July 3, 2025 • 15 mins
Ambient Songs:
By CoAg
https://www.youtube.com/@co.agmusic1823
Intro Theme by Swift Junai:
https://www.instagram.com/swiftjunai/?hl=en
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6hf5nMJ8s6LJJfFR4OQ3lg
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1PoG2b18MHocWZA8zQgWjO
Writers and researchers: Jay Adams
https://instagram.com/jayadamsdigital?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ==
Jordan Gottschick https://www.youtube.com/@DerpsWithWolves/playlists
By CoAg
https://www.youtube.com/@co.agmusic1823
Intro Theme by Swift Junai:
https://www.instagram.com/swiftjunai/?hl=en
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6hf5nMJ8s6LJJfFR4OQ3lg
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1PoG2b18MHocWZA8zQgWjO
Writers and researchers: Jay Adams
https://instagram.com/jayadamsdigital?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ==
Jordan Gottschick https://www.youtube.com/@DerpsWithWolves/playlists
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Texas Tower four.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It was one of several towers like it that stood
miles of the coast in the middle of the Atlantic.
The work on it was nerve wracking, the weather was brutal,
and if something went wrong, the men on board were
truly stranded alone in the ocean. This is the horrifying
story of Texas Tower four, and as always, viewer discretion
is advised. In the nineteen fifties, the United States was
(00:34):
on edge almost like never before, with the Cold War
and full effect. Soviet bombers could theoretically be on their
way in any second, and if they made it across
the Atlantic Ocean undetected, it would be devastating. So the
US Air Force did what any anxious superpower would do
under the circumstances. It started building towers in the middle
of the ocean. Not just any towers, though, These were
(00:55):
known as Texas Towers, and they were massive radar platforms
planted miles off the coast in the Atlantic, greatly resembling
oil rigs you might see in the Texas oil fields,
and they were designed to spot enemy bombers before they
got too close, and hopes have given the US a
precious thirty to sixty minutes of warning time to scramble
jets and prepared defenses. Basically, if something deadly was heading
toward America, these towers were the eyes of nervously scanning
(01:17):
the horizon. Of these towers, Texas Tower four was the
boldest of the mall. It was planted sixty three miles
or one hundred and one kilometers off the coast of
Long Island, New York, and one hundred and eighty five
feet or fifty six meters of water. It was supposed
to be and in many ways was a technological wonder,
but from day one, Tower four was similarly cursed, not
in some metaphorical way, as in the tower gave off
(01:39):
bad vibes, but in the form of concrete flaws, support issues,
and a sort of ever present sense that the whole
operation might be one gust away from disaster.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Despite these issues, though the role it.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Played was crucial back then, that kind of early warning
system was everything. With Tower fore in place, the raidar
coverage was pushed hundreds of miles out to sea, given
the US an advantage it never had before the Cold War.
Tower four's journey from blueprint to ocean platform began December
of nineteen fifty six in south Portland, Maine. The job
went to J. Rich Steelers out of New York City,
(02:10):
paired with Morrison Knights and from Idaho. The two large
construction firms were then tasks were creating a stable enough
radar tower to ride out the fury of the North Atlantic,
and on paper, the plan was solid, build a tower
on land, floated out, anchor it down and plugging the radar,
and in fact, several months later, on June twenty eighth,
nineteen fifty seven, Tower four was successfully floated and towed
(02:30):
to its site. But the success of that step was relative.
Somewhere in the process, as the steel legs rocked in
the swells, two or three of these structural supports got
knocked loose. Obviously not ideal when you're about to plant
a top heavy tower in deep churning water. So faced
with the choice of fixing it on site or bringing
it back to land, the Air Force chose the quicker
of the two, which was to fix it where it
(02:51):
stood now. To visualize these towers for those who were
just listening, imagine a giant tripod. Each tower stood on
three long steel legs plus unged into the ocean floor.
