68th Strategic Missile Squadron

The 68th Strategic Missile Squadron (SMS) was located just north of the Black Hills, South Dakota. It was part of the 44th Missile Wing, located at Ellsworth Air Force Base, just outside Rapid City, South Dakota.

Organization
The squadron was responsible for 50 missile silos, also called Launch Facilities (LF), broken down into groups of 10. Each ten missile silos had a control center, or Launch Control Facility (LCF), where two missile officers were on duty 24 hours a day. These LCFs were named after the phonetic alphabet, starting with Kilo. Lima, Mike, November, and Oscar were the other LCFs. The LCFs were designated as "one", hence Kilo 1 was the LCF, and Kilo 2 through 11 represented the actual missile silos controlled from Kilo 1. In addition to being a normal LCF, Kilo 1 was also the Alternate Command Post, or ACP. All of the other missile sites within the 44th Missile Wing (including the 66th and 67th SMS) reported to Kilo 1.

History
During March 1965 this SMS was responsible for the missile that was launched from a November Flight LF, 10 miles north of Newell, South Dakota. The program was called "Project Longlife" and was the only successful launch of a LGM-30 Minuteman missile from an operational site. The "Project Longlife" purpose was to test the launch capabilities from an operational site and to see how much damage the missile caused to the launch silo. The missile contained only enough fuel to burn for 7 seconds with a total flight time of 43 seconds. Many Minuteman missiles have been launched successfully from Vandenberg Air Force Base.