Command and Control (83 page)

The Army's Redstone missile
:
Although its range was short, the missile was so reliable that it was used by NASA to launch America's first astronaut into space. See “History of the Redstone Missile System,” John W. Bullard, Historical Division, Army Missile Command, AMC 23 M, October 15, 1965.

Launched from NATO bases in West Germany
:
Bob Peurifoy told me about the mismatch between the yield of the Redstone's warhead and the distance that it could fly.

It would take at least fifteen minutes to launch any of the missiles
: For the technical and operational details of the Thor, see Stephen Twigge and Len Scott,
Planning Armageddon: Britain, the United States and the Command of Western Nuclear Forces, 1945–1964
(Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 109–12.

as much as two days to complete its mission
:
Ibid., p. 111.

useful for a surprise attack
:
For an excellent summary of the inherent flaws of Thor and Jupiter missiles, the intermediate-range missiles that the United States shared with its NATO allies, see Philip Nash,
The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957–1963
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1997), pp. 80–85.

the Atlas missile loomed as America's great hope
:
For the definitive account of the Atlas program,
cowritten by one of its managers, see Chuck Walker, with Joel Powell,
ATLAS: The Ultimate Weapon by Those Who Built It
(Ontario, Canada: Apogee Books Production, 2005).

a “fire waiting to happen”
:
For the dangers of the Atlas and Titan propellants, see Charlie Simpson, “LOX and RP1—Fire Waiting to Happen,”
Association of Air Force Missileers Newsletter,
vol. 14, no. 3 (September 3, 2006). Colonel Simpson is the executive director of the Association of Air Force and worked with Titan I missiles.

a temperature of -297 degrees Fahrenheit
:
Cited in Walker,
ATLAS
, Appendix D, p. 281.

the odds of an Atlas missile hitting a target . . . no better than fifty-fifty
:
The estimate was sheepishly offered by Major General Thomas P. Gerrity, Commander, Ballistic Systems Division, Air Force Systems Command. Another officer optimistically predicted that the reliability of the Atlas would reach 85 percent. Instead, all of the missiles were deactivated and removed from service within a few years. For the reliability estimates, see “Missile Procurement, Air Force,” pp. 529–30.

General Thomas Power
: . . . thought the odds were closer to zero
: See Jacob Neufeld,
The Development of Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, 1945–1960,
(Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1990), p. 216.

During a test run of the first Titan silo
:
For more details of the accident, see Stumpf,
Titan II
, pp. 23–26.

about 170,000 pounds of liquid oxygen and fuel
:
The missile was fully loaded with propellants.

Donald Quarles was one of the leading skeptics
:
A few months before his death, Quarles was strongly attacked by the columnist Joseph Alsop for opposing new missile programs and allowing the United States to fall behind the Soviets. See Joseph Alsop, “Mister Missile Gap,”
Washington Post
, April 24, 1959.

how to bring the warhead close to its target
:
My description of ballistic missile guidance systems is based on a fine magazine article published more than half a century ago, Maya Pines, “The Magic Carpet of Inertial Guidance,”
Harper's
, March 1962; a training manual for Titan II launch officers, “Missile Launch/Missile Officer (LGM-25): Missile Systems,” Student Study Guide 3OBR1821F/3121F-V1 through 4, Volume I of II, Department of Missile and Space Training, Sheppard Technical Training Center, September 1968; and an extraordinary book about how missiles hit their targets, Donald MacKenzie,
Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993).

burned for only the first five minutes of flight
:
During the booster phase, the first-stage engine of the Titan II fired for about 165 seconds; during the sustainer phase, the second-stage engine fired for about 125 seconds; and during the Vernier Stage, the two small solid propellant engines fired for about 10 seconds. See “Missile Launch/Missile Officer (LGM-25),” p. 3.

about 80 percent of the warheads within roughly a mile of their targets
:
Cited in MacKenzie,
Inventing Accuracy,
p. 122.

a leading role in the miniaturization of computers
:
See ibid., pp. 159–61, 206–7; Edwards,
Closed World,
pp. 63–65.

all of the integrated circuits in the United States
:
See MacKenzie,
Inventing Accuracy,
p. 207. In 1965, the Pentagon was buying 72 percent of the integrated circuits, and the proportion being used in military applications did not fall below half until 1967. See Table 6 in Gregory Hooks, “The Rise of the Pentagon and U.S. State Building: The Defense Program as Industrial Policy,”
American Journal of Sociology,
vol. 96, no. 2 (September 1990), p. 389.

