All manner of things had to be
determined before precise specifications detailing internal and external dimensions—could
be drawn up for release to competitive bidders. There was the matter of deciding
how many and what types of personnel to people the towers with. Types of equipment
to install had to be settled beforehand: not only surveillance and communications
kinds for operational purposes, but also food preparation and recreational kinds,
among others, for logistic and morale purposes. How to replenish, with some
regularity, expendable commodities and other supply items, required thoughtful
consideration, so as to strike a proper balance between overloading and under-supplying
each tower. These and other questions raised by the concept of sticking Texas
Towers radars 100 or so miles from shore constituted problems of no mean proportion,
which ADC, in the early 1950’s, speedily came to grips with.
Manpower totals for sustaining three-shift, round-the-clock operations was no easy figure to compute. Initially, ADC had in mind remoting tower radar data, via submarine cable, from tower to shore, where the weapons control function of vectoring interceptors would be handled by the crew at the parent ACW shore site. This, accordingly, lessened the number of persons whose presence would be needed for tower duty. First, in September 1952, a crew of 22 men was postulated as a likely number for maintaining continuous operations, presupposing that Texas Towers would have no target identification or weapons control responsibilities. This estimate climbed to 25 in August 1953, to provide technicians for servicing the second of two height-finders programmed. A few months later, in November 1953, the personnel contingent was re-estimated at 27, upped next to 41 in July 1954. It then developed that no submarine cable would be strung for remoting, that existing “slowed down” video could not be made to work properly in its stead, and that too much time would be consumed either fabricating or adapting old equipment to this purpose. ADC therefore was obliged to change heart, electing to program control functions at each tower, together with the attendant increase in personnel this entailed. Until near the end of the decade, when the Texas Towers were scheduled convert to SAGE operations (whereby the Lincoln Fine System, AN/FST-2, would be installed to feed lance data automatically from the tower to specified SAGE centers), the Texas Towers were to operate manually, utilizing GPA-37 consoles for vectoring interceptors to their respective targets. Consequently, personnel estimates were upped again in January 1955, this time to 46 in all, to each tower with personnel enough to handle the control function, along with the other conventional surveillance duties. Space enough was allowed during the stages (late 1954-1955) to accommodate upwards of 72 which was fortunate considering that the size of the personnel force continued growing.
In mid-1956, after first tower
was erected, the staffing structure was hiked from 46 to 49 officers and airmen
for sustaining Texas Tower missions. Even this later proved inadequate by five
spaces, as evidenced by a staffing pattern in 1957 calling for a total of 54,
composed of six officers and 48 airmen. This large a contingent embraced personnel
not only to operate and maintain the surveillance, control, and communications
equipment, together with specialists in the plumbing, heating, refrigeration,
medical and cooking business to help keep body and soul alive, but also to fill
unique spaces, insofar as ADC was concerned, peculiar to the Texas Tower mission.
Into this latter class was categorized the slot for one S/Sgt (Staff Sergeant)
“seaman” and one A/lC (Airman First Class) “marine engineman” to handle maritime
matters associated with Texas Tower operations. So specialized were some of
these maritime support jobs, that ADC, until subsequently discouraged by USAF,
showed interest in a 1956 proposal to transfer the entire Texas Tower program—operations,
maintenance and all—to the Navy Department.
Besides the commander, who was
ordinarily a captain, something like three to four officer weapons controllers
(AFSC 1644), together with half a dozen or so airmen ACW operators working under
them, and nearly an equal number of radar repairmen under charge of an electronics
officer (AFSC 3044), were assigned each crew. Communications operators and technician
repairmen were well represented, too. Each crew was divided into three shifts.
One thing ADC insisted on regarding
personnel manning was the right to form two crews per tower. ADC desired to
alternate on-station tower duty so that no single crew spent more than one month
aboard a Texas Tower without time, the following month, spent ashore, when the
second of two crews took its month’s turn, on a rotational basis. Tower duty,
incidentally, counted as time aggregated on an isolated overseas tour.
