AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
Cold war era pixels, no longer likely to interfere with your TV reception, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53796724938/
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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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From 1958 through 1980, this incongruous four story monolith was the centerpiece of the "Alameda Air Force Station", a long-range radar site that was part of NORAD's SAGE early warning system. The blast-hardened concrete building served as the platform for an FPS-24 radar system, a massive 120 foot wide reflector that emitted a 5 megawatt VHF pulse, continuously rotating at 5 RPM.
Notoriously, the signal disrupted TV and radio reception throughout the San Jose area.
It's unclear if the SAGE system would have actually been effective in detecting incoming bombers, which presumably would have employed radar jammers. Fortunately, we never found out.
The antenna was removed shortly after the site's decommissioning in 1980, but the building, a prominent local landmark visible from downtown San Jose, has been preserved.
I have mixed feelings about these cold war relics. On the one hand, they're artifacts of what was perhaps humanity's most dangerous folly to date, locking the world in a deadly game where the stakes only went up with each round. This doesn't seem like something to commemorate or celebrate.
On the other hand, these objects, many now destroyed or decayed, serve as visible evidence of just how close to oblivion we are willing to go. And looked at from the right angle, they have stories to tell.
@[email protected] personally I think some should be kept as historical markers, neither celebratory nor commemorative, but simply to record.
Like you I lived through those times (but in the UK) and I'm still shocked by finding out new things about how close we came then. The latest thing I learned was about the US using depth charges in international waters during the Cuban Missile Crisis to get USSR sub B59 to surface, unaware of the almost apocalyptic argument they triggered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov