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

Richard L. English, head of the Disaster Preparedness Unit, a civilian in his late fifties, still fit and athletic, nicknamed “Colonel,” who’d served in the Air Force for many years

Technical Sergeant David G. Rossborough, an experienced first responder

SECURITY POLICE OFFICERS

Technical Sergeant Thomas A. Brocksmith, the on-scene police supervisor at the accident site

Technical Sergeant Donald V. Green, a noncommissioned officer in his early thirties who volunteered to escort a flatbed truck to Launch Complex 374-7

Technical Sergeant Jimmy E. Roberts, a friend of Green’s who accompanied him on the drive to Damascus

AT THE LITTLE ROCK COMMAND POST

Colonel John T. Moser, commander of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing

AT THE SAC COMMAND POST IN OMAHA

General Lloyd R. Leavitt, Jr., the vice commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command

AT BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE IN LOUSIANA

Colonel Ben G. Scallorn, a Titan II expert at the Eighth Air Force who’d worked with the missiles since the first silos were built

THE MANHATTAN PROJECT

General Leslie R. Groves, director of the project, who led the effort to build an atomic bomb

J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist, later known as “the father of the atomic bomb,” who served as the first director of the Los Alamos Laboratory

Edward Teller, a physicist later known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb,” often at odds with the other Los Alamos scientists

George B. Kistiakowsky, a chemist and perhaps the nation’s leading explosives expert, later the science adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower

SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS AT THE WEAPONS LABS

Bob Peurifoy, an engineer from Texas who joined Sandia in 1952 and subsequently became its leading advocate for nuclear weapon safety

Harold Agnew, a physicist from Colorado who helped create the first manmade nuclear chain reaction, filmed the destruction of Hiroshima from an observer plane, and played an important role in nuclear weapon safety efforts at the Los Alamos Laboratory

Carl Carlson, a young physicist at Sandia who in the late 1950s recognized the vulnerability of a nuclear weapon’s electrical system during an accident

Bill Stevens, an engineer who became the first head of Sandia’s nuclear safety department and worked closely with Bob Peurifoy

Stan Spray, a Sandia engineer who burned, crushed, and routinely tortured nuclear weapon components to discover their flaws

MILITARY LEADERS

General Curtis E. LeMay, an engineer who revolutionized American bombing techniques during the Second World War and turned the Strategic Air Command into the most powerful military organization in history

General Thomas S. Power, an Air Force officer who led the firebombing of Tokyo during the Second World War, followed LeMay to the Strategic Air Command, and gained the reputation of being a mean son of a bitch

General Maxwell D. Taylor, an Army officer who championed the nuclear strategy of limited war and served as influential adviser to President John F. Kennedy

OFFICIALS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

David E. Lilienthal, the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and a strong believer in civilian control of nuclear weapons

Fred Charles Iklé, a RAND analyst who studied the potential consequences of an accidental nuclear detonation and later served as an undersecretary of defense in the Reagan administration

Donald A. Quarles, an engineer whose work at Sandia, the Department of the Air Force, and the Department of Defense helped to promote nuclear weapon safety

Robert S. McNamara, a former automobile executive who, as secretary of defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, struggled to formulate a rational nuclear strategy

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

A-Bomb—an atomic bomb, a weapon deriving its explosive power from the fission of uranium or plutonium atoms

AEC—Atomic Energy Commission, the civilian agency created in 1947 to oversee nuclear weapons and nuclear power

AFSWP—Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, a military agency formed in 1947 to deal with nuclear weapons

B.E. Number—a unique eight-digit number that identifies each of the targets in the Air Force’s Bombing Encyclopedia

BMEWS—Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, the radar system built after Sputnik to detect Soviet missiles heading toward the United States

BOMARC—a ground-launched antiaircraft missile with an atomic warhead, designed by Boeing (BO) and the Michigan Aerospace Research Center (MARC), that was deployed at sites in the United States and Canada

CND—Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a British antiwar group whose logo later became known as the “peace symbol”

DEFCON — Defense Readiness Condition, the American military’s readiness for hostilities, ranked on a scale from DEFCON 5 (the lowest level of alert) to DEFCON 1 (nuclear war)

DEW Line—the Distant Early Warning Line, a radar system that extended across the Arctic in North America to detect Soviet bombers