The Space Shuttle Enterprise at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in 1985 during testing. After the Challenger tragedy in 1986, Space Shuttle launches from California were permanently canceled. The main purpose of launching from Vandenberg was to give the Space Shuttle access to polar orbits.

That’s fascinating. It’s remarkable that the Shuttle continued to fly for 20 years after it was deemed to unsafe to launch out of California.

Too bad it never saw a single launch from Vandenberg

For all my years and all of my shuttle interests, I’ve never seen this photo. Wow, thank you!

I was in the Air Force and stationed at Vandenberg from June 1974 till the end of 1975. I worked up on the hill over looking the base in the tracking group. I saw those shuttle launch pads and they were huge! We could actually drive up fairly close to where the area was fenced off.

I was lucky to be at Vandenberg through the 1975 launches of the Titan III C launches. It’s been awhile but I can’t remember if it was 2 or 3 launches during that year. Those things were huge and when they launched, it was just like a large earthquake that went on and on. My wife was in the 1964 Alaska earthquake and would freak out at any ground shaking, and here we were, not only in California but at an air base that launched rockets that produced the same feeling. I got her to tell herself “It’s only a rocket launch” over and over to calm herself when I wasn’t home. It worked pretty well, although it wasn’t always a rocket launch.

It was interesting to see the results of some of the failures of various launches that happened over the years before I was stationed there. I guess the 60’s were pretty exciting according to some of the contractors I talked to. And there was evidence around of where a number of rockets didn’t make it out of their underground silos before they blew up. And some of the stories they told of rockets that had to be destroyed after launch because they were heading towards LA or SF was really interesting. I guess there were a lot of aborts during the 60’s with the Atlas program.

Being a kid growing up during the moon landings and early manned missions, it was great being stationed there, even if there were no manned missions launched. I got to be on a number of launch countdowns (I always volunteered) cause our shop had equipment that we had to verify was either turned off or in certain modes during the launch. It was exciting when my launch number came up (usually in the 300’s) and I actually had a speaking part in a launch. Maybe no big deal to a lot of people but it was to me. And I could always say, “I’m no rocket scientist, but I’ve been part of launching them” when ever I got a chance.

I found out on one launch why most of the people in my group did not want to be on countdown duty. They never called my number during the countdown sequence and when they did the verification that all the boxes was checked, the one for our shop was not checked and it caused a hold of the launch. Causing a hold is a very big deal as you can imagine and my bosses boss (I was just an E4) got called to the control room to determine why I missed the check in when my number came up. I was very nervous as I was sure I never heard my number. They recorded everything so they pulled the tapes and listened and thank goodness the tape showed that the guy calling the numbers never called mine, so I never said anything and I and my shop was off the hook. That’s also why they did multiple verification during the whole launch sequences as well. I still volunteered to be the guy on launch duty, but you can believed I paid a lot closer attention after that, because I didn’t want to ever miss answering.

Probably my most memorable experience there, other than all the bigger launches, was the Minuteman launches they did for training and competition. I was heading up the hill to work one morning and Vandenberg itsself was socked in with ground fog. Our hill was high enough that it was usually above the low fog and our tracking site was well above it that morning. I looked out over the valley of fog and heard the roar and then saw a large glow in the fog and then two Minutemen missiles came up through the fog, already twisting and turning heading West out to the Pacific missile range. I really wish I’d had my camera with me to get a shot of it, but photography was prohibited at the tracking site, so I didn’t carry it with me.

Vandenberg was one of my most enjoyable places I was stationed while in the Air Force. Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs was the other most memorable, but that’s a different story. Interesting times back then during the cold war.