Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

The presence of a white hazy cloud on the other side of blast door 8 was ominous. Regardless of whether it was fuel vapor or smoke, it shouldn’t have been there when Gregory Lester opened the door, hoping to grab the RFHCOs. That meant blast door 9, leading to the cableway and the silo, had somehow been breached. That meant blast door 8 was all that stood between the men in the launch control center and a cloud of toxic, perhaps explosive fumes. The plan to reenter the silo was scrapped. Captain Mazzaro had already asked for permission to evacuate. Now he asked for it again, and Heineman, speaking on behalf of his PTS crew, wholeheartedly backed the request.

At the Little Rock command post, the hazard team debated what to do next. For the moment, their options were limited. The PTS team topside was still missing. Colonel Morris and Jeff Kennedy were en route in the helicopter but hadn’t brought along air packs and RFHCOs. Rodney Holder, the missile systems analyst technician at 4–7, was getting ready to power down the missile, so that a stray electrical spark wouldn’t ignite fuel vapor in the silo. Once the main circuit breakers were shut off, the men in the control center could do little more than stare at the changing tank pressures on the PTPMU.

The K crew worried about the safety of their counterparts at 4–7. Captain Jackie Wells, a member of the K crew, thought that if the missile collapsed, the fuel vapor that had leaked into the blast lock might ignite and rupture blast door 8. Even if the door held, debris from a large explosion might trap everyone in the control center. The blast doors and the escape hatch were supposed to ensure the crew’s survival, even after a nuclear detonation. But a Titan II complex had not yet faced that sort of test, and Wells thought the risks of leaving people in the control center outweighed any potential benefit.

The K crew advised Colonel Moser to order an evacuation. Sergeant Michael Hanson — the chief of PTS Team B, who was in the command post, preparing to lead a convoy to the site — agreed. He didn’t think the control center would survive a blast. And he wanted his buddies to get out of there, right away.

Captain Charles E. Clark, the wing’s chief technical engineer, said that the crew should stay right where they were. He had faith in the blast doors. And he warned Colonel Moser that if the crew left, the command post would have no way of knowing the tank pressures inside the missile and no means of operating the equipment within the complex. Clark argued that the crew should remain in the control center, monitor the status of the missile — and open the massive silo door above it. Opening the door would dilute the fuel vapor with air, making the vapor less flammable. The temperature in the silo would drop, and as the oxidizer tanks cooled, they’d become less likely to burst. Opening the door wouldn’t pose much of a threat to Damascus. Unlike the oxidizer, the fuel would dissipate rapidly in the atmosphere. It wouldn’t travel for miles, sickening people and killing cattle. First Lieutenant Michael J. Rusden, the bioenvironmental engineer, had calculated that with the winds prevailing at the moment, a toxic corridor would extend only four hundred to six hundred feet beyond the silo.

After consulting with SAC headquarters, Colonel Moser ordered everyone to evacuate the control center. And he asked SAC if the crew should open the silo door before they left.

That door was not to be opened under any circumstances, General Leavitt said. The idea wasn’t even worth discussing. Leavitt wanted the fuel vapors fully contained in the silo. He did not want a cloud of Aerozine-50 floating over nearby houses and farms. More important, he didn’t want to risk losing control of a thermonuclear weapon. Leavitt felt absolutely certain that if the missile blew up, the warhead wouldn’t detonate. He’d been around nuclear weapons for almost thirty years. In 1952 he’d been secretly trained to deliver atomic bombs from a fighter plane, in case they were needed during the Korean War. He had complete faith in the safety mechanisms of the W-53 warhead atop the Titan II. But nobody could predict how far the warhead would travel, if the missile exploded with the silo door open. Leavitt didn’t want a thermonuclear weapon landing in a backyard somewhere between Little Rock and St. Louis. Maintaining control of the warhead was far more important, he thought, than any other consideration.

The K crew waited tensely to hear if the men had made it out of the control center. Before abandoning the complex, the launch crew had left the phone off the hook — and when the intruder alarm suddenly went off at 4–7, the sound could be heard over the phone in the command post. That meant someone topside had opened the door to the escape hatch. More time passed without any word, and then Sergeant Brocksmith was on the radio, saying that he had everyone in his pickup truck.