I recently discovered a beuatiful little treasure in the form of a National
Geographic from Sept 65, the majority of which is a huge article on the US
Air Force at the time. The opening article was written by Gen LeMay who had
just retired. It was SAC's glory days, there were 800,000 people in the Air
Force, and Ed White is featured for the first American space walk only three
months before. It's a wonderful snapshot of history told from the time
when the XB-70 was still flying, the "radical l new" F-111 was in
development and the newest thing TAC was going to fly, and the B-47s hadn't
yet retired. Titan II missiles were still operational, Minuteman had only
just come into being, the B-2 wasn't even a thought in anyone's mind yet.
What a great opportunity to see what the thoughts and ideas at the time were
and to be able to overlay them with a historical perspective on how things
actually turned out.

Anyway, what I'm here to ask about is a system described called SAGE, Semi
Automatic Ground Environment, used on F102s and F-106s. It's described as a
remote control system whereby the pilots would scramble and begin the
intercept at which time ground controllers could take command of the
aircraft remotely, fly the intercept, launch missiles, and return the
aircraft to base. It sounds a bit advanced for 1965, though.

My question is, did this system really exist? Was it ever practically used?
What did the pilots think about it? Any of the ground controllers out there
who used it and could comment?

Cheers,
Shawn