The launch center you see is a square box about the size of an RV suspended by four large “shock absorbers” inside a hardened capsule with walls about six feet thick. The shock absorbers are so the launch center can sway in the event of a NuDet (nuclear detonation) near by. Unlike the older Titans, the Minuteman missiles were nowhere near the capsules, being a minimum of three miles away. Each capsule had direct command and control of 10 Minuteman missiles distributed in a spoke like fashion around the hub (capsule). The Titans crew was right with their massively larger missiles.

I was a Launch Control Officer for five years in the mid-80s out of FE Warren AFB in Cheyenne WY. My squadron was the 320th Strategic Missile Squadron with all 5 capsules and 50 missiles were physically in western NE, with the furthest over 100 miles away in Sidney NE. I spent 335 days underground over the 5 year period.

Awesome info, thank you! 335 days underground.. Similar to Nukes in the Navy!

In answer to your first question, in the field that would be the primary blast door, a penetration that went through the capsule to a chamber with another larger blast door out to the elevator. At the other end of this chamber is the passage to the generator room. We were obviously equipped to go quite some time “off-grid”.

I am assuming the view is from one of the training simulators which are used exact, suspended control centers with a viewing window.

We had no maps in the capsule. Any targeting we did was normal 3-d coordinates, technically we really did not have a “need to know” where the coordinates were located.

Thanks! If you look to the left, from the hallway, then go to the very left corner and look right there's a paper map on the wall with circles all over it. Was curious what that was. In my absolute ignorance it looks like one of those "nukes will explode this far" sort of maps but I can't tell if it's actually a map of land or a system design thing.