Malmstrom Echo and Oscar Flight Missile-Malfunction Reports

“Hastings cites declassified 341st Strategic Missile Wing history material for a full-flight, ten-missile Echo Flight shutdown on March 16, 1967, while also presenting former missile personnel who later associated unusual aerial observations with the period of the failures.”

“The source explicitly preserves uncertainty about Oscar Flight: Salas later concluded the event probably occurred after the March 16 Echo shutdown; witness recollections differ on whether six-to-eight, fewer than ten, or all ten Oscar missiles malfunctioned.”

“Hastings reports that Boeing engineers ruled out several candidate causes and reproduced the Echo faults a high percentage of the time by injecting a noise signal into the logic coupler, but could not determine the source of the original signal.”

“Hastings preserves conflicting Oscar recollections: Salas initially wrote six to eight missiles, Meiwald remembered fewer than ten, and Jamison later remembered ten. The date is also unresolved, with later testimony favoring a date after March 16 and possibly March 24.”

“Hank Barlow told Hastings that his team was redirected to restore Echo missiles and that at the first site the VRSA gave no indication of why the missile was down, which he considered unusual.”

“Salas relays anonymous “Mr. X,” who said an Echo-7 Channel 11 DC Coupler No-Go repeatedly recurred while a round orange pulsating object hovered nearby. X interpreted the pulses as directed toward the guidance-and-control coupler and described a perceived energy field.”

“Robert Salas is quoted as recalling that while underground at Oscar Flight a security controller first reported unusual lights and then urgently reported a glowing red UFO hovering outside the front gate shortly before several missiles began malfunctioning.”

“Don Crawford told Hastings that when he relieved the Echo crew, Carlson and Figel described reports from separate missile-maintenance teams and a mobile Security Alert Team of unusual aerial lights near launch facilities before the failures.”

“Salas, underground and not a visual witness, recalls his Flight Security Controller first reporting unusual lights and then a glowing red UFO hovering outside the Oscar LCF gate before multiple missiles indicated No-Go.”

“Barlow relayed a second-hand story that an Echo security camper team saw a ring of lights overhead and a guard photographed them, after which the camera or film was reportedly confiscated.”

“Salas recounts that while he was underground at the Oscar Flight LCC, the Flight Security Controller first reported maneuvering lights over the site and then urgently reported a glowing red object hovering outside the front gate. Salas did not personally see the object.”

“Meiwald later recalled that a mobile security team responding to an outlying Oscar launch facility also reported observing a UFO, and that radio contact with the team was lost until the vehicle approached the LCF again.”

“Roberto Morales told Klotz that while guarding launch facilities during missile-restoration work he and others saw lights streak, stop, move back and forth, and approach relatively closely. The account is retrospective and not tied in this chapter to a specific launch facility or exact time.”

“Hastings cites declassified 341st Strategic Missile Wing history extracts documenting a full-flight ten-missile Echo shutdown on March 16, 1967. The same official history states that UFO rumors around Echo during the fault were disproven.”

“Jamison told Hastings that targeting teams were held at the maintenance hangar while UFO reports were active and later received a briefing instructing them to report sightings and shelter inside a silo if an object approached.”

“In Chapter 16 Hastings quotes the October 20, 1969 Bolender memorandum as stating that UFO reports which could affect national security should continue under standard Air Force procedures and that reports under JANAP 146 or AFM 55-11 were not part of Blue Book.”

“Salas says that within seconds of the urgent topside UFO report, multiple Oscar missiles indicated No-Go conditions. He recalls eight to ten missiles, while a footnote states Fred Meiwald recalled six and that both agreed six to eight were lost immediately after the guard report.”

“Salas and Meiwald describe Oscar missiles going off alert because of Guidance and Control system faults rather than loss of site electrical power. Faded Giant does not provide a contemporaneous Oscar engineering record equivalent to the Echo documentation in this chapter.”

“Faded Giant describes a post-alert debriefing attended by Salas, Meiwald, their squadron commander and an AFOSI representative, after which Salas says they were told the incident was highly classified and not to be discussed. This is Salas's retrospective participant account of the briefing.”

