'Way O/T, Damascus, Arkansas

Just finished reading a 600+ page book entitled, "Command and Control", by Eric Schlosser.

The book revolves around a Titan II missile blowing up in its silo near Damascus, Arkansas in 1980. Do any of ya'll remember that"? I don't recall hearing about it when it happened.

The book is also an excellent history of the U.S. nuclear weapons industry from the first atomic bombs in WWII to the present. It delves into all of the tensions of the Cold War, and expounds on the inter-service rivalries over control and use of nuclear weapons, also the rivalries between military and civilian control. Plus, whenever there was a change of administration, or even a key personnel change, the whole picture could change. Everyone had their own idea about how and when nuclear weapons should be used.

Truth be told, I was on a nuclear weapons assembly team in the Marine Corps for several years in the early 1960's, and according to this book, the nuclear weapons industry was far less perfection and far more prone to accidents than we working in the industry were led to believe.

After reading the book, my initial reaction was, "Holy s***, I actually survived all of that!"

Does anyone have any comments?

I lived 60 miles from it and we could feel and hear it explode. Was a scary day once we found out it was a nuclear tipped missile. Good thing they cant go off from a rocket fuel explosion.

It speaks well for the industry that there has never been an accidental full scale nuclear reaction. And as a high level member of the industry commented, that was probably a combination of design, luck, and divine intervention, possibly more of the latter than we realize.

I had the pleasure of serving 435 alerts as a Missile Combat Crew Commander well below the topsoil of the beautiful hills of Missouri (Whiteman AFB) . That's more than a year underground in command of 150 Minuteman missiles. We took this very seriously (as a member of the Strategic Air Command we played "you bet your career" everyday). All it took was one minor mistake and you were done. Some things might still be classified, so mum's the word.
I actually got to launch two from Vandenberg AFB in California as part of an accuracy test. On one launch we actually sank the target barge, so I guess that was close enough.
Larry

really suprising how many missle silos were in the u.s. we had a nike installation about 10 miles or so north of the farm were i grew up at. there were prolly 20 or 30 silos surrounding the city of chicago. and to the south of us was the joliet army ammunition plant where the made all kinds of shells and had test ranges. the farm next to us had about 100 acres or so of old growth timber, and the army stored high explosives in small metal sheds. (we called em dynamite houses.) from what i gather, there were many woods like that that had explosives stored in them. just a paddlock on a steel door back then.

Yeah. If you get cancer as a result don't be surprised. BTDT

Mark

Since radiation is cumulative and the human body doesn't dissipate it, we all wore dosimeters which were read and recorded on a monthly basis. Regulations said if anyone's dosimeter reached a predetermined level, they would be reassigned. Only I don't recall that happening to anyone.

Even though I was the nuclear technician on the team, my dosimeter never read beyond what it would from normal causes, x-rays, etc.

I hear you on the classifications. It's been 50 years and I still don't talk about a lot of it, even though a lot has probably been declassified.

I've always kinda figured if I did talk about some of it, everybody would just think I was spouting BS and not believe me anyway

I remember something about it, I live about 100 miles north and it seems there was some sort of alert issued.

Did you go to school at Sandia Base in ALBQ,Nm and were you in a Nss or just a base where they were deployed. I was stationed at Killeen Base the only one the Army maintaned and the largest base we had at the time. Mos was a 262.1 elect assy Nuclear Weapons. 58-60 Navy and Marines used to come thru to see what we were doing.They were safe.

Good Evening Larry

When were you stationed at Whiteman ? I was Stationed there from Nov. 60 t0 Jan. 65 . I was there when they started to fly the Missiles in . I used to go to Whiteman when I retired for Commissary ,BX >some Medical .
My E Mail is [email protected]
I was also there when the B-47 burnt on the ramp. Its pretty close to the Fire Department Seems like they lost a Fire Chief & I think maybe 3 Firemen .

John in Az.

We went to Sandia for about six months initial training, and then back occasionally for short courses on various things.

My home base was Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, NC. In fact, I was in the nuclear weapons program at Cherry Point during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Within a day or two, Cherry Point looked more like an Air Force B-52 base than a Marine Corps fighter base.

Cherry Point has runways that will handle B-52's, but I always wondered why they picked Cherry Point when the Air Force has bases that will handle B-52's closer to Cuba. I have a good friend who is a retired Air Force bomber pilot, Lt. Col. type. I asked him once, and he said it was a matter of pure efficiency. A B-52 could take off from Cherry Point, establish an optimum rate of climb, and arrive over Cuba at an ideal altitude to deploy a weapon. No wasted time or effort.

Saw a tv special which talked about Russia almost launching a full scale attack against the US. The US would always hold war games in Germany involving NATO, of course the Russians would monitor all of this. The war games were in full swing and NATO was launching all out attack on Russia. The Russians had a computerized system that monitored airspace and this system was fooled by solar flares. Together with the NATO info and the solar flares which showed up as a full scale US missile attack the Russians computer system was ordering an all out attack on the US. One Russian officer shut it down because he thought something was wrong. In a few minutes when no missiles hit Russia he knew he was right. The Russians rewarded his common sense by booting him out of the service. He single handedly stopped the destruction of the world and look what he got.

The NORAD command center in the mountain by Colorado Springs got a "Code 1" alert once, meaning "War Immanent". In the panic that ensued, someone thought to ask, "where's Khrushchev?"

Turned out Khrushchev was visiting in Washington DC at that moment. It seemed unlikely that the Soviets would launch a nuclear war on the U.S. while their head honcho was inside a prime target.

After the panic subsided, it was learned that the BMEWS early warning system had mistaken the moon coming over the horizon in Norway for a massive missile launch in Siberia.

The Minuteman missile cables ran all across our farms. I lived within sight of three of the silos. The creek on my farm has cut out about 150 of the old abandoned cable and I have been meaning to go down and cut it out. It broke awhile back. I counted 86 individual wires in it. I guess if you think about it, the fate of the world could have passed through those wires.


Gene

The story I remember from Damascus as told by the gubmint was that a crew was working in the silo and Bubba dropped a big wrench that fell quite a ways and punctured a fuel tank, hydrazine, maybe, and that made a big boom. It was a big story here in Arkansas.

I live about 68 miles due east of Damascus and remember it well.