The other thread about researching service history got me thinking about my own grandfather and didn't want to hyjack that thread. I've been thinking about how to try and research what my grandfather did after the war. All my family knows is that he worked at Pantex. From what I know is that he retired as a CWO4 from the Air Force at Randolph in the 50s as a jet engine mechanic before winding up at Pantex in Amarillo. I'm sure everything going on there back then was highly classified. Wonder if there are any records and if so if they're still classified. I have a TS/SCI but don't have a clue where I might start to investigate this. If anyone has any contacts at Pantex they could put me in touch with I'd be extremely appreciative

Yeah, I might know someone....trouble is they're really, really busy right now. So a few things...

First, hit the Internet up. For instance:

http://pantex.com/about/history

That page has a contact for someone in "cultural resources". You can also follow links there to the plant magazine, The Pantexan. The only links posted are for the WWII issues. I think they have digitized all of the magazines for all years. I don't know if they can do a keyword search on his name, but I'd ask that lady in cultural resources. Maybe he got mentioned in the company magazine.

Also, it doesn't really matter that you have a clearance, as you might expect, "need to know" trumps clearance.

If you didn't know, Pantex was a conventional arms plant during WWII. It closed with the Japanese surrender. But it reopened in 1951 as a nuclear weapons plant.

The level of secrecy has varied over the years. Procter and Gamble used to be the prime contractor, so the most you could get out of anyone about the plant was that they "made soap". Even in the 1980s, I asked a coworker what her husband did out there, and was told not to ask. Then during the Clinton administration, our whole family got to take a tour. They're back to secret again, but not crazy.

During the 1950s, I think the whole nuclear complex was kind of the wild west. I'm not sure what kind of records they kept. And while DOE is in charge, there have been a succession of contractors running the plant. So who knows where personnel records went.

My insider did say to get his name, and she will try to search the Pantexan records if she can find the time. (And if they are searchable) I'm afraid that there aren't any old farts still working there who would remember back that far.

I'm a bit of a buff on nuclear history, so if you have general questions, I might be able to fill you in.

And PM the name to me here on TexAgs.

Having grown up in Amarillo as a 2-3 year old kid, my mother and I lived in Army converted barracks housing while my mother worked at Pantex and dad was still overseas in WWII. Then in HS I delivered building materials, etc., during the 50's to various projects at Pantex I can say there was and has been through the years all sorts of "secrecy" - special clearances and passes required to work there - and individual jobs and job titles, etc., are very secretive. I spent some time out there during the Silas Mason & Hanger years as well.

Amarillo has lived under a cloud of "what if" re: Pantex as long as i can remember. For a long time no one who didn't work there really didn't know exactly what happens at Pantex. Of course, now it is fairly well known that the U.S. repository of nuclear weapons and their destruction occurs at Pantex. And that it is part of a sister facility in Tennessee - which is all part of "does it stay open, get consolidated - or what??"...

I am personally aware of some "safety" incidents and "exposure" lawsuits that affected some of my closest friends - some of whom are now deceased as a result of that exposure and whose families won settlements.

If Pantex were to close it would be a tremendous blow to the Amarillo economy. Much like the closing of Amarillo AFB in 1968. God forbid that either Pantex or Bell Helicopter, etc., should ever move out...

To follow, now that Trump has declared we will not be reducing our U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal further, and that we will be "improving and upgrading" to make our military stronger... - I suspect Pantex will be around for a long, loooong time. And, continue to work closely with bases in New Mexico - particularly Holloman, Sandia and Kirtland AFB. We should never place all our eggs in one basket. The runway at Amarillo's Rick Husband is part of the old Amarillo AFB and has runways built to withstand the biggest, heaviest payload aircraft the U.S. has ever built or will build for the foreseeable future (B-52's, Space Shuttle, etc.). It is a real benefit to the area and to keep Pantex open. Same for the old Clinton-Sherman AFB runways just across the border in OK.

In cold war years there was a list of targets in the U.S. that were considered top priority for hits from the Russians. Pantex was always near the top of that list and in the top 10.

Pantex is currently run by CNS, which also runs Y-12 in Tennessee.

However, the Pantex mission is unique, and that includes storage of Plutonium pits. Which have no where else to go, so Pantex will probably be in operation for hundreds of years.

They are still the only production plant that assembles, maintains, and disassembles nuclear weapons. Another unique mission that will not be moved, unless the government is willing to spend $$Billions$$.

I do know that Pantex has had at least one incident of the conventional explosive in a nuclear weapon going off and killing workers. To my knowledge, which does not include anything classified, there have been few radioactive events, and the plant, as a whole, is extremely safe from a radiological standpoint.

In the 50s and 60s, they used to use water to flush the cuttings from the machining of high explosives down an open ditch and let it evaporate. Some of that went in the soil, and has caused problems.

Regarding the modernization of the arsenal, that has been going on for a while, even under (Surprise!) Obama. Google up "B-61 Mod 12" for a ton of unclassified information.

Which brings up a side point, that NONE of the things I have or will post here are classified. My inside source does not discuss such things. But I read a lot of books and go to a lot of web sites. This information is all available for anyone to Google.

