5.21.2005
How Duluth almost started WWIII
Saw the last posts in the Duluth movie thread about the teachings of fallout plans. I had saw this story on the Discovery Channel a while back and you brought the memory back. I had to find it and I did. Funny, but probably scarey back then.....At around midnight on 25 October 1962, during the CubanMissile Crisis, a guard at the Duluth base saw a figure climbing thefence. He shot at it, and activated the "sabotage alarm". Thisautomatically set off sabotage alarms at all bases in the area. At VolkField, Wisconsin, the alarm was wrongly wired, and the Klaxon soundedwhich ordered nuclear-armed fighter aircraft to take off. The pilotsbelieved World War III had begun, and might have used their nuclearweapons. The duty officer at Volk Field kept his cool. He calledDuluth. There was no war. By this time aircraft at Volk Field werestarting down the runway. A car raced from command center and managedto signal the aircraft to stop. When things had settled down it wasfound that the original intruder had been a bear, not a saboteur.