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

he’d pushed hard for dropping them on Chinese troops: In a 1952 memo to the secretary of the Army, Nichols argued that the United States should “utilize atomic weapons in the present war in Korea the first time a reasonable opportunity to do so permits.” The use of nuclear weapons against military targets in North Korea and air bases in northeast China, Nichols thought, might “precipitate a major war at a time when we have the greatest potential for winning it with minimum damage to the U.S.A.” See Kenneth D. Nichols, The Road to Trinity: A Personal Account of How America’s Nuclear Policies Were Made (New York: William Morrow, 1987), pp. 291–92.

“No active capsule will be inserted”: Quoted in “History of Custody and Deployment,” p. 39.

“Designated Atomic Energy Commission Military Representatives”: The acronym for these new keepers of the nuclear cores was DAECMRs. See Feaver, Guarding the Guardians, p. 167, and “History of Custody and Deployment,” p. 111.

The Strategic Air Command stored them at air bases: For the list of the bases and the types of nuclear weapons they stored, see “History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 January 1958—30 June 1958, Historical Study No. 73, Volume I 1958 (TOP SECRET/RSTRICTED DATA/declassified), pp. 88–90.

“to provide rapid availability for use”: Quoted in “History of Custody and Deployment,” p. 37.

On at least three different occasions: In one incident, a technician slipped during the test of a Mark 6 bomb and accidentally pulled out its arming wires, triggering the detonators. See “Accidents and Incidents Involving Nuclear Weapons: Accidents and Incidents During the Period 1 July 1957 Through 31 March 1967,” Technical Letter 20-3, Defense Atomic Support Agency, October 15, 1967 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 1, Accident #1 and #3; p. 2, Accident #5.

a “wooden bomb”: For the effort to develop nuclear weapons with a long shelf life, see Furman, Sandia: Postwar Decade, pp. 660–66, and Leland Johnson, Sandia National Laboratories: A History of Exceptional Service in the National Interest (Albuquerque, NM: Sandia National Laboratories, 1997), pp. 57–8.

“Thermal batteries” had been invented: For the history, uses, and basic science of thermal batteries, see Ronald A. Guidotti, “Thermal Batteries: A Technology Review and Future Directions,” Sandia National Laboratory, presented at the 27th International SAMPE Technical Conference, October 9–12, 1995, and Ronald A. Guidotti and P. Masset, “Thermally Activated (‘Thermal’) Battery Technology, Part I: An Overview,” Journal of Power Sources, vol. 161 (2006), pp. 1443–49.

a shelf life of at least twenty-five years: Cited in Guidotti, “Thermal Batteries: A Technological Review,” p. 3.

the Genie, a rocket designed for air defense: For details about the first air-to-air nuclear rocket, see Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume VI, pp. 2–50, and Christopher J. Bright, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 65–94.

a top secret panel on the threat of surprise attack: Killian’s group was called the Technological Capabilities Panel of the Science Advisory Committee, and “Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack” was the title of its report.

a “lethal envelope” with a radius of about a mile: See Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume VI, pp. 45–46.

“probability of kill” … was likely to be 92 percent: Cited in ibid., p. 46.

“The Department of Defense has a most urgent need”: Quoted in ibid., p. 21.

Project 56 was the code name: In an oral history interview, Harry Jordan, a Los Alamos scientist, later described one of the rationales for the tests: “People worried that in shipping these weapons that they could go off accidentally … one accidental detonator could go, and would go nuclear in Chicago railroad yards or something.” See “Harry Jordan, Los Alamos National Laboratory,” National Radiobiology Archives Project, September 22, 1981, p. 1.

“one-point safe”: I am grateful to Bob Peurifoy and Harold Agnew for explaining the determinants of one-point safety to me.

The fourth design failed the test: Harry Jordan called it “a small nuclear incident.” Although the yield was less than one kiloton, it revealed that the weapon design wasn’t one-point safe. See “Harry Jordan,” p. 2.

“The problem of decontaminating the site”: “Plutonium Hazards Created by Accidental or Experimental Low-Order Detonation of Nuclear Weapons,” W. H. Langham, P. S. Harris, and T. L. Shipman, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, LA-1981, December 1955 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 34.

“probably not safe against one-point detonation”: Quoted in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume VI, p. 32.