A Family Friendly Force: Providing a Family Visitation Option for SAC Alert Crews

Abstract

On January 16, 1974, commanders at McConnell Air Force Base near Wichita, Kansas, and members of the local media ate a lunch of steak and baked potatoes. A photograph in the official base newspaper shows a woman in a beehive hairdo about to hand a plate over cafeteria glass to one of the honored guests. The occasion was the opening of a new alert center, ready to house up to twenty-four member crews of KC-135 airplanes. The base paper called it "the newest and finest alert facility in all the Strategic Air Command" (SAC) and a "vast improvement over old alert facilities."¹ The Wichita Eagle was more objective in its description but did call the center "a one-of-a-kind alert facility."²