Loring Air Force Base, Part 1
My last day in Maine I made it to Loring Air Force Base, located near Limestone.
A few quotes from the linked Wikipedia page regarding the base
Loring AFB was carved out of the woods of Maine beginning in the late forties and officially dedicated in 1953.
The host wing for Loring AFB throughout its existence was the 42nd Bomb Wing. The wing originally flew the B-36 Peacemaker, converting later to the B-52 Stratofortress…
The Nuclear Weapons Storage Area at Loring once operated as a separate, top secret facility. Originally called the North River Depot, the remote area to the northeast of Loring’s property was the first U.S. Operational site specifically constructed for the storage, assembly, and testing of atomic weapons…
Since 1981, nearly $300 million in military construction and operations and maintenance funds were spent to upgrade the facilities…
The official base closure date was 30 September 1994.
It is a strange feeling to ride a bicycle around an area where a third of a billion dollars was spent since I was born and is now largely devoid of human presence.
Hey, so my girlfriend and I are interested in some Urban Exploration while we are up here in ME for the summer and we decided that Loring AFB and the OTH Radar station in Moscow ME were worth checking out. What was it like trying to get onto the property? Was the only “security” the park ranger presence?
Sup Chandler! Getting onto the property was not a problem. I took a dirt road that ended up by those barracks. I actually was told I had to leave that area and was given a ride off the property.
The airstrip was right by some residential area and easily accessible as well. I didn’t see anyone else around and no one told me that I wasn’t supposed to be there.
Nice shots of the “Vamp House” in the WSA. So many legends surrounded that building. That, and “The Bank” as well.
How do u get to the igloos?? We went there looking and be and I could not find it.
The ‘Decoy Building’ was the storage building for plutonium pits. The pits were stored suspended in rectangular frames, then the frames put in the building. When a weapon was to be armed, officers and technicians would sign-out the frames, transport to an assembly building, where the pits would be placed in bombs, made ‘live’ and then loaded on planes.
The rectangular frames were used to prevent pits from going ‘hot’ or critical. Just physical separation was enough to prevent incidents. Keeping proper separation was referred to as ‘the geometry problem’, so bomb pits or triggers were kept suspended in cages, easily seen and accounted for.
These buildings, because they may harbor minute particles of plutonium dust, are always a no-go zone on old bases.