These legs held up a sprawling platform nearly the size
of a football field. Then on top of that sat
massive radar domes like giant weatherproof beach balls. Along with
the living quarters, generators, and equipment. The towers had to
(03:14):
have everything the crew would need to live and work
sort of indefinitely, until supply runs were made periodically. Once
the tower was in position, As the crew tried to
anchor the legs into position, rough weather rolled in. The
storm then batted the braces, breaking one off entirely. These
braces were large horizontal and diagonal supports that criss crossed
the legs to stabilize the structure and were crucial to.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Keeping it standing.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
The Navy then tried to clean up the mess with
a set of underwater repairs, and the plan was to
replace the broken braces with new ones that would attach
the stubs of the original supports, since those stubs were
basically mangled leftovers. Though the new solution required clamping collars
or big steel sleeves bolted underwater around the damaged joints.
This was a jankee fix at best, and it didn't
really work. In fact, by the end of nineteen fifty eight,
(03:58):
a report titled Texas Tower Force Stability and Deficiencies made
it crystal clear that the structure was in trouble.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Divers found that half.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
The bolts could be yanked out by hand, somewhat even
the right size, and others had been shoved into holes
that were too wide, probably in a hurry to get
the job done. But even still, the mission rolled forward.
The radar domes went up in the form of three
giant rubber enclosures housing sensitive electronics, and the tower was
declared operational. It swayed and groaned and made the crew nervous,
but in terms of expanding US surveillance, it was doing
(04:27):
its job. Now. The Texas Towers might have been engineering marbles,
but life aboard them, and particularly the tower fort, was miserable.
To get airmen to even volunteer for rolls aboard the towers,
the Air Force had to get creative. They placed an
ad in the Air Force magazine that promised thirty days
on an island with great fishing, excellent food, modern housing,
and free movies every.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Night of the week.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
They positioned the work as if it were a little
offshore resort with a radar dish, and to sweeten the deal,
the Air Force promised two weeks of leaf for every
six spent on the towers. This obviously sounded charming enough
because applications flooded in, but the ADS didn't mentioned the
less palatable aspects of life abore the towers, like the
swaying or the bone rattling vibrations from the radar domes,
or the diesel generators that never stopped humming. The ADS
(05:09):
also neglected a detail condition that became known as tower fever,
which was the sense of dread that crept in after
too many days of grey skies, relentless wind, and no
way off. This is probably worse by the fact that
the tower structure wasn't just unstable, it was noisy. The
steel legs that were plunged into the ocean amplified distant
groans and booms, transmitting them upward like a massive tuning fork.
(05:30):
The whole thing was alive with the sounds of creaking
metal and the occasional unsettling rumble that reminded crew just
how far from shore they really were. Even when things
were common, they rarely were. In the North Atlantic, getting
tune from the tower was a logistical nightmare. Helicopter flights
were dangerous enough that choppers were always sent.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Out in pairs.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
One would land on the platform while the other hovered nearby,
just in case the first one went into the ocean,
and on bad weather days, which were common, the choppers
didn't shop at all. And then there was the donut.
This was an improvised boarding system straight out of a cartoon.
Picture yourself in a massive innertube from an aircraft tire
dangling from a crane high above the waters. You'd grab on,
hold tight and hope for the best as it was
(06:07):
lowered or even dropped down onto a violently rolling ship.
As you might imagine, even seasoned sailors and airmen wanted
no part of it. Despite these risks in the isolation, though,
there were also genuine attempts to boost morale and keep
it high. Hobby shops are cobbled together on board, Pizza
parties and barbecues were held, beer rations were handed out,
and yes, they really were movie nights. But the charm
(06:27):
wore off fast when the walls were vibrating and the
fog horn, the world's largest by the way, was blasting
in their ears.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Every twenty nine.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Seconds on foggy days. Suffice it to say, sleep was
tough to come by for those stationed on the towers,
and while they were built to handle the heavy seas,
with designed specks that claimed they could take one hundred
and twenty five mil per hour winds and waves excess
of thirty five feet or ten and a half meters,
even a fraction of those caused problems. In fact, Towers
two and three were positioned in significantly shallower waters than
(06:55):
Tower four, automatically making them more stable, but even they
weren't immune to the sickening movement of the ocean. Tower four, however,
lurched and weaved, and it didn't feel like you were
standing on something solid. It felt like you were constantly
riding it. This is why the airmen and civilian contracts
aboard Tower four nicknamed it old Shaky to make matters worse.
