"Airman Mindling, Airman Mindling, you have a phone call," the loudspeaker called out from the ceiling of the Bitburg Air Base NCO Club. I was totally surprised as I had never been paged before in my life. The first thing that raced through my mind as I headed for the office that Saturday afternoon was that something had happened back stateside. 
   "Hello, this is Airman Mindling!"
  

"Mindling, this is Major Shaw, get out to Rittersdorf and see what you can do to fix that damn launch door they jammed open. Get out there as soon as you can!" 

"Yes sir, I'm on my way!" I had no idea what he was talking about as I hung up, just that I had to take my fiancee (and future wife) back to Bitburg or she would again have to wait on me for yet another site dispatch. I raced across the street to our barracks and changed into fatigues in record time, and after dropping Ilse at her mother's apartment on Kyllburgerstrasse, was on my way to Site VII in my green, nearly clapped out 1954 VW. 

I was absolutely floored that Major Shaw, Chief of Maintenance for the 587th Missile Maintenance Squadron, called me, a two striper, to fix a launch site facility problem. How he had picked me was a mystery until I got the site, where, sure enough, one of the huge launch bay doors was stuck about a third of the way up.

"You the hydraulics expert from Flight Controls?" one of the launch crew members asked as I climbed the steps to inspect the jammed door.

"Uhhh, yeah, I'm from flight controls," not wanting to challenge the expert part of the statement. As I crossed to the inside of the launch bay, I checked the huge pistons, then secondly,  the control arm that ran parallel and directly above the two silver, polished exposed pistons. Sure enough, jammed between the control arm bar, used as a sensing switch bar, and the huge, traveling piston arms, was a bent and thoroughly stuck, metal cased PSM-6 multimeter. Someone had been troubleshooting a circuit during the assembly of the missile that had just been loaded and had thoughtlessly set the standard Air Force issue multimeter on the closest available shelf, the one that was formed by the pistons and the control arm. Then they forgot it was there. 

Hours later, during the final phase of the missile acceptance, the huge 100 ton door was to be raised and closed. The launch crew members in the launch bay, usually including the crew chief, are in direct contact by headset with the Launch officer 60 feet underground in the Launch Control Center. The innocuous grey PSM-6 apparently escaped detection by the launch crew. Apparently every thing had gone well until the door simply stopped. The raising process is as exciting as watching grass grow, and takes almost as long. It took a few moments to realize it had finally jammed. It was stuck just far enough up to prevent a launch, and it couldn't be reversed to go back down.

I disconnected the switch leads, but they were for the launch prevent position indicator and had no effect on the squealing hydraulic unit. We tried to stop, reset, and even reduce the pressure to the huge cylinders trying vainly to over power the jammed test set.  I had never seen the door system before, but simply tried to logically figure out how to satisfy the signal requirements to stop the door drive system. That didn't work, so we got a bigger hammer. 

We tried knocking, then leveraging the case out from between the arm and the piston to no avail. That was one PSM-6 that was never going to be used again. Time was running out as a command decision was made downstairs: blow the pressure and let the door down, one way or another. 

We all stood by on top and waited for the command, every body standing well clear of the door and it's revetment. At first, it appeared to be slow motion, but when it hit, it could have been heard all the way back to base. It cracked the concrete between the two adjacent bays with its impact. The door was open and the launch and AGE people were trying to figure out how to straighten the control rod. That bay was out of commission for a while, but at least the door was open. 

When I went to see Major Shaw the next morning in the Chief of Maintenance's office, he listened intently as I told him what had happened.

After a long pause, he said, "At least it's open!"

He finally managed a wry grin when I told him the PSM-6 wasn't one of ours. 

The damaged revetment at Rittersdorf. The crack on the left had been semi-repaired and filled in, but the crack on the right side remained until Site VII shutdown in 1969. Photo courtesy of Bob Sosenko (rsosenk1@twcny.rr.com)

I do remember the stuck door and I was there! I certainly don't remember all the details but as I recall we burst a hydraulic line in the power room trying to open that door. Being one of the smaller troops on crew, I got elected to be a gopher and crawl under the steel decking to clean up about 50 gallons of fluid. That actually turned out to be the easy part since everybody else was cleaning red fluid off the walls, ceiling and equipment. What a mess 3,000 psi can make in only a few seconds time..

Now, I'm really guessing here but if memory serves me right, there was a PSM-6 involved and I remember a light haired (maybe blonde), skinny dude (we all were back then..) working feverishly trying to figure out what some dumb-ass launch crew member did to a 100 ton door.....;-) That was you? I'll be damned. That's probably where you remember me from. I was a Mech 1 at the time but being trained in all positions except nukes, I and everyone else was in the bay at some point offering their two cents worth. We had to override the door interlocks so we could get access and that got the guards panties all in a bundle as I remember. When he saw 3 of us in the bay - all armed, he started breathing normal again and stopped hyper-ventilating over the two bay doors being opened (launch and access doors) after you fixed whatever it was.

Bob Sosenko (rsosenk1@twcny.rr.com) 71st TMS