This facility provided the Air Force's SAC commanders with a pre and post attack shelter to conduct operations.  PACCS operations on the ground were paralleled with a EC-135 airborne command post aircraft which were based at Westover AFB which was 5 miles south of this facility.  In 1970 PACCS was relocated from Westover AFB to Grissom AFB, Indiana.  It is now owned by Amherst College and used as a library repository.  Communications were provided by private cable and microwave to Chesterfield and Springfield, as well as HF circuits.   Below is the 200 ft tower that sat on top of the bunker that supported a TM microwave link (passive reflector on tower, dish on roof of bunker) to the Chesterfield Communications site. A fifty foot microwave tower on top of the mountain still exists and can be seen as dot above the treeline just above and to the right of the top of the flagpole.  The microwave shot at the mountain top was two dishes connected together by a piece of waveguide.  The rather new concept using two dishes in this passive manner worked well.  The link was used to relay television conference calls between the Base Commander at Westover and the Battle Staff at The Notch.

NOTES:

1. The PACCS system was established by the Kennedy Administration to better control the nations massive nuclear firepower.  The PACCS system consisted of aircraft equipped with command and control facilities, that could serve as a command post in the event that the ground based facilities were destroyed.  The system consisted of Looking  Glass operating from Offutt AFB by SAC, the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP) operated by the National Command Authority, and the auxiliary command posts (one for each Air Force) located at Barksdale AFB, LA; Westover AFB, MA; and March AFB, CA.  These auxiliary ground based command post were matched with airborne command posts.  There were also four support squadrons located at Mountain Home AFB, ID; Lincoln AFB, NB; Lockbourne AFB, OH; and Plattsburg AFB, NY.  The support squadrons with B-47's modified with specialized communications equipment.

2. The Notch like its big brother Cheyenne Mountain had four redundant communications paths (two microwave and two buried cable).  One microwave path was from the top of the mountain to Westover AFB to the south, and the second microwave path was to the northwest to Chesterfield (L-3/L-4) and Peru (TD2).  Two buried cable routes also existed.  The southern route went underground to Westover AFB and then underground to the Springfield, MA central office (L-3).  The northern buried cable route went north to the town of Amherst where it entered a L-3 cable vault and connected to the "order wire" copper pairs that ran through the center of the L-3 cable to the 1ESS AUTOVON switch at Chesterfield.
 

INSIDE THE NOTCH

 Return to L-4 Home Page