By the early nineteen sixties, the Texas Towers were already
(07:16):
a bit outdated when they were first conceived. Again, the
threat was Soviet bombers flying low across the Atlantic, but
by nineteen sixty one those bombers were replaced by intercontinental
ballistic missiles. These new threats didn't fly slow and low.
They rocketed a one thousand miles per hour. Tower four
couldn't even spot a missile until it was already too late.
The same thirty to sixty minute heads up it had
(07:37):
once promised had been whittled down to something close.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
To thirty seconds.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Despite this, though, the military decided to keep the tower
staffed because of the threat of Soviet salvage. The US
knew Russian ships were lingering nearby, and if any of
the towers were left unmanned, there was the real fear
that the Soviets would swoop in, grab the radar technology,
and sail away with US secrets. So it was reasoned
that it was better to keep a small crew board
and hold the line, even if that line was rusting
(08:01):
and swaying in the wind. By early nineteen sixty one,
the crew board Tower four had been scaled down from
seventy to just twenty eight, which included fourteen airmen and
fourteen civilian contractors, most of them repairmen. Their job wasn't
so much defending the skies anymore as it was patching
up a dying structure and keeping an eye out for
unwelcome guests. Meanwhile, the tower itself was unborrowed time. The
(08:21):
legs were still damaged from storms years earlier, and the
retrofitted repairs hadn't held up. But the big blow came
in September of nineteen sixty with Hurricane Donna. The storm
hit the tower with one hundred and thirty two mile
per hour winds and waves at more than fifty feet
or fifteen meters high, far exceeding the design specs. When
Hurricane Donna was done, Tower four was still standing, but
just barely. Inspections afterward revealed the underwater bracing had cracked
(08:45):
and shifted, causing the tower to lose nearly half of
its structural strength. At this point, it was basically one
good hit away from collapse, but it stayed manned, and disturbingly,
everyone was aware of these issues.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
And knew it wasn't safe.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
They didn't need a fresh inspection report or a team
of divers to tell that, though just living on it
made it obvious. It started creaking more than usual and
swaying water than it had before. In fact, the crew
would often even joke with one another and warned that
no one should ever shape with the straight rasor on board.
This light touch of humor might have been the only
and best way to deal with the fear that permitted
the crew, and beyond that, the vibrations some of the
(09:19):
radar equipment, generators, and even the ocean itself were also
more intense. Captain Gordon Felon, the man in charge on
Tower FOR, apparently, repeatedly requested complete evacuations in the tower.
He sent message after message to his senior officers imploring
them to give him the authority, but his requests were
always denied. The top brass was always still more concerned
with Soviet salvage. This would all culminate in mid January
(09:41):
when the tower got troubling news. Captain six Do Mengual,
commanding officer of the Navy supply ship that made trips
out to Tower For, warned Gordon directly that something nasty
was brewing. Seas were getting rough and winds were shifting.
If they were going to evacuate, they needed to start now.
But Gordon still didn't have the authority to pull his crew.
That power was still held with the superiors safely in
(10:02):
land at Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod. On
the evening of January fourteenth, the weather advisory called for
winds between forty six and sixty nine miles per hour.
This wasn't welcome news aboard tower for but it also
wasn't anything the tower hadn't already survived. In fact, just
six days earlier it had gone through the same conditions
without any major issues. But then the following day, on
January fifteenth, the storm intensified.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
At ten am.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Gordon was asked if he was worried, and he responded
that it didn't matter because it was already too late
to evacuate. Conditions had deteriorated fast and helicopter flights were impossible.
