Post Script
This is not Mitchel AFB, but...
Photo by Anthony Wencer
In 1958, while plans to wind down Mitchel AFB were being made, my father and I attended the annual Mineola Fair (what the Long Island Fair used to be called) at Roosevelt Raceway, practically next door to Mitchel on the old Hempstead Plains Aerodrome grounds. On the way into the ticket gates, attendees could see on display a tactical guided missile on its mobile launcher. The TM-61 Matador was a surface-to-surface weapon with a flight range of over 600 miles; it typically was armed with a 20 kiloton nuclear warhead.
Looking back now as an adult, I see this display as a reminder of how real the Cold War sometimes felt, and I think how ironic it was to place such a thing at a traditional end-of-summer fair. The underlying message, I guess, is that even when we didn't think about it, the Cold War never really went away.
The Matador also was a symbol of how the world was changing - the USAF was moving into new realms, leaving Mitchel and many other traditional bases behind.
End of Part One
