On October 12, 2008, I posted this to the Rimbach List:

I spent a good part of today with a retired CMSgt who worked for Raytheon at Eldorado AS south of San Angelo.  After the PAVE PAWS radar site was deactivated there and he helped move the radar equipment to Clear AS, AK, he worked on Shemya (9 weeks on the rock and 4 weeks back home for nearly 10 years).

He asked if I’d ever heard of a project called QUEEN MATCH, which I hadn’t.  It was a project to launch an ICBM from Shemya at the same time the USSR launched one of theirs toward Kamchatka.  Our missile was to be loaded with sensors to collect data from the Soviet ICBM (like the COBRA BALL missions).  The data package was to be parachuted back to earth and recovered over the Pacific.

There was only one launch from Shemya (Earckson AFB) in July ‘89 after a failed attempt in August ‘88.
http://www.astronautix.com/sites/earckson.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/aries.htm

He told me you can still see the silo and the gantry area where they laid out the missile before raising it and dropping it into the silo.  I just had to check it our on Google and here it is: http://tinyurl.com/3jnyov

Ya learn somethin’ new every day :O)

The guy who told me about QUEEN MATCH was going through his photo archives and came up with one he took of the launch site in June ‘93 when he was working there.

A ground-level view to go with the satellite image.