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

at most, one: “Actually, we had one [bomb] that was probably operable when I first went off to Los Alamos: one that had a good chance of being operable,” Lilienthal later told the historian Gregg Herken. Although Los Alamos had perhaps a dozen nuclear cores in storage, a shortage of parts made it impossible to put together that many bombs. Colonel Gilbert M. Dorland, who headed the bomb-assembly battalion at Sandia, had an even bleaker view of the situation than Lilienthal. “President Truman and the State Department were plain bluffing,” Dorland later wrote. “We couldn’t have put a bomb together and used it.” For Lilienthal, see Herken, Winning Weapon, p. 197. For Dorland, see Abrahamson and Carew, Vanguard of Atomic Deterrence, p. 120.

“probably operable”: Quoted in Herken, Winning Weapon, p. 197.

“We not only didn’t have a pile”: Quoted in ibid, p. 235.

“haywire contraption”: Quoted in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Voulme 1, p. 133.

Nobody had bothered to save all the technical drawings: According to the official history of the Atomic Energy Commission, when the original Manhattan Project scientists left Los Alamos, they “left behind them no production lines or printed manuals, but only a few assistants, some experienced technicians, some laboratory equipment, and a fragmented technology recorded in thousands of detailed reports.” See Hewlett and Duncan, Atomic Shield, p. 134. For the lack of guidance on how to build another Little Boy, see Abrahamson and Carew, Vanguard of Atomic Deterrence, pp. 41–42.

He’d wrapped the metal around a Coke bottle: See Abrahamson and Carew, Vanguard of Atomic Deterence, p. 42.

the final assembly of Mark 3 bombs: Ibid., pp. 60–61.

“a very serious potential hazard to a large area”: Quoted in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume 1, p. 137.

secretly constructed at two Royal Air Force bases: During the summer of 1946, the head of the Royal Air Force and the head of the United States Army Air Forces had decided that British bases should have atomic bomb assembly equipment, “just in case.” See Abrahamson and Carew, Vanguard of Atomic Deterrence, pp. 115–17; Ken Young, “No Blank Cheque: Anglo-American (Mis)understandings and the Use of the English Airbases,” Journal of Military History, vol. 71, no. 4 (October 2007), 1136–40; and Ken Young, “US ‘Atomic Capability’ and the British Forward Bases in the Early Cold War,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 42, no. 1 (January 2007), pp. 119–22.

“if one blew, the others would survive”: Quoted in Abrahamson and Carew, Vanguard of Atomic Deterrence, p. 119.

parts and cores to assemble fifty-six atomic bombs: See Wainstein et al.,“Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 34.

deploy only one bomb assembly team overseas: The AFSWP had two fully trained teams by the end of 1948—but lacked the support personnel to send both into the field at the same time. See ibid., p. 17; and Abrahamson and Carew, Vanguard of Atomic Deterrence, pp. 68–69, 150.

Robert Peurifoy was a senior at Texas A&M: Peurifoy interview.

killed more than two million civilians: That is a conservative estimate; the Korean War was especially brutal for noncombatants. According to Dong-Choon Kim, who served as Standing Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea, “the percentage of civilian deaths was higher than in any other war of the 20th century.” For the estimate and the quote, see Dong-Choon Kim, “The War Against the ‘Enemy Within’: The Hidden Massacres in the Early Stages of the Korean War,” in Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park, and Daqing Yang, eds., Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 75.

“prevent premature detonation”: “Final Evaluation Report, MK IV MOD O FM Bomb,” “The Mk IV Evaluation Committee, Sandia Laboratory, Report No. SL-82, September 13, 1949 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 60.

“integrated contractor complex”: See Furman, Sandia National Laboratories, pp. 310–12.

In Violation

Jeff Kennedy had just gotten home: Interview with Jeffrey Kennedy.

Kennedy thought, “Wow”: Ibid.

“Commander, if you want to tell me how to do my job”: Quoted in ibid.

Sandaker was a twenty-one-year-old PTS technician: Interview with James Sandaker.

“Well, I got to go”: Ibid.

“All right,” Sandaker said: Ibid.

“baby oil trailer”: See “Report, Major Missile Accident, Titan II Complex 374-7,” Statement of Archie G. James, Staff Sergeant, Tab U-42, p. 1.

“Tell it not to land”: Holder interview.

“Jeff, I fucked up like you wouldn’t believe”: Quoted in Kennedy interview.

“Oh, David,” Kennedy said: Ibid.

Sam Hutto’s family had farmed the same land: Interview with Sam Hutto.

“We went into, through, and out of the Depression”: Quoted in ibid.