- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
All the pixels, none of the incoming enemy bombers, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53796724938
#photography
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This is a stitched imaged made from two side-by-side captures with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digaron-W lens and a Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50) on a Cambo WRS 1250 camera, shifted left/right +/- 15mm, producing a 230MP final image.
From 1958 through 1980, this incongruous four story (82 foot) monolith was the centerpiece of the “Almaden Air Force Station”, a long-range radar site that was part of NORAD’s SAGE early warning system. The blast-hardened concrete building served as the platform for an FPS-24 radar system, a massive 120 foot wide reflector that emitted a 5 megawatt VHF pulse, continuously rotating at 5 RPM.
Notoriously, the signal disrupted TV and radio reception throughout the San Jose area.
It’s unclear if the SAGE system would have actually been effective in detecting incoming bombers, which presumably would have employed radar jammers and other countermeasures. Fortunately, we never found out.
The huge rotating antenna (not shown) was removed shortly after the site’s decommissioning in 1980, but the building, a prominent local landmark visible from downtown San Jose, has been preserved.
I have mixed feelings about these cold war relics. On the one hand, they’re artifacts of what was perhaps humanity’s most dangerous folly to date, locking the world in a deadly game where the stakes only went up with each round. This doesn’t seem like something to commemorate or celebrate.
On the other hand, these objects, many now destroyed or decayed, serve as visible evidence of just how close to oblivion we are willing to go. And looked at from the right angle, they have stories to tell.
@[email protected] plus all those bomb shelters. I remember one girl hosting sleepovers in the one her parents built. Must have been circa 1961
File in the same category as Auschwitz-as-museum, perhaps? As slave-plantation that actual condemns slavery (vs. that fucking thing in LA that burned down… 🔥 )?
@[email protected] One can only learn from history if you remember it right? Too many people today don’t really understand the destruction that a single nuclear weapon can wreak. That the bombs dropped in Japan would be considered “tactical” today. These edifices serve to remind us a bit of that threat.
@[email protected] The contemporaneous Nike missile system was amazing as well–20-kiloton warheads on missiles with a range of 87 miles in “air defense” of cities across the US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nike
@[email protected] I’ve been wondering if I could capture a fitting picture of this from my street to reply with the next time you post this. Took my kids up there shortly after it was opened up to the public.
