But Air Force engineers were worried that vibrations from the rocket engines might shake the missiles apart before launch. The later Titan and Atlas F series missiles were stored upright in underground silos capped with massive "clamshell" doors. Before the missiles could be fired, servicemen had to raise each missile vertically on a launch pad and add fuel. Here, the Air Force stored the missiles horizontally in "coffins" - concrete-walled, above-ground enclosures. During the height of the "missile gap" hysteria, the Air Force hastily activated the Nation's first Atlas missiles at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Turning these ideas into reality, however, proved difficult.
The missile would be sited inside fixed, underground facilities it was to have a quick launch reaction it was to be stored in a launching position the launch site would require minimal support: and the launch units were to be self-supporting for two weeks. According to historian Jacob Neufeld, the Air Force conceptually developed its "ideal" ICBM base in 1955, during the early days of the Atlas program: Cutaway Illustration of a Titan One Missile Complexīy the time the flight test took place, the Air Force was already planning for Minuteman missile deployment.
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