It had about 12.5 kilobytes of memory
:
This is a rough estimate, used for the sake of simplicity. The Titan II missile's onboard guidance computer could store 100,224 binary bits. They were stored on a magnetic drum memory assembly with 58 tracks. Each track held 64 words (or “bytes”) that contained 27 bits. For the sake of comparison, I have converted those 27-bit bytes into today's more commonly used 8-bit bytes. By that measure, the Titan II onboard computer had about 12.5 kilobytes of memory. For the specifications of the computer, see “Missile Launch/Missile Officer (LGM-25),” p. 24. I am grateful to Chuck Penson, Bob Peurifoy, Richard Peurifoy, and Steve Peurifoy for helping me with these calculations.

more than five million times that amount
:
Many smartphones now have 64 gigabytes of memory. A gigabyte is equivalent to about 1 million kilobytes. The comparison between the 12.5-kilobyte
memory of a Titan II computer and the 64-gigabyte memory of a smartphone is inexact. But it still conveys an important point: even the rudimentary computing device aboard the Titan II could guide a nuclear warhead almost halfway around the world with remarkable accuracy.

the first missile to employ an inertial guidance system
:
For the Nazi efforts in this field, see MacKenzie,
Inventing Accuracy,
pp. 44–60.

the Nazi scientists who invented it were recruited
:
Dr. Walter Haeussermann, who played a large role in developing the guidance system of the V-2, was brought to the United States under Project Paperclip and reunited with his former employer, Wernher von Braun. Haeussermann later worked on the guidance systems of the Redstone and Jupiter missiles, left the Army to work for NASA, later headed the Astrionics Laboratory at the Marshall Space Center, and helped devise the mechanisms that guided American astronauts safely to the moon. See Dennis Hevesi, “Walter Hauessermann, Rocket Scientist, Dies at 96,”
New York Times
, December 17, 2010.

Circular Error Probable . . . of less than a mile
:
See MacKenzie,
Inventing Accuracy
, p. 131.

miscalculated by just 0.05 percent
:
During the last fifteen minutes of the Titan II warhead's reentry, it traveled at a speed of about 16,000 miles per hour. It would cover a distance of about 4,000 miles in those fifteen minutes. A measurement error of 0.05 percent would add or subtract about 20 miles from the distance traveled. For the speed of reentry, see Penson,
Titan II Handbook
, p. 169. Maya Pines made a similar calculation in “Magic Carpet of Inertial Guidance,” but with a somewhat different result.

The accuracy of a Titan II launch
:
My description of a Titan II missile's launch, trajectory, and flight is based on information found in Penson,
Titan II Handbook,
pp. 118–39, 169; Stumpf,
Titan II,
pp. 177–78; and “Final Titan II Operational Data Summary,” Rev 3, TRW Space Technology Laboratories, September 1964, p. 3-1. Some of the numbers differ slightly in these sources. For example, Chuck Penson says the missile began to rise 58 seconds after the keys were turned; David Stumpf says 59.2 seconds. I have tried to convey the gist of how a Titan II launch would have unfolded. Penson's account is especially vivid and detailed.

about twenty-three thousand feet per second, faster than a speeding bullet
:
An object going 16,000 miles per hour is traveling about 4.44 miles per second—roughly 23,467 feet per second. The velocity of bullets fired from a typical handgun ranges from about 800 to 1,200 feet per second at a distance of 50 yards. The speed of rifle bullets is higher, reaching as much as 4,000 feet per second.

surface temperatures of about 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit
:
Although temperatures that high might be encountered briefly, the strong shock wave preceding a warhead as it falls will dissipate a great deal of that heat in the atmosphere. Cited in “Ballistic Missile Staff Course Study Guide,” 4315th Combat Crew Training Squadron, Strategic Air Command, Vandenberg Air Force Base, July 1, 1980, p. 3–1.

hotter than the melting point of any metal
:
Tungsten's melting point is the highest—6,170 degrees Fahrenheit. Cited in Stumpf,
Titan II
, p. 56.