The waves were also too violent for the doughnut or
any other transfer method. The window was shut, and for
all intents and purposes, the crew of twenty eight at
board Tower fort was stuck to write it out. That afternoon,
around one pm, Gordon made a chilling.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Call to his wife.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
He told her that the tower was moving more than
usual and warned that as the tower fell into the ocean,
none of them would survive. There would be no rescue,
just the cold Atlantic. And that was before the forecast
was updated at three thirty pm to reflect wind gus
up to eighty six miles per hour. Thirty minutes later,
at four pm, Gordon radioed OTIS to report a loud
cracking sound and a noticeable increase in the tower sway. Finally,
(11:10):
permission came down and Gordon was directly authorized to order
an evacuation, but he and everyone aboard knew it was
probably already too late. The weather had gotten even worse,
and so instead of helicopters, the Navy and Coast Guard
dispatched ships to the tower to initiate the evacuation, but
they were still hours away and the storm was already
on top of the tower. Gordon then called his wife
again at six pm, and this time he reported waves
at thirty five feet high and wins in excess of
(11:32):
ninety eight miles per hour. The crew meanwhile was on
deck throwing classified materials, including literal safes filled with secret documents,
overboard to prevent them from falling to enemy hands should the.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Tower be successfully evacuated.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Then at six forty five pm, Tower Force final distress
call crackled across the radio, reporting that the tower was
breaking up. About fifteen minutes later, Gordon radioed six to
one last time and warned them to get the ship
to the safety of port somewhere as.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Quickly as he could.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Six Oh then reluctantly agreed, knowing that it was right move,
and wheeled the supply ship round. He then intently watched
the radar blip representing Tower four in the screen in
front of him until seven twenty eight pm, when it
completely vanished. The entire structure had collapsed into the Atlantic,
taking all twenty eight men with it. Not a single
man survived, and only two of the bodies were ever recovered.
(12:18):
When Tower four finally slipped beneath the Atlantic, it left
a wake of outrage, confusion, and grief that stretched from
the icy waters off Long Island all the way to
the halls of Congress at Otis Air Force Base, where
the tower had been monitored and managed. The response was fast,
but far from comforting. A board of inquiry was convened immediately,
but it didn't take long for heads to start rolling.
As the investigation got under weight, it was learned that
(12:40):
a superior officers had given Gordon the authority to order
evacuation of Tower four in the event that he deemed unnecessary.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
In the day's leaped to the collapse.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It was just that no one bothered to inform Gordon
of this. A colonel, who was the acting commander of
the Boston Air Force Defense Sector, was then charged with
involuntary manslaughter, and two other officers were also charged with
dereliction of duty. This sounded like accountability and looked like justice,
but it didn't last. By June of that same year,
the charges against the commanding officer and executive officer were dropped,
(13:08):
and in August a court martial board dismissed all charges
against the colonel. Just like that, the legal fallout fizzled.
No one was had responsible, and the message was loud
and clear. Yes, mistakes were made, but apparently no one
had actually made them. This obviously didn't sit well with anyone,
and especially not the families of the twenty eight men
who had lost their lives. Before the charges were dropped
over the Senate stepped in and held hearings. This time,
(13:30):
the conclusion pulled no punches. Human error, the committee said,
was at the heart of it. All engineers, building contractors,
the Air Force, and the Navy. Everyone had a hand.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
On the wheel.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
The Navy in particular, though, came unto fire for how
it supervised the construction and repair of the tower. One
jaw dropping revelation also then came from the seabed itself.
Tower Too, which was one of the more stable platforms
positioned in much shallow water, had its legs driven forty
eight feet or about fifteen meters into the ocean floor.
The legs of Tower four were sunk just eighteen feet
or boith five meters into the sandy bottom that was
(14:02):
all less than half the depth and sitting in far deeper,
more treacherous water. It was like building a high rise
on wet sand and then being surprised when it tilted. Meanwhile,
back in the civilian world, the public was left with
the haunting question of how this could have happened.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
How could a.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Tower build what the express purpose of saving lives be
the cause of so many deaths. Unfortunately, there were no
satisfying answers, just a series of shrugged shoulders, legal loopholes,
and quietly reassigned careers. In the end, Texas towerfour became
a symbol not of Cold War might, but of what
happens when bureaucracy and faulty engineering collide in a place
where failure isn't an option. Today, what's left of Tower
(14:37):
four still rests on the ocean floor, one hundred and
eighty five feet below the surface. The site is deep
enough to keep casual divers away, but shallow enough for
experienced wrecked hours to explore if they're brave enough to
descend into the graveyard. The wreck has since become part
of the seafloor, colonized by marine life. But if you
know the story, it's impossible to look at those remains
without feeling the weight of what happened there. And for
decades most people forgot about the Texas Towers. They were
(15:00):
a Cold War experiment that never really worked, pushed aside
by better technology, but Tower four left a scar. The
men who died up there didn't go down in battle.
