AUTHOR'S NOTE The launch vehicles and facilities history in this book covers the period 1958 to 2014.
This book examines the intriguing story of Camp Cooke, an Army training installation in California that sent thousands of soldiers overseas during World War II and the Korean War, and produced six Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. During the war years, Cooke hosted numerous USO camp shows featuring some of Hollywood's leading entertainers as well as many other luminaries from radio and stage.
In 1956, the Air Force acquired the installation and two years later renamed it Vandenberg Air Force Base. It has since become America's only space and missile base and has developed a unique history of its own. America's first spy satellite program was conducted from Vandenberg. The intelligence data collected from these missions debunked the myth of a missile gap with the Soviet Union. At the height of the Cold War America's first ICBM missile equipped with a nuclear warhead was based at Vandenberg.
Topping the list of important visitors to the base was President John F. Kennedy who witnessed the launch of an Atlas missile. And, as part of an unprecedented trip to the United States, Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev passed through the base on a train in 1959.Read about his surprising reaction as his train passed within view of Atlas ICBMs with nuclear warheads standing on alert.
In 1956, the Air Force acquired the installation and two years later renamed it Vandenberg Air Force Base. It has since become America's only space and missile base and has developed a unique history of its own. America's first spy satellite program was conducted from Vandenberg. The intelligence data collected from these missions debunked the myth of a missile gap with the Soviet Union. At the height of the Cold War America's first ICBM missile equipped with a nuclear warhead was based at Vandenberg.
Topping the list of important visitors to the base was President John F. Kennedy who witnessed the launch of an Atlas missile. And, as part of an unprecedented trip to the United States, Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev passed through the base on a train in 1959.Read about his surprising reaction as his train passed within view of Atlas ICBMs with nuclear warheads standing on alert.
Many other fascinating stories appear in the book including the exposure of 1,000 Camp Cooke soldiers to above-ground atomic bomb detonations in the Nevada desert(more than a decade before the controversial exposure of American soldiers to Agent Orange in Vietnam), missile accidents at Vandenberg that sometimes ended with devastating results, and the tragic death of a young airman in a missile training exercise.
Included in this book are biographies of Generals Cooke and Vandenberg, a list of nearly every Army unit that trained at Cooke, and a historical summary of every launch facility at Vandenberg and the missile types flown from these facilities from the first one in 1958 up through 2014. Important historical events that occurred at each of these facilities arecaptured in the launch facility summary.
This book is the definitive history of Camp Cooke and Vandenberg AFB. Written by the retired chief historian at Vandenberg, this detailed and thoroughly researched narrativeis the inside story of the installation not told anywhere else. The book is enriched by more than 100 rare and previously unpublished images.
