- Page, Joseph T., II.
Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014.
ISBN 978-1-4671-3209-1.
-
Prior to World War II, the sleepy rural part of the
southern California coast between Santa Barbara
and San Luis Obispo was best known as the location
where, in September 1923, despite a lighthouse having
been in operation at Arguello Point since 1901, the
U.S. Navy suffered its worst peacetime disaster, when
seven destroyers, travelling at 20 knots,
ran
aground at Honda Point, resulting in the loss of
all seven ships and the deaths of 23 crewmembers. In the
1930s, following additional wrecks in the area, a
lifeboat station was established in conjunction
with the lighthouse.
During World War II, the Army acquired 92,000 acres
(372 km²) in the area for a training base which
was called Camp Cooke, after a cavalry general who
served in the Civil War, in wars with Indian tribes, and
in the Mexican-American War. The camp was used for
training Army troops in a variety of weapons and in
tank maneuvers. After the end of the war, the base was
closed and placed on inactive status, but was re-opened
after the outbreak of war in Korea to train tank crews.
It was once again mothballed in 1953, and remained
inactive until 1957, when 64,000 acres were transferred
to the U.S. Air Force to establish a missile base on
the West Coast, initially called Cooke Air Force Base,
intended to train missile crews and also serve as the
U.S.'s first operational intercontinental ballistic
missile (ICBM) site. On October 4th, 1958, the base was
renamed Vandenberg Air Force Base in honour of the late
General Hoyt
Vandenberg, former Air Force Chief of Staff and
Director of Central Intelligence.
On December 15, 1958, a Thor intermediate range ballistic
missile was launched from the new base, the first of hundreds of
launches which would follow and continue up to the present day.
Starting in September 1959, three Atlas ICBMs armed with nuclear
warheads were deployed on open launch pads at Vandenberg, the
first U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles to go on alert.
The Atlas missiles remained part of the U.S. nuclear force until
their retirement in May 1964.
With the advent of Earth satellites, Vandenberg became a key
part of the U.S. military and civil space infrastructure.
Launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida are restricted to a
corridor directed eastward over the Atlantic ocean. While this
is fine for satellites bound for equatorial orbits, such as the
geostationary orbits used by many communication satellites, a
launch into polar orbit, preferred by military reconnaissance
satellites and Earth resources satellites because it allows them
to overfly and image locations anywhere on Earth, would result
in the rockets used to launch them dropping spent stages on
land, which would vex taxpayers to the north and hotheated Latin
neighbours to the south.
Vandenberg Air Force Base, however, situated on a point
extending from the California coast, had nothing to the
south but open ocean all the way to Antarctica. Launching
southward, satellites could be placed into polar or
Sun
synchronous orbits without disturbing anybody but the
fishes. Vandenberg thus became the prime launch site
for U.S. reconnaissance satellites which, in the early
days when satellites were short-lived and returned film
to the Earth, required a large number of launches. The
Corona
spy satellites alone accounted for
144 launches from Vandenberg between 1959 and 1972.
With plans in the 1970s to replace all U.S. expendable launchers
with the Space Shuttle, facilities were built at Vandenberg
(Space
Launch Complex 6) to process and launch the Shuttle, using a
very different architecture than was employed in Florida. The
Shuttle stack would be assembled on the launch pad, protected by
a movable building that would retract prior to launch. The
launch control centre was located just 365 metres from the
launch pad (as opposed to 4.8 km away at the Kennedy Space
Center in Florida), so the plan in case of a catastrophic launch
accident on the pad essentially seemed to be “hope that
never happens”. In any case, after spending more than
US$4 billion on the facilities, after the Challenger
disaster in 1986, plans for Shuttle launches from Vandenberg
were abandoned, and the facility was mothballed until being
adapted, years later, to launch other rockets.
This book, part of the “Images of America” series,
is a collection of photographs (all black and white) covering
all aspects of the history of the site from before World War II
to the present day. Introductory text for each chapter and
detailed captions describe the items shown and their
significance to the base's history. The production quality is
excellent, and I noted only one factual error in the text (the
names of crew of Gemini 5). For a book of just 128 pages, the
paperback is very expensive (US$22 at this writing). The
Kindle edition is still pricey (US$13
list price), but may be read for free by Kindle Unlimited
subscribers.
December 2019 