, ICBM silos dotted the countryside around Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and Forbes Air Force Base near Topeka. No sign of nukes on Kansas City’s East Side. Military and government records, old newspapers. It was a time of global gamesmanship and military staredowns.Īnd it sets the scene for a question that Kenneth Goodwin submitted to “What’s Your KCQ?” He asked if it was true that ballistic missiles had been buried along Van Brunt Boulevard near Linwood Boulevard in the early 1960s. By Randy Mason | Cold War years were fraught with tension. ![]()
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