Secret Facilities

In the Winter of 1971 this movie was being shown on military installation screens in Germany. I saw this while I was in the Army and stationed in Germany. Little did I know that a few years later some of the fiction portrayed in this movie would actually become a small reality.

While in the Army I had seen and utilized many classified communications, documents and manuals. Serving in the military gave credence to the secret communication, facilities, and procedures demonstrated in the movie. It looked fairly real and plausible enough to me at the time. My military friends and I questioned the Lunar Receiving Laboratory for returning Apollo astronauts. Just what if there were a facility like Wildfire?

The location of Wildfire, the fictional town in New Mexico, and Albuquerque Center. I didn't have a clue about any of that in 1971/72. But, just four years later, I would be employed at Albuquerque Center as an Air Traffic Controller and would retire from that facility some thirty-six years later. I became truly familiar with Nevada, Arizona, SoCal, and New Mexico.

I worked with and had visited many "secret" installations on many "classified projects" throughout the Southwest, White Sands Missile Range, Luke AFB, Green River Utah, Davis-Monthan AFB, Edwards AFB, NORAD, Los Alamo's Labs, Pantex, etc. Several times I had utilized flight progress strips in the strip bay that had "Secret" stamped on them and used for informational purposes only. Whatever flight they represented never existed, black world stuff. I've used, in automation, special software that when executed rippled the solid state RAM with a one/zero pattern so as to overwrite the "classified" flight plan information residual in the computer. Secret agents have visited the facility wherein if one agent were late by just a couple of minutes an entire bevy of Federal Agents would be deployed to locate him. Secret documents carried in "diplomatic courier" pouches handled by guys with guns. Usually test flight information for classified aircraft flown lights out at night or project information that had the potential to disrupt ATC radar, air traffic, or facilities... And, we were a federal agency too.

Anyway, I've always enjoyed this film. Watched it many times over the years and enjoy its suspense. Living out some of its reality has been enlightening but totally unintentional. What other secret facilities and projects exist throughout government? Probably a lot..