On the way up, a barometric switch closed
:
 . . .
On the way down, an accelerometer ignited:
I learned these details from a weapon designer who worked on the W-53 warhead.

set for an airburst
: . . . at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet
: Cited in Penson,
Titan II Handbook
, p. 135.

At first, perhaps 70 to 75 percent . . . were expected to hit their targets
:
Cited in “Missile Procurement,” p. 532.

that proportion would rise to 90 percent
:
Cited in ibid.

“the biggest guns in the western world”
:
“Nuclear ‘Guns' Ready, Aimed at Likely Foes,”
Los Angeles Times
, June 22, 1964.

The first launch crews had to train with cardboard mock-ups
:
For the challenges that some of the first crews faced, see Grant E. Secrist, “A Perspective on Crew Duty in the Early Days, the 308th SMW,”
Association of Air Force Missileers Newsletter,
vol. 13, no. 4, December 2005, pp. 4–6.

Sergeant Donald V. Green was serving as a referee
:
Interview with Donald V. Green.

General LeMay liked to run these tests
:
They were prominently featured in the movie
Strategic Air Command
and in the
Life
magazine profile of LeMay, “Toughest Cop of the Western World.” The author and historian James Carroll described how his father, a high-ranking security officer at the
Pentagon, spent years attempting acts of “faux sabotage” against LeMay, as part of a friendly rivalry. See James Carroll,
House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power
(Boston: Mariner Books, 2006), pp. 214–19.

“Scallorn, just be quiet”
:
Quoted in Scallorn interview and Moser interview.

“Roger, General”
:
Quoted in ibid.

“Little Rock, this is Martin-Denver”
:
Carnahan's recommendation that nothing be done is the only quote in the entire three-volume accident report that comes from a tape recording of discussions on the Missile Potential Hazard Net. The quote is long, it's verbatim—and it absolves Martin Marietta of responsibility for what later went wrong. The recording was made at Martin-Denver. See “Report, Major Missile Accident, Titan II Complex 374-7,” Testimony of Charles E. Carnahan, Tab U-11, pp. 1–2.

“It's hot as hell”
:
Quoted in “Report, Major Missile Accident, Titan II Complex 374-7,” Kennedy statement, Tab U–46, p. 10.

P
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F
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: O
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Decapitation

a B-52 bomber took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base
:
My account of the accident is based on interviews with Bob Peurifoy and Bill Stevens, as well as on documents that have been released through the Freedom of Information Act. See “Summary of Nuclear Weapon Incidents (AF Form 1058) and Related Problems—January 1961,”
Airmunitions Letter
, No. 136-11-56G, Headquarters, Ogden Air Material Area, April 18, 1961 (
SECRET
/
RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified), pp. 1–27; and “Official Observer's Report, Air Accident, Goldsboro, North Carolina,” Ross B. Speer, AEC/ALO, February 16, 1961 (
SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified). A good explanation of why the accident was so dangerous can be found in a memo written by Parker F. Jones, the supervisor of Sandia's Nuclear Weapon Safety Department: “Goldsboro Revisited, or How I Learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb, or To Set the Record Straight,” Parker F. Jones, SFRD Memo, SNL 1651, October 22, 1969 (
SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified). Joel Dobson offers the best description of the accident itself and the fate of the crew in
The Goldsboro Broken Arrow: The Story of the 1961 B-52 Crash, the Men, the Bombs, the Aftermath
(Raleigh, NC: Lulu, 2011). But Dobson's book is less reliable about the inner workings of the weapons.