But USAF was reluctant to authorize
the extra spaces that this two-crew plan entailed. The most USAF would bend,
was a 1.5 crew manning ratio per tower. ADC persevered in reaffirming need for
a 2.0 crew manning ratio, and eventually resorted to improvising the difference
by borrowing from its own resources.3
Determining what kind of equipment
to install was more easily determined, particularly with regard to surveillance
equipment. Precedents for selecting search and height-finding radars already
existed in the form of ADC’s ground-based AC&W sites. Drawing from its experience
with them, ADC picked the FPS-3A long-range search set (modified subsequently
to the FPS-20A configuration), and two FPS-6 long-range height-finders. For
protection from wind, rain and snow, all three antennas were to be enclosed
in arctic tower radomes composed of a rubberized dome sprouting bulbously 55
feet in diameter, and supported underneath by a walled framework. These helped
characterize the shape TexasTowers finally assumed, silhouetting a clover-leaf
profile on stilts.
Ordinarily, installation of a
pair of FPS-6 height finders and an FPS-3A search set entailed separating them
at least 150 feet apart, for good reasons. If bunched closely together, there
was a real danger of mutual electronic interference being generated when radar
antennas faced one another. An exception to this rule, however, had to be made
aboard Texas Towers, where surface space, of necessity, was constricted.
To minimize chances of mutual interference, yet compactly squeeze all equipment
atop a relatively small surface, the FPS-3A search set, sandwiched between the
other two, was elevated so as to tower above them. The two FPS-6 antennas, moreover,
were pointed in opposite directions, one facing toward land, the other toward
sea, being slaved together, and to the FPS-3A, for synchronizing movements.
As a final measure of precaution, interference blankers were installed to blot
out electronic signals emanating from FPS-6 antennas when pointing toward the
FPS-3A.4
Tower-to-shore communications
presented a problem different from that of radars. There simply was no network
of telephone lines conveniently at hand to tap into, as at ACW stations on land.
Notwithstanding this, the question was settled long in advance of tower erection
time. ADC originally wanted-to string submarine cables from tower to shore at
a cost estimated at first to be $1,000,000 per tower. Follow-on estimates that
nearly doubled this amount, however, helped doom the submarine cable plan. Another
system equally favored by ADC was adopted for primary point-to-point communications:
multiple-channel tropospheric scatter radio, described in more detail below.5
After the size of the forthcoming
personnel contingent and of the equipment inventory was, for the most part,
known, work proceeded on the platform to accommodate them. Beforehand, the Navy
Bureau of Yards and Docks had contracted core-drilling work in July 1954 to
the De Long Corporation and the Raymond Concrete Pile Company. Feasibility studies,
on 18 June 1954, were farmed out to the architect-engineering firms of Moran,
Proctor, Mueser and Rutledge of New York City, and the Anderson-Nichols and
Company of Boston. These studies were soon completed and, by October 1954, their
results submitted. Hereupon, the Bureau of Yards and Docks contracted with the
same firms to formulate the engineering and design work for five towers. They
were expressly designed to withstand 125-mile per hour winds and 35-foot high
waves.
Texas Tower
2.
Responsibility for constructing the first Texas Tower was entrusted to Bethlehem
Steel Company. By then, each of the five approved sites had been designated
as follows: Cashes Ledge was named TT-1 (for Texas Tower 1); Georges Shoal,
TT-2; Nantucket Shoal, TT-3; Unnamed Shoal, TT-4; and Brown’s Bank, TT-5. This
numbering sequence, however, was not indicative of site-erection priorities.
Indeed, it was TT-2, Georges Shoal that ADC chose for its first Texas Tower.
Situated some 110 miles east of Cape Cod, the TT-2 unit, besides enjoying a
location in shallow waters that would help facilitate its erection, was to be
among the first of ADC’s radar units to tie into the emerging SAGE network.6