They weren't lost in a firefight or taken by enemy hands.
They were just doing their jobs, following orders and trusting
that someone somewhere had made sure that the ground or
in this case, the platform, was solid beneath their feet.
This is Texas Tower four.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It was one of several towers like it that stood
miles of the coast in the middle of the Atlantic.
The work on it was nerve wracking, the weather was brutal,
and if something went wrong, the men on board were
truly stranded alone in the ocean. This is the horrifying
story of Texas Tower four, and as always, viewer discretion
is advised. In the nineteen fifties, the United States was
(00:34):
on edge almost like never before, with the Cold War
and full effect. Soviet bombers could theoretically be on their
way in any second, and if they made it across
the Atlantic Ocean undetected, it would be devastating. So the
US Air Force did what any anxious superpower would do
under the circumstances. It started building towers in the middle
of the ocean. Not just any towers, though, These were
(00:55):
known as Texas Towers, and they were massive radar platforms
planted miles off the coast in the Atlantic, greatly resembling
oil rigs you might see in the Texas oil fields,
and they were designed to spot enemy bombers before they
got too close, and hopes have given the US a
precious thirty to sixty minutes of warning time to scramble
jets and prepared defenses. Basically, if something deadly was heading
toward America, these towers were the eyes of nervously scanning
(01:17):
the horizon. Of these towers, Texas Tower four was the
boldest of the mall. It was planted sixty three miles
or one hundred and one kilometers off the coast of
Long Island, New York, and one hundred and eighty five
feet or fifty six meters of water. It was supposed
to be and in many ways was a technological wonder,
but from day one, Tower four was similarly cursed, not
in some metaphorical way, as in the tower gave off
(01:39):
bad vibes, but in the form of concrete flaws, support issues,
and a sort of ever present sense that the whole
operation might be one gust away from disaster.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Despite these issues, though the role it.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Played was crucial back then, that kind of early warning
system was everything. With Tower fore in place, the raidar
coverage was pushed hundreds of miles out to sea, given
the US an advantage it never had before the Cold War.
Tower four's journey from blueprint to ocean platform began December
of nineteen fifty six in south Portland, Maine. The job
went to J. Rich Steelers out of New York City,
(02:10):
paired with Morrison Knights and from Idaho. The two large
construction firms were then tasks were creating a stable enough
radar tower to ride out the fury of the North Atlantic,
and on paper, the plan was solid, build a tower
on land, floated out, anchor it down and plugging the radar,
and in fact, several months later, on June twenty eighth,
nineteen fifty seven, Tower four was successfully floated and towed
(02:30):
to its site. But the success of that step was relative.
Somewhere in the process, as the steel legs rocked in
the swells, two or three of these structural supports got
knocked loose. Obviously not ideal when you're about to plant
a top heavy tower in deep churning water. So faced
with the choice of fixing it on site or bringing
it back to land, the Air Force chose the quicker
of the two, which was to fix it where it
(02:51):
stood now. To visualize these towers for those who were
just listening, imagine a giant tripod. Each tower stood on
three long steel legs plus unged into the ocean floor.
These legs held up a sprawling platform nearly the size
of a football field. Then on top of that sat
massive radar domes like giant weatherproof beach balls. Along with
the living quarters, generators, and equipment. The towers had to
(03:14):
have everything the crew would need to live and work
sort of indefinitely, until supply runs were made periodically. Once
the tower was in position, As the crew tried to
anchor the legs into position, rough weather rolled in. The
storm then batted the braces, breaking one off entirely. These
braces were large horizontal and diagonal supports that criss crossed
the legs to stabilize the structure and were crucial to.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Keeping it standing.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
The Navy then tried to clean up the mess with
a set of underwater repairs, and the plan was to
replace the broken braces with new ones that would attach
the stubs of the original supports, since those stubs were
basically mangled leftovers. Though the new solution required clamping collars
or big steel sleeves bolted underwater around the damaged joints.
