BCB Optics site

The photo above shows the BCB (Battery Control Building) on Kwajalein Island.  The two small domes atop the main building contained BC-4 Ballistic cameras (shown at left, and below).  The dome atop the small green building contained the RADOT R1.  The control electronics for the BC-4s and RADOT were inside the main building.  The antennae near the building are part of the HF communications station which was also located in the BCB.

This is the B1B Ballistic Camera.  Operating this camera for ICBM reentries was always an incredible experience.  I had a front row seat here for some amazing displays of ballistic pyrotechnics!  The camera was computer controlled, and once it was set up there wasn't much else to do but watch the show, and press the "camera on" button just prior to reentry.

Both of the BC-4 ballistic cameras when we had them in the building for servicing. The one on the left is B1B, which had a longer focal length and a smaller field of view.

RADOT R1, a Recording Automatic Digital Optical Tracker, for close-up views of incoming ballistic reentry vehicles.  It was computer controlled, but it also had a joystick and eyepiece for manual tracking, like a big arcade game.

This is the electronics that controlled the RADOT and ballistic cameras at the BCB.  This stuff was already ancient when I was working here in the early 1980s.  The two SEL 810A computers were transistorised monsters from the days before the advent of the silicon chip.  They had 8K of magnetic core memory, and a set of light bulbs and toggle switches for loading registers.  Programs were loaded from paper tapes via the teletypes.

Sometimes the computers just wouldn't cooperate!