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

The workers from Petit Jean were told to stand by, and for the time being, the power stayed on. An executive from Martin Marietta, the manufacturer of the Titan II, had joined the net, giving estimates of the tank pressures at which the stage 1 fuel tank was likely to collapse and the oxidizer tank to burst. The situation felt grim. Nevertheless, members of the hazard net debated how PTS Team B should proceed, step by step, upon their arrival at 4–7. First, everyone had to reach a consensus on the proper course of action — and then they had to write a checklist for it. The audio quality of the conference call was mediocre, and with so many people involved in the discussion, at half a dozen locations, it was often hard to figure out who was saying what.

One of the most authoritative voices had a strong Texan accent. It belonged to Colonel Ben Scallorn, the deputy chief of staff for missiles at Eighth Air Force headquarters in Louisiana. Moser had served under Scallorn at Whiteman Air Force Base and phoned him right after hearing about the accident in Damascus, wanting to get his opinion, privately, of how bad it sounded. Scallorn didn’t sugar the pill; he thought it sounded really bad. He knew the Titan II as well as just about anyone else at SAC. He’d worked long hours in silos wearing a RFHCO and seen firsthand how dangerous the missile could be. During the discussions on the Missile Potential Hazard Net, he was blunt about what needed to be done at 4–7, regardless of whether anyone would listen.

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When Ben Scallorn first reported to Little Rock Air Force Base in 1962, the Titan II silos there were still being dug. The missile maintenance department consisted of three people: a first lieutenant who ran it, a sergeant who served as his clerk, and a secretary. The 308th Strategic Missile Wing had not yet been activated, and the Air Force was eager to get the Titan IIs into the ground. Scallorn was glad to be in Little Rock, preparing to study missile maintenance. His previous assignment in the Air Force had been “recreational services.” For years he’d managed softball fields, swimming pools, movie theaters, and service clubs at SAC bases everywhere from Mississippi to Morocco. He was thirty-three, with a wife and three small boys. Helping to deploy America’s largest ballistic missile, at the dawn of the missile age, promised to be a more rewarding career path. He was sent to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, to learn how the Titan II worked — and six weeks later returned to Little Rock as chief of maintenance training at the 308th.

Scallorn visited the launch complexes around Little Rock as they were being constructed. Each one was a massive endeavor, requiring about 4.5 million pounds of steel and about 30 million pounds of concrete. Elaborate water, power, and hydraulic systems had to be laid underground. The silo door was too heavy to be transported by road; it arrived in eight pieces for assembly at the site. In order to bring missiles on alert as quickly as possible, the Air Force relied on a management practice known as “concurrency”: work began on the Titan II complexes long before a Titan II missile had flown. Both would be completed at roughly the same time.

The Air Force also used concurrency to speed the deployment of other ballistic missiles. Led by the Army Corps of Engineers, tens of thousands of workers dug hundreds of silos to hide missiles beneath the landscape of rural America. It was one of the largest construction projects ever undertaken by the Department of Defense. In addition to Arkansas, underground launch complexes were placed in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. Between Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, missile silos were dispersed across an area extending for thirty-two thousand square miles.

About an hour north of Santa Barbara, along a stretch of the central California coast with forty miles of pristine beaches and rocky cliffs, the Air Force built a missile research center and the first operational missile site. Later known as Vandenberg Air Force Base, it provided a clear shot to target sites at Eniwetok and Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. Like the missile complexes in America’s heartland, Vandenberg was rushed to completion. Within a few years of its opening in 1957, the base had launchpads, silos, underground control centers, storage facilities, administrative buildings, and a population of about ten thousand.