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Current Events » in reply to Warning to mariners:

Pacific Missile Range
robert — (archived)

Without actually plotting those coordinates, it sounds to me like the old Pacific Missile Range (probably renamed by now), centered at Pt. Mugu NAS, and I think the adjacent Port Hueneme SeaBees base is part of that command, for logistical support. I lived nearby, near Ventura, when I was a kid, and was pretty familiar with the place.

Vandenberg AFB is a hundred miles north, and between the two, missile launches were a pretty regular occurrence in the '60s. I saw an Atlas test launch one time during a grade school field trip, to La Purisima Mission adjacent to Vandenberg. There we were in a restored 18th century adobe mission, when there was a tremendous roar and a silver Atlas rose up over the hill and into the sky. Beautiful juxtaposition.

If the authorities had just said it was a routine test launch, there'd be no mystery and no big deal, in that area. Their perplexity is the real story, and that's the fascinating part. Either the US military accidentally launched a missile, or somebody's freelancing, in the middle of a known missile test range. We live in interesting times.

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