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

By the end of the decade, the Soviet Union had about 150 long-range bombers: In 1958, the Soviet Union had about 50 Bison bombers and 105 Bears. Cited in May et al., “History of Strategic Arms Competition,” p. 186.

the Strategic Air Command had almost 2,000: In 1959, SAC had 488 B-52 bombers and 1,366 B-47s. See Polmar, Strategic Air Command, p. 61.

such a system would “provide a reasonable degree”: Quoted in Wainstein et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 201.

at least two hours’ warning of an attack: Cited in ibid., p. 203.

a distance of about twelve thousand miles: Cited in ibid., p. 207.

almost half a million tons of building material: Roughly 459,900 tons were transported into the Arctic by barges, planes, and tractor-pulled sleds. Cited in James Louis Isemann, “To Detect, to Deter, to Defend: The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line and Early Cold War Defense Policy, 1953–1957,” dissertation, Department of History, Kansas State University, 2009, p. 299.

temperatures as low as -70 degrees Fahrenheit: Cited in ibid., p. 304.

“The computerization of society”: I first encountered the quote in Edwards, The Closed World, on page 65. The original source is a fascinating book: Frank Rose, Into the Heart of the Mind: An American Quest for Artificial Intelligence (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

America’s first large-scale electronic digital computer, ENIAC: The acronym stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.

researchers concluded that the Whirlwind computer: It is hard to overstate the importance of the Whirlwind computer and the SAGE air defense system that evolved from it. The historian Thomas P. Hughes described the creation of SAGE as “one of the major learning experiences in technological history”—as important as the construction of the Erie Canal. The historians Kent C. Redmond and Thomas M. Smith have called SAGE “a technical innovation of such consequence as to make it one of the major human accomplishments of the twentieth century.” And yet one of the great ironies of SAGE, according to the historian Paul N. Edwards, is that it probably wouldn’t have worked. “It was easily jammed,” Edwards noted, “and tests of the system under actual combat conditions were fudged to avoid revealing its many flaws.” It created the modern computer industry and transformed society — but probably wouldn’t have detected a Soviet bomber attack. For these quotes, as well as descriptions of how SAGE influenced the future, see Thomas P. Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus: Four Monumental Projects That Changed the Modern World (New York: Vintage, 1998), p. 15; Kent C. Redmond and Thomas M. Smith, From Whirlwind to Mitre: The R&D Story of the SAGE Air Defense Computer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), p. 429; and Edwards, Closed World, p. 110.

the first computer network: See Edwards, Closed World, p. 101.

contained about 25,000 vacuum tubes and covered about half an acre: Cited in Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus, p. 51.

SAGE created the template for the modern computer industry: See Redmond and Smith, From Whirlwind to Mitre, pp. 436–43; and Edwards, Closed World, pp. 99–104.

almost five hours after being sent: During a SAC command exercise in September 1950 the average transmission time for teletype messages was four hours and forty-five minutes. See Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 78.

a special red telephone at SAC headquarters: See ibid., p. 162.

an automated command-and-control system: It was called the SAC 456L System, or SACCS — the Strategic Automated Command and Control System. It was commissioned in 1958 but did not become fully operational until 1963. See ibid., pp. 169–70; and “The Air Force and the Worldwide Military Command and Control System, 1961–1965,” Thomas A. Sturm, USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, DASMC-66 013484, SHO-S-66/279, August 1966 (SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 12.

from an hour and a half to six hours behind the planes: See Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 170.

“I don’t think I would put that much money”: Quoted in “Supersonic Air Transports,” Report of the Special Investigating Subcommittee of the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Eighty-sixth Congress, Second Session, 1960, p. 47.

It extended three levels underground and could house about eight hundred people: See “Welcome to Strategic Air Command Headquarters,” Directorate of Information, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base (n.d.).

Below the East Wing at the White House: For Roosevelt’s bunker and the construction of a new bunker for Truman, see Krugler, This Is Only a Test, pp. 68–75.

an underground complex with twenty rooms: Cited in ibid., p. 73.

the airburst of a 20-kiloton atomic bomb: Cited in ibid., p. 70.

Known as Site R: For details about Site R, see ibid., p. 63–6.