The U.S. Army during the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. in the late 1950s deployed nearly 200 Nike Ajax missile batteries at 40 defense areas within the United States. The two local facilities were one near Cement Hill and one near Potrero Hills off of Highway 12.

Their locations were not secrets.

The Potrero Hills site was featured in two 1957 newspaper articles. One reported on Travis Elementary students going there on a field trip and the other covered the facility’s dedication ceremony where Marian Martin, a 17-year-old senior at Armijo High School, was crowned Miss Suisun City Site.

Tony Wade: Back in the Day

By 1959 the Potrero Hills Nike site had been abandoned by the Army. Solano County explored condemning the land and using it for a jail farm, but a company expressed interest in the location so they could . . . well . . . blow stuff up.

Explosive Technology, a new industry born of the space age, took the place of the missile site off of Highway 12 and opened in July 1965.

The company was started by Frank Burkdoll, Dr. N.R. Zabel and G. Ben Huber. The three men had worked together at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park from 1956 through 1960. Incidental to their primary research, they discovered a different use for explosives. They learned that packing explosives into a tube with a V-shaped groove could be used to cut metal, cement, wood and other materials.

They saw the potential marketability immediately so they left SRI, acquired financial backing and formed Explosive Technology. It became a subsidiary of Ducommun Inc., the oldest California company, established in the gold fields in 1849.

The company’s initial bread-and-butter product was a linear-shaped charge they named Jetcord for sale on the commercial market.

Military and defense applications for their handiwork included devices to make wayward Minutemen missiles self-destruct, a high-explosive charge that accelerated a blade or blades that could be used for bundle cutting or bolt breaking, and ones for parachute deployment, among others.

Most exciting was the company’s involvement with the Saturn, Gemini and Apollo space programs. Explosive Technology produced separation systems for rockets as well as ones that would “blow the hatch” off of space capsules once they had returned to Earth and splashed down in the ocean.

Explosive Technology had an open house in November 1965, hosted by the Fairfield-Suisun Chamber of Commerce. While the heavy rainfall would have scrubbed a launch of a NASA rocket that day, it didn’t stop more than 1,500 people from around the state showing up to see numerous exhibits. They included a half-size scale mock-up of the Apollo command module complete with dummies wearing actual astronaut space suits.

Over the next years, Explosive Technology added products used in road flares as well as Jet-Axe, a forcible entry and ventilation tool for firefighting that become a standard in fire departments across the U.S. and overseas.

But the sexiest products were those involving the space program. For several years each Apollo flight carried more than 50 devices designed and developed by Explosive Technology. A 1971 Daily Republic advertisement proudly touted “We Put Fairfield on the Moon” and listed several of the company’s products that had been utilized in lunar missions.

Explosive Technology in later years nearly doubled its size and provided explosive-actuated devices and subsystems for military aircraft including the F-15, F-18 and also made parts for the Space Shuttle. Explosive Technology was acquired in 2000 by aerospace and defense contractor Goodrich. Then it became UTC Aerospace Systems and is now Collins Aerospace.

Locals shared memories of Explosive Technology:

Joyce Nagel Jackson: My dad worked there as a machinist for 20-plus years after he retired from the Air Force. I worked there for about five years every winter – during my off season from traveling for rodeos. I tested stuff and blew it up.

Edwin Smits: I worked the graveyard shift. There was an old silo we worked in. None of the old equipment was there, but you could tell by the layout what went where.

Tom Lish: I worked out there for about a year. It was a good place to work – nice folks and I enjoyed it. It’s fun making things that go boom in the night.

Reach Fairfield writer Tony Wade at [email protected].

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