Airman restores aged missile

  • Published
  • By Chris Willis
  • 341st Missile Wing Public Affairs
MALMSTROM AIR FORCE BASE, Mont. --  Several times a week, Airmen drive to and from a missile alert facility passing Lewistown, a small town in central Montana. In the center of the town is a museum with a Minuteman I missile on display. Nobody really knows how it got there or why it's there. Some people in the city call it the lonely missile, while others say it was placed there for deterrence. The only thing for sure is the missile was decaying.

2nd Lt. Angie Phillips, 490th Missile Squadron deputy missile combat crew commander, an Air Force Academy graduate, is one of the Airmen that drive the route several days a week. She grew up in the Air Force, her father was in the Air Force and his father was in the Air Force. She jokes that "it's kind of just a family thing."

After seeing the missile several times a week, Phillips, disappointed in its appearance, decided to do something about it.

"On my third alert, I was on my way to the launch control center and saw this missile on the side of the road," she said. "I would have never thought a Minuteman I missile would be on display."

New to the squadron, she decided to contact her flight commander and asked if anybody had been working to restore it. 

"Nobody was doing anything to fix it up which surprised me," she said. "I felt like it really needed to get fixed."

She went online to find out more about the missile in Lewistown but nothing popped up. 

"I then went out to the base museum and found only one small article from 1969," she said. "They really had no great information about it, so I took time from one of my off days and asked around at the Lewistown museum, and they didn't really know anything about it either." 

Phillips then called the National Museum of the Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. They started digging and found out it was part of several test pieces used for the Minuteman I missile.

"I went to the town trying to see if anybody knew someone who was there when the missile was put in the ground around 1969, but once again I got limited information," she said. "I then asked if I could take on the project to restore the missile."

In the middle of the project, Phillips was notified she was picked to compete in the Air Force Global Strike Challenge. Global Strike Challenge is the world's premier bomber, intercontinental ballistic missile and security forces competition.

"I had to balance between prepping for Global Strike Challenge in the evening and working on the missile in the morning," she said. "Working on both called for some flexibility."

After the competition was completed Phillips went right back to work on the missile, with limited resources and information.

"The town really got together getting lift cranes and bucket trucks, they would tap out and take turns scrapping the paint off," she said.

After almost six months of scraping old paint, applying new paint and fighting of bad weather, the missile was restored to its original glory.

"The town takes so much pride in their restored missile," said Phillips.

Lewistown now kind of sees Phillips as a representative for the base. The town now has bigger plans to represent the missile wing in the museum. 

"When I drive by the missile I look at it and think 'I helped with that project' but it's more than that, I think about all the hard work from others that did more than I did," she says humbly. "There are so many people in the town that were so amazing, it was the town that came together and got this project done."

When asked what inspired and motivated her to take on such a huge project Phillips just simply stated, "What motivates me is the sense of pride. Pride in what my job does and pride of being in the Air Force."