This was a jankee fix at best, and it didn't
really work. In fact, by the end of nineteen fifty eight,
(03:58):
a report titled Texas Tower Force Stability and Deficiencies made
it crystal clear that the structure was in trouble.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Divers found that half.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
The bolts could be yanked out by hand, somewhat even
the right size, and others had been shoved into holes
that were too wide, probably in a hurry to get
the job done. But even still, the mission rolled forward.
The radar domes went up in the form of three
giant rubber enclosures housing sensitive electronics, and the tower was
declared operational. It swayed and groaned and made the crew nervous,
but in terms of expanding US surveillance, it was doing
(04:27):
its job. Now. The Texas Towers might have been engineering marbles,
but life aboard them, and particularly the tower fort, was miserable.
To get airmen to even volunteer for rolls aboard the towers,
the Air Force had to get creative. They placed an
ad in the Air Force magazine that promised thirty days
on an island with great fishing, excellent food, modern housing,
and free movies every.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Night of the week.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
They positioned the work as if it were a little
offshore resort with a radar dish, and to sweeten the deal,
the Air Force promised two weeks of leaf for every
six spent on the towers. This obviously sounded charming enough
because applications flooded in, but the ADS didn't mentioned the
less palatable aspects of life abore the towers, like the
swaying or the bone rattling vibrations from the radar domes,
or the diesel generators that never stopped humming. The ADS
(05:09):
also neglected a detail condition that became known as tower fever,
which was the sense of dread that crept in after
too many days of grey skies, relentless wind, and no
way off. This is probably worse by the fact that
the tower structure wasn't just unstable, it was noisy. The
steel legs that were plunged into the ocean amplified distant
groans and booms, transmitting them upward like a massive tuning fork.
(05:30):
The whole thing was alive with the sounds of creaking
metal and the occasional unsettling rumble that reminded crew just
how far from shore they really were. Even when things
were common, they rarely were. In the North Atlantic, getting
tune from the tower was a logistical nightmare. Helicopter flights
were dangerous enough that choppers were always sent.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Out in pairs.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
One would land on the platform while the other hovered nearby,
just in case the first one went into the ocean,
and on bad weather days, which were common, the choppers
didn't shop at all. And then there was the donut.
This was an improvised boarding system straight out of a cartoon.
Picture yourself in a massive innertube from an aircraft tire
dangling from a crane high above the waters. You'd grab on,
hold tight and hope for the best as it was
(06:07):
lowered or even dropped down onto a violently rolling ship.
As you might imagine, even seasoned sailors and airmen wanted
no part of it. Despite these risks in the isolation, though,
there were also genuine attempts to boost morale and keep
it high. Hobby shops are cobbled together on board, Pizza
parties and barbecues were held, beer rations were handed out,
and yes, they really were movie nights. But the charm
(06:27):
wore off fast when the walls were vibrating and the
fog horn, the world's largest by the way, was blasting
in their ears.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Every twenty nine.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Seconds on foggy days. Suffice it to say, sleep was
tough to come by for those stationed on the towers,
and while they were built to handle the heavy seas,
with designed specks that claimed they could take one hundred
and twenty five mil per hour winds and waves excess
of thirty five feet or ten and a half meters,
even a fraction of those caused problems. In fact, Towers
two and three were positioned in significantly shallower waters than
(06:55):
Tower four, automatically making them more stable, but even they
weren't immune to the sickening movement of the ocean. Tower four, however,
lurched and weaved, and it didn't feel like you were
standing on something solid. It felt like you were constantly
riding it. This is why the airmen and civilian contracts
aboard Tower four nicknamed it old Shaky to make matters worse.
By the early nineteen sixties, the Texas Towers were already
(07:16):
a bit outdated when they were first conceived. Again, the
threat was Soviet bombers flying low across the Atlantic, but
by nineteen sixty one those bombers were replaced by intercontinental
ballistic missiles. These new threats didn't fly slow and low.
They rocketed a one thousand miles per hour. Tower four
couldn't even spot a missile until it was already too late.
