Driving Delta Flight

Dispersal was a key design feature of the Minuteman system. The South Dakota missile field totaled fifteen control centers and one hundred fifty missiles divided into three squadrons. Fifty missiles made up a squadron, and each squadron was further divided into five flights of ten missiles. Every flight had its own Launch Control Center that monitored ten silos. To reduce its vulnerability to enemy attack, each flight was dispersed across several miles, with the control center located a minimum of three miles from any missile and the missiles similarly distanced from each other. With the control center as the center of the clock the silos were numbered 2-11 and arrayed across the landscape irregularly but in a clockwise formation. While the park preserves a single silo and control center, during the Cold War the Delta Flight would have included nine additional active silos. While those silos were retired in the 1990s, their sites remain visible today. This activity is a vehicle-based driving tour beginning at the visitor center, and visiting all eleven locations that made up Delta Flight. Follow in the path of Air Force personnel and travel the South Dakota backroads to visit the ten silos and control center of Delta Flight, which once kept 12 megatons of destructive power constantly on alert.