“The authors explicitly preserve uncertainty over whether Echo and Oscar occurred on the same morning or on different days close together. They note that the official Wing history and contemporary documents discussed in the chapter document Echo but do not resolve Oscar chronology.”

“For Echo Flight, the book states that Eric Carlson and Walter Figel were on duty and that Figel recalled an on-site security guard reporting a UFO over a launch facility before additional missiles went off alert. Figel then dispatched teams to two sites where personnel reportedly also described UFOs.”

“The chapter quotes the 341st Strategic Missile Wing history as stating that UFO rumors around Echo during the fault were disproven and that a November Flight mobile strike team reported no unusual activity on the morning of March 16. The authors dispute the adequacy and accuracy of that conclusion.”

“The authors quote a March 17, 1967 SAC message requesting immediate support from Ogden and stating that the lack of an apparent reason for the loss of ten missiles was cause for grave concern to headquarters.”

“Robert Kaminski told the authors that a Boeing investigation team found no significant failures or engineering findings that explained why the ten Echo missiles went off alert and that a final engineering report was later stopped after he was told the incident had been reported as a UFO event.”

“W.M. Dutton confirmed his role as an electrical-power specialist on the investigation and said no definitive cause was determined. R.E. Rigert said laboratory injection of a certain electrical noise signal could duplicate the Guidance and Control faults, while power problems and lightning were ruled out.”

“The chapter reports that George Richards, the Logic Coupler specialist, was certain the LCC Logic Coupler could not have issued a programmed shutdown command to the missile Guidance and Control system and that no such command signal existed.”

“The authors discuss electromagnetic pulse as a candidate mechanism because sufficiently strong externally generated pulses could in principle penetrate or couple into the Minuteman system, but state that no source capable of producing the required field pulse at Echo was found.”

“Faded Giant rejects contemporaneous nuclear testing as the source of the putative EMP, noting no U.S. nuclear test on March 16 and arguing that the nearest Operation Latchkey tests were underground and too distant to account for effects at Malmstrom.”

“The book describes an active 1965-1967 EMP hardening/test program at several Minuteman locations but states the authors found no evidence that an EMP test at Echo or Oscar caused the shutdowns; they argue such equipment could not have been present at the LCFs without operational personnel knowing.”

“The authors infer that later Minuteman pulse-suppression and monitor-line protection modifications may have been influenced in part by the shutdown investigation. The chapter does not document a direct causal administrative link.”

“Salas and Klotz argue that directed electromagnetic effects from UFOs may have caused the Malmstrom shutdowns, drawing on wider UFO electromagnetic-effect literature and the reported proximity of objects to missile facilities.”

“The authors mention an additional anonymous 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron witness who alleged that UFO presence interfered with reactivating Echo missiles. They state they found the correspondence credible but could not directly verify the witness because he wished to remain anonymous.”

“Appendix C reproduces the January-March 1967 341st Strategic Missile Wing history stating that at 0845 on March 16 all ten Echo Flight launch facilities lost strategic alert nearly simultaneously with Voice Reporting Signal Assembly Channels 9 and 12 No-Go indications, while no other Wing I configuration lost strategic alert at that time. The history says Channel 50 data were collected from E-7 and E-8 and all ten sites were returned to alert without launch-facility equipment replacement.”

“The reproduced Wing history says analysis of Channel 50 data from E-7 and E-8 determined that both sites were shut down as a result of an "external influence" to the Guidance & Control section and that no internal G&C No-Go was detected. Later data from E-2 and E-9 likewise indicated their G&C units had not entered a No-Go loop. In this engineering context, "external influence" denotes an input external to the G&C circuitry, not an identified external craft or actor.”

“The reproduced March investigation report states that the team considered externally generated signals capable of producing the Channel 9 and 12 indications through the Logic Coupler, while emphasizing that a scenario requiring all ten couplers to fail within seconds of each other was very remote and required further contractor-level study.”

“The same reproduced Wing history records a competing official conclusion: weather was ruled out, communications maintenance reported no unusual EWO-1/EWO-2 activity, UFO rumors around Echo were described as disproven after questioning a November Flight mobile strike team, and the 801st Radar Squadron reportedly gave a negative report for radar or atmospheric interference related to Echo Flight.”