The same thirty to sixty minute heads up it had
(07:37):
once promised had been whittled down to something close.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
To thirty seconds.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Despite this, though, the military decided to keep the tower
staffed because of the threat of Soviet salvage. The US
knew Russian ships were lingering nearby, and if any of
the towers were left unmanned, there was the real fear
that the Soviets would swoop in, grab the radar technology,
and sail away with US secrets. So it was reasoned
that it was better to keep a small crew board
and hold the line, even if that line was rusting
(08:01):
and swaying in the wind. By early nineteen sixty one,
the crew board Tower four had been scaled down from
seventy to just twenty eight, which included fourteen airmen and
fourteen civilian contractors, most of them repairmen. Their job wasn't
so much defending the skies anymore as it was patching
up a dying structure and keeping an eye out for
unwelcome guests. Meanwhile, the tower itself was unborrowed time. The
(08:21):
legs were still damaged from storms years earlier, and the
retrofitted repairs hadn't held up. But the big blow came
in September of nineteen sixty with Hurricane Donna. The storm
hit the tower with one hundred and thirty two mile
per hour winds and waves at more than fifty feet
or fifteen meters high, far exceeding the design specs. When
Hurricane Donna was done, Tower four was still standing, but
just barely. Inspections afterward revealed the underwater bracing had cracked
(08:45):
and shifted, causing the tower to lose nearly half of
its structural strength. At this point, it was basically one
good hit away from collapse, but it stayed manned, and disturbingly,
everyone was aware of these issues.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
And knew it wasn't safe.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
They didn't need a fresh inspection report or a team
of divers to tell that, though just living on it
made it obvious. It started creaking more than usual and
swaying water than it had before. In fact, the crew
would often even joke with one another and warned that
no one should ever shape with the straight rasor on board.
This light touch of humor might have been the only
and best way to deal with the fear that permitted
the crew, and beyond that, the vibrations some of the
(09:19):
radar equipment, generators, and even the ocean itself were also
more intense. Captain Gordon Felon, the man in charge on
Tower FOR, apparently, repeatedly requested complete evacuations in the tower.
He sent message after message to his senior officers imploring
them to give him the authority, but his requests were
always denied. The top brass was always still more concerned
with Soviet salvage. This would all culminate in mid January
(09:41):
when the tower got troubling news. Captain six Do Mengual,
commanding officer of the Navy supply ship that made trips
out to Tower For, warned Gordon directly that something nasty
was brewing. Seas were getting rough and winds were shifting.
If they were going to evacuate, they needed to start now.
But Gordon still didn't have the authority to pull his crew.
That power was still held with the superiors safely in
(10:02):
land at Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod. On
the evening of January fourteenth, the weather advisory called for
winds between forty six and sixty nine miles per hour.
This wasn't welcome news aboard tower for but it also
wasn't anything the tower hadn't already survived. In fact, just
six days earlier it had gone through the same conditions
without any major issues. But then the following day, on
January fifteenth, the storm intensified.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
At ten am.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Gordon was asked if he was worried, and he responded
that it didn't matter because it was already too late
to evacuate. Conditions had deteriorated fast and helicopter flights were impossible.
The waves were also too violent for the doughnut or
any other transfer method. The window was shut, and for
all intents and purposes, the crew of twenty eight at
board Tower fort was stuck to write it out. That afternoon,
around one pm, Gordon made a chilling.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Call to his wife.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
He told her that the tower was moving more than
usual and warned that as the tower fell into the ocean,
none of them would survive. There would be no rescue,
just the cold Atlantic. And that was before the forecast
was updated at three thirty pm to reflect wind gus
up to eighty six miles per hour. Thirty minutes later,
at four pm, Gordon radioed OTIS to report a loud
cracking sound and a noticeable increase in the tower sway. Finally,
(11:10):
permission came down and Gordon was directly authorized to order
an evacuation, but he and everyone aboard knew it was
probably already too late. The weather had gotten even worse,
and so instead of helicopters, the Navy and Coast Guard
dispatched ships to the tower to initiate the evacuation, but
they were still hours away and the storm was already
on top of the tower. Gordon then called his wife
again at six pm, and this time he reported waves
at thirty five feet high and wins in excess of
(11:32):
ninety eight miles per hour. The crew meanwhile was on
deck throwing classified materials, including literal safes filled with secret documents,
overboard to prevent them from falling to enemy hands should the.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Tower be successfully evacuated.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Then at six forty five pm, Tower Force final distress
call crackled across the radio, reporting that the tower was
breaking up. About fifteen minutes later, Gordon radioed six to
one last time and warned them to get the ship
to the safety of port somewhere as.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Quickly as he could.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Six Oh then reluctantly agreed, knowing that it was right move,
and wheeled the supply ship round. He then intently watched
the radar blip representing Tower four in the screen in
front of him until seven twenty eight pm, when it
completely vanished. The entire structure had collapsed into the Atlantic,
taking all twenty eight men with it. Not a single
man survived, and only two of the bodies were ever recovered.
