I TELL SOME people that I used to work at the sharp end of the stick while flying the pointy end of a big aircraft during the closing days of the Cold War. I spent some of those days watching events like the one in the film clip by by maintenance men from Griffiss Air Force Base that could easily have preceded the end of the world.
The four minute clip shows a live Minimum Interval Take Off (MITO) from the 1980s, the time when I would fly missiles weighing 70,000 pounds around the United States. Boyhood friends of mine flew the B-52Gs in the shot and several of my close friends flew the KC-135A aircraft.
If you watch the video clip, you should know that in a simulated nuclear launch, aircraft had to be airborne inside a 12 to 15 second window. And while this New York MITO was playing out, nearly every Strategic Air Command base in the United States was playing out the same high speed pressurised launch sequence.
[Bernie Goldbach logged more than 3000 flying hours through his active days in the 1980s.]