“Appendix C records that a 7.2-kV transformer failed later on March 16 and that power-system switching and transformer-failure theories were investigated. The reproduced history says subsequent tests led investigators to decide commercial power switching was not the cause of the Echo shutdown and that the Malmstrom investigation team remained unable to determine a logical cause.”

“A reproduced March 17 SAC message states that all ten Echo missiles lost strategic alert within about ten seconds, were returned to alert with no apparent difficulty, and that no apparent reason for the loss of ten missiles could readily be identified, which SAC described as cause for grave concern requiring an in-depth analysis and corrective action.”

“A reproduced March 28 task-group message says representatives of Boeing, Autonetics, OOAMA and Fifteenth Air Force concluded that insufficient data existed to resolve the Echo problem or define an adequate engineering analysis without further testing, and planned tests intended to reproduce the No-Go mode first at launch-facility level and then at LCF level.”

“The April-June Wing history and reproduced April status message report Boeing testing in which a roughly 30-microsecond pulse placed on the C-53P Logic Coupler self-test-command line produced Channel 9 and 12 No-Go responses in seven of ten applications in one test series. The records describe a plausible Logic Coupler sequence-error mechanism and continued work to identify the source and path of such a noise pulse.”

“A reproduced June 2 interim report states that May power and transformer-simulation tests at Malmstrom produced no launch-facility shutdowns and no significant noise propagation on the Sensitive Information Network attributable to the simulated transformer failure. The report also says the ten Echo launch facilities showed no status change as a result of those power tests.”

“Because the power tests were essentially negative, the reproduced June interim report says the Echo problem appeared to be of an electromagnetic-pulse or electrostatic nature and recommended additional susceptibility testing. This was an engineering working assessment, not identification of an actual March 16 EMP source.”

“The October-December 1967 Wing history says tests directed at adverse-power theories all produced negative results and describes the Sierra-39 EMP program as the final series of tests in that area. This shows continued technical investigation months after the shutdown rather than a settled cause immediately after the event.”

“A reproduced June 10 SAC progress report states that induced electronic pulse testing had shown a pulse introduced at the Logic Coupler could cause shutdown, but neither the source nor the paths for the field impulse had been determined and a system analysis was underway to identify possible coupling paths and recurrence probability.”

“A reproduced July 7 SAMSO message says no similar cause could yet be postulated that would account for the E-Flight incident and lists additional monitoring, susceptibility and power-system work, while calling for continued technical interchange to identify a credible explanation.”

“Thornton recounts a guard reporting a glowing red object less than roughly 30 feet above the ground near Oscar Flight before several missiles entered no-go status.”

“Thornton says a military investigation considered ordinary technical causes and that witnesses were later instructed not to discuss the event.”

“Thornton says six to eight Oscar Flight missiles and ten Echo Flight missiles were disabled, for a total of roughly 16–18 weapons.”

“Hall summarizes the March 16 Malmstrom event as a glowing red saucer-shaped object near a Minuteman site while missiles became inoperative and later returned to service.”

“Hastings argues that UFO activity and Minuteman faults were connected, but the same source contains an official rejection of UFO involvement, unidentified technical fault mechanisms, disputed Oscar chronology, and retrospective testimony.”

“Thornton argues that reports multiplied around atomic facilities and later missile/storage sites, forming a persistent nuclear-site pattern.”

“Thornton says Robert Hastings interviewed 167 military witnesses and required service records, recorded interviews, and cross-reference against FOIA documentation.”

“Thornton recounts a Minot AFB case in which Captain David Schuur allegedly saw missile systems enter launch countdown while a UFO moved among sites.”

“Thornton reports similar nuclear-site incursions in the Soviet Union and cites post-Soviet military material as mirroring American experiences.”

“Thornton says Sarah Gamm encountered contemporary nuclear-related UAP reports through Pentagon/UAP Task Force channels, including a secure system called “Our Space.””

“Thornton interprets the nuclear cases as purposeful demonstrations showing that unknown intelligence can monitor, disable, or activate nuclear systems.”

“The chapter repeatedly suggests the objects may be educating, warning, or exercising “cosmic oversight” of humanity’s nuclear adolescence.”

“Thornton concludes that the nuclear connection is beyond reasonable doubt and that the question has shifted from whether monitoring occurs to what humanity should learn from it.”