We had tankers at Amarillo and for a long time I thought all SAC bases had both bombers and tankers. It wasn't until I talked to guys from other bases during our first rotation to Guam that I found out that wasn't the case.

I do remember heavy security around nuclear weapons. The Pantex Plant, the primary United States nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility, is 17 miles northeast of Amarillo. I remember some heavily armed convoys traveling between Pantex and Amarillo AFB. We weren't supposed to notice anything, but we suspected that nukes were stored in our underground bomb bunkers and distributed by military transports to other bases as necessary.

I don't remember much about the SAC command center at Offutt AFB, other than that it was underground and built to survive a nuke strike. The NORAD underground command center at Cheyenne Mountain where Mark worked for a while got all the glory. I do remember Operation Looking Glass, which kept a general officer and command staff members in the air 24/7 in an EC-135 flying command post out of Offutt AFB in case of war. I think that went on from 1961 to 1990.