This 1/80th scale model represents Texas Tower # 2 (TT-2) which was situated off the Atlantic coast and was located 110 miles east of Cape Cod MA. Texas Towers, resembling oil drilling platforms used in the Gulf of Mexico, were huge manned radar platforms fastened to the ocean floor and served as early warning sites for the Air Defense Command (ADC). The Air Force occupied TT-2 in December of 1955 and was the first of three Texas Towers built.
The function of the Texas Towers, utilizing one AN/FPS-20A or AN/FPS-67 search radar and two AN/FPS-6 height-finder radars, was to scan the skies some 200 to 250 nautical miles seaward, providing an additional thirty-minute attack warning to prepare air-defense systems for the anticipated Soviet bomber threat.
Typically, six officers and forty-eight airmen staffed each tower, working in shifts of one month aboard a tower and one month ashore. The tower's instability, in the face of Atlantic storms, eventually negated whatever real advantage the towers had. On January 15, 1961, a fierce winter gale bore in on Texas Tower # 4 and ripped off all three of its supporting legs in succession. Its 28 occupants sank with the platform into the sea; none survived. The Air Force decommissioned the last of of the towers on March 25, 1963. The Texas Towers were replaced by the USAF EC-121 Warning Star airborne early warning aircraft.
The donor of this exhibit, T/SGT (Retired) Frederick Aschert of Colorado Springs CO, was stationed on Texas Tower # 2. He meticulously hand built this model over a seven year period and donated it to the Peterson Museum in 1996.
http://www.petemuseum.org
The virtual museum website radomes.org contains many links about Texas Towers. Click here for a place to get started or here for the 1952-1964 ADC History of Texas Towers, written by historian Thomas W. Ray.