There is no museum at Pantex right now, and few artifacts in local museums. But anyone interested in this sort of thing should put the National Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque high on their bucket list.

http://www.nuclearmuseum.org/

And regarding the runways at Amarillo, in the 1980s, I had a coworker at the Bushland Ag Experiment Station who had been in the Air Force at Amarillo AFB. He always swore to me that the ends of the runway were 12-foot-thick concrete. And that there were direct pipelines from refineries in Borger to AAFB to deliver jet fuel without trucks. And there are railroad sidings where material from Pantex could go direct from the plant to the AFB. You can still see those on Google Maps.

I personally saw the construction at Amarillo Airport, when they were building the current terminal. It is on the ramp where B-52s used to be parked. Concrete there was easily 3 feet thick.

I am out there on a monthly basis as a contractor. All I will say about this place now is that it was run much better when B&W had the contract. CNS is a huge cluster. That's all I'll say.

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Then during the Clinton administration, our whole family got to take a tour. They're back to secret again, but not crazy.

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As you and I have discussed on this board before (some time ago) similar relaxing of security processes occurred at Los Alamos as well under Clinton and his BSC Dept of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary. Here are just two examples of BSC ideas that O'leary had:

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Hazel O'Leary did at least two things that would undermine the security of the United States and would result in classified nuclear weapons information being divulged:

...First, Mrs. O'Leary banned personnel badges that clearly indicated whether the bearer had a security clearance and, if so, how high. Her reasoning: Such badges were discriminatory. And second, she ended the practice of requiring reports to DOE headquarters about foreign nationals from "sensitive countries" who visited the unclassified areas of the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories.

Second:

Most notoriously, Clinton appointed an anti-military, environmental leftist Hazel O'Leary to be Secretary of Energy, a department responsible for the nation's nuclear weapons labs. O'Leary promptly surrounded herself with other political leftists (including one self-described "Marxist-Feminist") and anti-nuclear activists, appointing them as her assistant secretaries with responsibility for the security of the nuclear labs. In one of her first acts, O'Leary declassified eleven million pages of nuclear documents, including reports on 204 U.S. nuclear tests, describing the move as an act to safeguard the environment and a protest against a "bomb-building culture."

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http://constitutionalley.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2008.02.03_hazel_oleary.html

I have always been of the opinion that the lax security policies at Los Alamos at during that time played a major role in the Chinese getting highly classified design info on miniaturizing nuclear warheads. The same technology that the Norks are using to threaten us now.

On a side note, during the mid 50's I recall my dad (an AF nuke technician at Manzano AB at the time) having conversations with my mother about being offered a job at Pantex with American Car and Foundry, which I assume was the Pantex contractor at that time.

I also remember some of the younger AF guys who worked for my dad coming over to our house and talking about getting out and going to work for ACF. I distinctly remember that they talked about getting a substantial pay raise over their AF pay.

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I am out there on a monthly basis as a contractor. All I will say about this place now is that it was run much better when B&W had the contract. CNS is a huge cluster. That's all I'll say.

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I suspect you can blame that on the latest craze in the govt contracting world - LPTA - Lowest Priced Technically Acceptable. This guy explains that incredibly stupid concept very well IMO:

https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2014/09/02/insights-lohfeld-lpta-alternative.aspx

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One of the things I dislike most about lowest priced, technically acceptable (LPTA) procurements is that they are so misaligned with the values we have grown up with as government contractors.

No matter how hard I try, I just cannot get excited about writing a proposal where the objective is to provide the minimally acceptable technical solutiona solution that just squeaks by the technical evaluatorsinstead of one that dazzles them by striving for outstanding performance and showcases good ideas and innovations. I was brought up in an industry that prided itself on striving to be the best, and not one that sought to deliver minimally acceptable work to the government.

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I have a couple of friends who managed contractor support teams at the National Weather Service NEXRAD facility Norman where I used to work.

They told me that LPTA has been a disaster because when the contracts recently turned over (it happens every 5 years) the new contractor selected under LPTA guidelines got rid of a lot of highly experienced folks and hired mostly unqualified folks at much less pay and benefits. Yes, the contract costs are less for the government, but the performance is crap. Our SIL is a contractor supporting the AF at Scott AFB and has seen the same thing happen when several contracts recently turned over at Scott.

Wages do not matter when you work "on-site". All government facilities are prevailing wages. So that general laborer in your shop that makes minimum wage makes 13+ on site. Painters and HVAC sheet metal workers make as much or more than a high pressure pipe welder. I don't see the logic in that. LPTA is a pain. Especially when they hire engineers straight out of college with zero experience and let them decide a budget on a big job. Plus you have to price on-site work 2-3 times higher than normal just to put up with the abundance of paperwork and lost time just standing around waiting on the PSTR's, engineers, and security. An 8 hour work day on site will net you generally 4.5 hours of actual work. Takes almost twice as long because of the politics and dick measuring that goes on out there. That's where our hard earned tax dollars get wasted. I'll do work for the D.O.D before D.O.E any day. Way easier with D.O.D.