(12:18):
When Tower four finally slipped beneath the Atlantic, it left
a wake of outrage, confusion, and grief that stretched from
the icy waters off Long Island all the way to
the halls of Congress at Otis Air Force Base, where
the tower had been monitored and managed. The response was fast,
but far from comforting. A board of inquiry was convened immediately,
but it didn't take long for heads to start rolling.
As the investigation got under weight, it was learned that
(12:40):
a superior officers had given Gordon the authority to order
evacuation of Tower four in the event that he deemed unnecessary.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
In the day's leaped to the collapse.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It was just that no one bothered to inform Gordon
of this. A colonel, who was the acting commander of
the Boston Air Force Defense Sector, was then charged with
involuntary manslaughter, and two other officers were also charged with
dereliction of duty. This sounded like accountability and looked like justice,
but it didn't last. By June of that same year,
the charges against the commanding officer and executive officer were dropped,
(13:08):
and in August a court martial board dismissed all charges
against the colonel. Just like that, the legal fallout fizzled.
No one was had responsible, and the message was loud
and clear. Yes, mistakes were made, but apparently no one
had actually made them. This obviously didn't sit well with anyone,
and especially not the families of the twenty eight men
who had lost their lives. Before the charges were dropped
over the Senate stepped in and held hearings. This time,
(13:30):
the conclusion pulled no punches. Human error, the committee said,
was at the heart of it. All engineers, building contractors,
the Air Force, and the Navy. Everyone had a hand.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
On the wheel.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
The Navy in particular, though, came unto fire for how
it supervised the construction and repair of the tower. One
jaw dropping revelation also then came from the seabed itself.
Tower Too, which was one of the more stable platforms
positioned in much shallow water, had its legs driven forty
eight feet or about fifteen meters into the ocean floor.
The legs of Tower four were sunk just eighteen feet
or boith five meters into the sandy bottom that was
(14:02):
all less than half the depth and sitting in far deeper,
more treacherous water. It was like building a high rise
on wet sand and then being surprised when it tilted. Meanwhile,
back in the civilian world, the public was left with
the haunting question of how this could have happened.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
How could a.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Tower build what the express purpose of saving lives be
the cause of so many deaths. Unfortunately, there were no
satisfying answers, just a series of shrugged shoulders, legal loopholes,
and quietly reassigned careers. In the end, Texas towerfour became
a symbol not of Cold War might, but of what
happens when bureaucracy and faulty engineering collide in a place
where failure isn't an option. Today, what's left of Tower
(14:37):
four still rests on the ocean floor, one hundred and
eighty five feet below the surface. The site is deep
enough to keep casual divers away, but shallow enough for
experienced wrecked hours to explore if they're brave enough to
descend into the graveyard. The wreck has since become part
of the seafloor, colonized by marine life. But if you
know the story, it's impossible to look at those remains
without feeling the weight of what happened there. And for
decades most people forgot about the Texas Towers. They were
(15:00):
a Cold War experiment that never really worked, pushed aside
by better technology, but Tower four left a scar. The
men who died up there didn't go down in battle.
They weren't lost in a firefight or taken by enemy hands.
They were just doing their jobs, following orders and trusting
that someone somewhere had made sure that the ground or
in this case, the platform, was solid beneath their feet.
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