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

An airman in a RFHCO suit would carry a portable vapor detector to one of the silo’s exhaust vents, place the detector’s probe into the white cloud rising from the vent, and measure the amount of fuel vapor. The measurement would give them a sense of whether the silo was safe to enter. At a level of about 18,000 parts per million (ppm), the RFHCO would start to melt. At 20,000 ppm, the fuel vapor could spontaneously combust, without any exposure to a spark or flame, just from the friction caused by the movement of air. Waving your hand through the fuel vapor, at that concentration, could ignite it. The portable vapor detector — a blue rectangular steel box that weighed about twelve pounds, with a round gauge on top — wasn’t an ideal instrument for the task. It “pegged out” and shut off when the vapor level reached a maximum of 250 ppm. But it was the best they had.

If the proportion of fuel vapor rising from the exhaust shaft was lower than 200 ppm, a couple of airmen in RFHCOs would enter the launch complex through the access portal. Everybody on the hazard net agreed that the escape hatch was too narrow for someone in a RFHCO suit to fit through it.

After proceeding through the two outer doors, the airmen would open blast doors 6 and 7 manually with a portable hydraulic pump. Using electricity to open the blast doors might create a spark.

The airmen would enter the blast lock and look at the readout from the Mine Safety Appliance. It would tell them the vapor level in the silo. If the level was below 200 ppm, the men would open blast door 9, walk down the long cableway, enter the silo, and vent the stage 1 fuel tank.

The airmen would bring a portable vapor detector with them. And if it registered a vapor level higher than 200 ppm at any point during those first four steps, the men would get out of the launch complex as quickly as possible, leaving the doors open behind them.

Colonel Scallorn wasn’t happy with part of the plan. He was concerned about the rising heat in the silo, the risk that an oxidizer tank would rupture from the heat, and the huge explosion that would follow. Working outdoors with PTS teams, he’d seen how sensitive the oxidizer could be to small increases in temperature. On a cold, clear day at a launch site in Arkansas, the stainless steel mesh of an oxidizer hose could get warm enough, just from lying in the sun, to blow off a poppet. He thought it would be foolish to enter the silo without knowing the tank pressures inside the missile. It wasn’t worth the risk. It would put these young men in harm’s way. Over the years, he’d found that some people at SAC headquarters treated maintenance crews and PTS guys like they were expendable.

Scallorn suggested, on the net, that the two airmen should enter the launch control center first, check the tank pressures on the PTPMU, and turn on the purge fan to clear fuel vapor from the silo. They could always go into the silo later.

General Leavitt didn’t appreciate the suggestion. “Scallorn, just be quiet and stop telling people what to do,” he snapped. “We’re trying to figure this thing out.”

“Roger, General,” Scallorn replied. “You got that, Moser?”

It was an awkward moment. Nobody liked to hear one of SAC’s leading Titan II experts being told to shut up.

Not long afterward, Charles E. Carnahan, a vice president at Martin Marietta, who’d been quietly listening to the discussion, spoke up.

“Little Rock, this is Martin-Denver,” Carnahan said. “Are you interested in any of our judgments in this matter?”

Of course, Leavitt told him, go ahead.

“If it was us, we would seriously consider not moving into the silo area for some number of hours.”

Carnahan was asked if he meant the silo or the entire launch complex.

“I am talking about the launch complex,” he said. “It is entirely possible that the leak is still leaking. It is our judgment that while the leak continues, the vapor content in the silo and the general area will continue to rise. The potential for a monopropellic explosion increases as the vapor content increases. Once the leak has leaked out, if you have no explosion, it is our judgment that the vapor content in the area will decrease. We are unclear as to the gain that is expected from an early entry, or an entry at this point in time, into the complex area.”

After hours of debating what to do, the Missile Potential Hazard Team now had to ponder the advice of the company that built the missile: do nothing.

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