Sunday,
Dec 13, 1959 article by Selby Norheim from The Daily Interlake of Kalispell, Mt.
(News Editor)
Put your finger-tip on a hot stove and the nerves in your finger will carry a message to your brain. The brain will decide almost instantly that the stove is no place for the finger and it will send an order down the arm to the finger to move - post haste.
In the time lag though, between contact and order,
the finger is burned.
Military
men and scientists of the United States have devised a complex electronic
warning system called SAGE which they hope will enable the nation to react fast
enough to keep its fingers from getting burned.
Sometimes in 1960, as part of SAGE (Semi-Automatic
Ground environment), invisible fingers will reach out from the Kalispell area
for 300 miles or so 24 hours every day. They will be seeking hostile objects
such as bombers and missiles and when such are contacted, these ”fingers” will
carry messages via the “nerves” to the “brain”.
And because the speed of the fingers – land-based
radar – and the sensitivity of the nerves – electronic computers – the trained
brains – Air Force personnel at Great Falls - will be able to act with almost
no time lag.
Constructed at a cost of $3,000,000, the Kalispell
air Force station near Lakeside will soon be an integral part of SAGE, a
defense program which annually costs $5 billion to operate, an investment
deemed worthwhile and necessary in preventing a sneak attack on the US.
Heading
the radar installation just off Flathead Lake, the 716th Aircraft
Control and warning squadron, is Capt. Elwin Schlecht, a former B-29 pilot.
Capt. Schlecht joined the Air Force in 1943, served in the European Theatre and
most recently was stationed at Hamilton Field out of San Francisco where he
flew huge planes.
As head of the land-based radar installation, it
will be the duty of Capt. Schlecht and the officers and men under him to keep
the equipment continuously capable of automatically transmitting data on enemy
objects to the Great Falls direction center.
It is the duty of land-based radar to keep watch
over the land mass to the north. First to pick up enemy bombers coming over the
polar route would be the DEW (Distant early warning) line.
Next is the Mid Canada line of land-based radar and
then the Pine Tree line over the US-Canadian border.
As Capt. Schlecht explained, it would be impractical
to send up interceptor planes or missiles when an attack flight was reported by
the DEW line.
Thus the various lines have been established to
track the approaching enemy and compile information necessary to formulate
adequate defense measures.
With the vast amount of information made available
by the electronic computers, military men can determine how, where and when the
enemy forces can be blasted out of the sky.
The over-all air battle would be directed by
officials at the Operations Center of North American Air Defense Command at
Colorado Springs, but the direction center at Great Falls, one of 27 in the
nation, would direct a segment of the battle.
The Lakeside installation is already considered one of the plushest
installations of the Air Force and with its location near beautiful Flathead
Lake, it is expected to become a mecca for vacationing brass, or even official
visits with fishing rod packed among other gear.
Already manned by a nucleus crew,
the ultimate strength of the station will be 115 military men and 15 civilians.
The station is not expected to become operational until next summer.
Original plans for the station
called for manually operated radar for a period before converting to the
automatic status now planned.
As a result, the two dormitories for
airmen and one for bachelor officers will not be filled and each man will have
a private room. Housing adjacent to the cantonment area has been constructed
for 27 families and at present, half of the houses are being utilized.
The public will be permitted to view
the station sometime next spring at an open house now being planned by Capt.
Schlecht.
In addition to the dormitories, the
visitors will see a dining hall with stainless steel kitchen and numerous
automatic appliances, a recreation building which will offer limited PX
supplies and a combination gym and movie house plus pool tables, library and
lounge room.
The administration building will
house adequate offices for Capt. Schlecht, his adjutant, and office personnel,
a sick room manned by two medics, and complete dental facilities which will be
offered for 30 days every quarter.
The station also boasts two wells,
its own sewage disposal plant and a motor pool garage where minor maintenance
for station vehicles and equipment. Major maintenance will be handled off base.
A 100-foot water tower keeps 50,000
gallons of water on hand and booster equipment permits pressure to be increased
to 70 pounds for fire purposes. Another safety precaution is the separate
building for paint storage.
A scenic road climbs gradually at never more than an eight per cent
grade from the 3,000 foot cantonment to the top of the mountain.
From the top, the view is
unobstructed to Lake Mary Ronan, Flathead County, most of the Flathead Valley
and Kalispell as well as to rows and rows of distant ranges.
Three radar towers are spaced at the
top, two of which will be covered with fiberglass and one which will be covered
by a pressurized rubber dome.
One of the towers will be used
solely for search purposes, and two will house height finder radar but all will
work as a unit, supplying both azimuth and height for the data compiling
computers.
The radio transmitter building will
house equipment for ground-to-air talking and for relaying messages from planes
to other points out of the area. Four huge ventilating fans are used to aid in
maintaining a critical temperature range which permits a variance of just five
degrees.
The operations building will house
the computers which will gather radar information and prepare it for sending to
the direction center. The huge computer room must maintain a two-degree spread
on temperature in order to prevent damage to the high precision instruments or
inaccuracy in its readings.
To maintain this critical
temperature, two 40-ton air conditioners must work constantly. Power for the radar
installation is furnished by a private firm but standby power is always
available.
Men on duty 24 hours every day will be prepared to switch to emergency power which will be furnished by four electric diesel driven generators.
Despite the mountaintop frigidity,
which can bring temperatures down to 40 or 50 degrees below zero, the problem
is to keep the computer room from getting overheated by the myriad of tubes and
motors within the equipment.
A supply building containing rows
and rows of bins with spare parts for every piece of equipment will make the
mountaintop installation self-sufficient.
The buildings on the mountaintop are
being constructed by Watts Construction Co,
under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers.
The entire area is surrounded by a
high fence as an aid to keeping out inquisitive persons or others who may wish
to cause damage.
Armed guards will be stationed
throughout the area to prevent any such damage and to assure that this segment
of SAGE will continue to do its share in protecting the United States from
sneak attack by bomber or missile.
A sneak attack may never come but
the huge investment in SAGE is expected to be worth the investment many times
over if only used for traffic control, an ever-present problem becoming greater
with every stride forward in the jet age.
But if the attack does come, the air
Force will be ready to alert the nation.