Caribou Air Force Station
Caribou Air Force Station, also known as North River Depot and East Loring, is a defunct Air Force Station that operated from 1951 until some time when it was absorbed into Loring Air Force Base in 1962. It was located in Limestone, Maine, adjacent to Loring. Between 1951 and 1962 Caribou was an Operational Storage Site for Air Materiel Command (AMC-OSS), one of five in the United States, and the weapons storage and maintenance facility for Loring alert aircraft.
Caribou Air Force Station
Storage Structure ‘A’ (Building No. 260) was the first “Nuclear Capsule Storage Building”. This building was designed to withstand a direct hit in case of an attack. During its early history, it was the most defended structure at the site. A chain link fence with six strands of barbed wire on two out riggers (three strands on each side) originally surrounded the building. A gate in the fence allowed access to the structure. The structure was 10 feet thick on the sides, 10 feet thick on the bottom (some of which is buried below ground), and more than 20 feet thick above the ceiling of the vaults. Inside each vault were permanently installed steel racks of shelves. There were 16 full racks (3 shelves per rack), and 4 single racks (3 shelves per rack). The total number of shelves equaled 60. On each shelf was stored a unique device. Subsequent structural effects testing of nuclear weapons led to the determination that the design of Building No. 260 rendered it top heavy. The structure could be toppled and subsequently destroyed by the precursor wave of a weapon detonated at very low altitude or at the surface. This information led to the design of a new capsule storage structure.