... a great investment!

... the more we dig- the more underground Cold-War bunkers we find! Here's one for sale! Opened in 1969 this facility belonged to the Federal Reserve. Amongst other jobs it was a stash of several billion dollars of non-radioactive cash. The eerie isolation of the place appeals to me, but the lack of a jacuzzi is a real low-point!

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... Greenbriar Bunker!

... here's some homey details of the Congressional relocation site under the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia. (top) If you were an arriving Senator who'd gotten a snoot full of that pesky fallout; you would be invited to take a trot through the decontamination showers. (bottom) Stockpiled food. The bunker had a cafeteria and dining room and it looks like the survival menu was quite a bit better than CD biscuits! Hey, the caterer is still around! (LINK)

... B-36 maintenance: Greenland!

... ground crew scrape ice off the wing of a B-36 strategic bomber at Thule AFB in Greenland. Keeping bombers closer to Russia in Greenland was a constant logistics nightmare. It was done on a rotational basis. The gigantic B-36's were too big for any hangars and had to be kept out in the open; subjected to the incredibly harsh Arctic environment.

1962 ... end of the Cuban Missile Crisis!

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1968 ... where to go and what to do!

... moo, oink!

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1958 ... on guard!

LINK

... it's curtains!

... fortunately 'Magicman' is in the nick-of-time to throw a monkey wrench into the high-hopes of those Bolshevik Bastards! Now, if someone would just tell him that Vietnam is not going to be a mom and apple pie 'walk-in-the park'! Yee-gads!

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1954 ... Warning Star!

... long before satellites constantly peered down or even before the massive radar constructions of the Arctic DEW line; watching for a sneak-attack from the USSR was a fairly ad-hoc affair. These are Lockheed EC-121 "Warning Stars" (close cousin to the 'Constellation' airliner) which would prowl beyond the continental US; scanning with powerful radars to detect incoming bomber forces. These airplanes, along with ground based radar, ships, submarines and even blimps comprised the early warning network in the early days of the Cold War.

1952 ... F-9 'Cougar'

LINK

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... Boomers!

LINK

1962 ... "I'll buy it!"

... Pilot's seat; Convair B-58 'Hustler'

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1952 ... tiger by the tail!

1955 ... "terrain: pull-up!"

... not sure what story this illustration belongs to; but the caption doesn't take the physics into account!

... I don't know about you guys, but this is a good facsimile of a recurring nightmare I've had most of my life. Perhaps it was too many episodes of 'Sky King' as a kid.

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... fan-mail!

1962 ... evolving!

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1959 ... mistaken (panic) identity!

... okay - maybe they didn't panic - but the mistaken conclusion that the M-50 "Bounder" was a nuclear-powered strategic bomber must have pleased the Soviets! "Look comrade; stupid writer for Aviation Week has saved us hundreds of millions of rubles in development costs!" If the Pentagon didn't believe it, at least American toy companies did!

 

... I never get tired of the enthusiastic way the narrator (Peter Ustinov) pronounces Bounder!!

... talk about rare footage: Boris and Natasha had to go through seven car-chases, shoot twenty henchmen and trade 50 pairs of Levis to smuggle this video out of the Iron curtain.

Now it's available on YouTube! Ah- for the good old days! 

1953 ... vertical warfare!