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

fearing a nuclear disaster: An accident report said the evacuation was motivated by “the possibility of a nuclear yield.” See “Summary of Nuclear Weapons Incidents, 1958,” p. 13.

“a slab of slag material”: Ibid.

The “particularly ‘hot’ pieces”: Ibid.

plutonium dust on their shoes: An accident report mentioned “alpha particles” and “dust” without noting their source: plutonium. See “Accidents and Incidents Involving Nuclear Weapons,” p. 5.

“explosion of the weapon, radiation”: The quote is a State Department paraphrase of what the Air Force wanted to say. See “Sidi Slimane Air Incident Involving Plane Loaded with Nuclear Weapon,” January 31, 1958 (SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 1.

The State Department thought that was a bad idea: See ibid.

“The less said about the Moroccan incident”: The quote is a summary of a State Department official’s views, as presented in “Sidi Slimane Air Incident,” p. 2.

a “practice evacuation”: “Letter, from B.E.L. Timmons, director, Office of European Regional Affairs, U.S. State Department, to George L. West, political adviser, USEUCOM, February 28, 1958 (SECRET/declassified), NSA.

“In reply to inquiries about hazards”: “Joint Statement by Department of Defense and Atomic Energy Commission,” Department of Defense Office of Public Information, February 14, 1958, NSA, p. 1.

Less than a month later, Walter Gregg and his son: My account of the accident in Mars Bluff is based on “Summary of Nuclear Weapons Incidents, 1958,” pp. 8–12; “Mars Bluff,” Time, March 24, 1958; “Unarmed Atom Bomb Hits Carolina Home, Hurting 6,“ New York Times, March 12, 1958; and Clark Ruinrill, “Aircraft 53-1876A Has Lost a Device: How the U.S. Air Force Came to Drop an A-Bomb on South Carolina,” American Heritage, September 2000. Rumrill’s account is by far the best and most detailed.

about fifty feet wide and thirty-five feet deep: The size of the crater varies in different sources, and I’ve chosen to use the dimensions cited in a contemporary accident report. See “Summary of Nuclear Weapons Incidents, 1958,” p. 8.

the plane had just lost a “device”: Quoted in Ruinrill, “Aircraft 53-1876A Has Lost a Device.”

“Are We Safe from Our Own Atomic Bombs?”: Hanson W. Baldwin, “Are We Safe from Our Own Atomic Bombs?” New York Times, March 16, 1958.

“Is Carolina on Your Mind?”: Quoted in “The Big Binge,” Time, March 24, 1958.

a nuclear detonation had been prevented by “sheer luck”: Quoted in “On the Risk of an Accidental or Unauthorized Nuclear Detonation,” Fred Charles Iklé, with Gerald J. Aronson and Albert Madansky, U.S. Air Force Project RAND, Research Memorandum, RM-2251, October 15, 1958 (CONFIDENTIAL/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 65.

“the first accident of its kind in history”: “’Dead’ A-Bomb Hits U.S. Town,” Universal Newsreel, Universal-International News, March 13, 1958.

a hydrogen bomb had been mistakenly released over Albuquerque: I learned the details of this accident from weapon designers. General Christopher S. Adams — former chief of staff at the Strategic Air Command and associate director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory — tells the story in his memoir, Inside the Cold War: A Cold Warrior’s Reflections (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, September 1999), pp. 112–13.

“Well, we did not build these bombers”: Power, Design for Survival, p. 132.

Macmillan was in a difficult position: The United States informed the British when nuclear weapons were being flown into the United Kingdom — but did not reveal when “any particular plane is equipped with special weapons.” See “U.S. Bombers in Britain,” cable, from Walworth Barbour, U.S. State Department Deputy Chief of Mission, London, to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, January 7, 1958 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA.

argued that nuclear weapons were “morally wrong”: Some members of the C.N.D. wanted Great Britain to disarm unilaterally; others sought an end to hydrogen bomb tests and the use of British bases by American planes. The quote comes from a letter that the organization sent to Queen Elizabeth. See “Marchers’ Letter to the Queen,” The Times (London), June 23, 1958.

“I drew myself,” Holtom recalled: Quoted in Clare Coulson, “50 Years of the Peace Symbol,” Guardian (U.K.), August 21, 2008. Holtom also described the symbol as the combination of two letters from the semaphore alphabet: “N” for nuclear and “D” for disarmament.

“Imagine that one of the airmen may”: Quoted in Iklé, “On the Risk of an Accidental Detonation,” p. 61.

the “world has yet to see a foolproof system”: See “Excerpts from Statements in Security Council on Soviet Complaint Against Flights,” New York Times, April 22, 1958.

67.3 percent of the flight personnel: The report was circulated in May 1958. See Iklé, “On the Risk of an Accidental Detonation,” pp. 65–66; “CIA Says Forged Soviet Papers Attribute Many Plots to the U.S.,” New York Times, June 18, 1961; and Larus, Nuclear Weapon Safety and the Common Defense, pp. 60–61.