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

that proportion would rise to 90 percent: Cited in ibid.

“the biggest guns in the western world”: “Nuclear ‘Guns’ Ready, Aimed at Likely Foes,” Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1964.

The first launch crews had to train with cardboard mock-ups: For the challenges that some of the first crews faced, see Grant E. Secrist, “A Perspective on Crew Duty in the Early Days, the 308th SMW,” Association of Air Force Missileers Newsletter, vol. 13, no. 4, December 2005, pp. 4–6.

Sergeant Donald V. Green was serving as a referee: Interview with Donald V. Green.

General LeMay liked to run these tests: They were prominently featured in the movie Strategic Air Command and in the Life magazine profile of LeMay, “Toughest Cop of the Western World.” The author and historian James Carroll described how his father, a high-ranking security officer at the Pentagon, spent years attempting acts of “faux sabotage” against LeMay, as part of a friendly rivalry. See James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (Boston: Mariner Books, 2006), pp. 214–19.

“Scallorn, just be quiet”: Quoted in Scallorn interview and Moser interview.

“Roger, General”: Quoted in ibid.

“Little Rock, this is Martin-Denver”: Carnahan’s recommendation that nothing be done is the only quote in the entire three-volume accident report that comes from a tape recording of discussions on the Missile Potential Hazard Net. The quote is long, it’s verbatim — and it absolves Martin Marietta of responsibility for what later went wrong. The recording was made at Martin-Denver. See “Report, Major Missile Accident, Titan II Complex 374-7,” Testimony of Charles E. Carnahan, Tab U-11, pp. 1–2.

“It’s hot as hell”: Quoted in “Report, Major Missile Accident, Titan II Complex 374-7,” Kennedy statement, Tab U–46, p. 10.

PART FOUR: OUT OF CONTROL

Decapitation

a B-52 bomber took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base: My account of the accident is based on interviews with Bob Peurifoy and Bill Stevens, as well as on documents that have been released through the Freedom of Information Act. See “Summary of Nuclear Weapon Incidents (AF Form 1058) and Related Problems — January 1961,” Airmunitions Letter, No. 136-11-56G, Headquarters, Ogden Air Material Area, April 18, 1961 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), pp. 1–27; and “Official Observer’s Report, Air Accident, Goldsboro, North Carolina,” Ross B. Speer, AEC/ALO, February 16, 1961 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA /declassified). A good explanation of why the accident was so dangerous can be found in a memo written by Parker F. Jones, the supervisor of Sandia’s Nuclear Weapon Safety Department: “Goldsboro Revisited, or How I Learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb, or To Set the Record Straight,” Parker F. Jones, SFRD Memo, SNL 1651, October 22, 1969 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified). Joel Dobson offers the best description of the accident itself and the fate of the crew in The Goldsboro Broken Arrow: The Story of the 1961 B-52 Crash, the Men, the Bombs, the Aftermath (Raleigh, NC: Lulu, 2011). But Dobson’s book is less reliable about the inner workings of the weapons.

Mattocks managed to jump through the escape hatch: Mattocks should have been killed immediately by the tail of the plane. But the plane was breaking apart as he left it, and the tail was already gone. The B-52 exploded right after his parachute deployed, briefly collapsing it. He landed on a farm in the middle of the night, assured its frightened owners that he wasn’t a Martian, got a ride to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base — and got arrested by the guards at the front gate. They had not been informed of the accident, and he couldn’t produce any military identification. One of the other crew members who safely escaped from the plane, Captain Richard Rardin, found a ride to the base and arrived at the gate not long afterward. When the guards threatened to arrest Rardin, too, Mattocks managed to convince them that the two men were indeed Air Force officers and that a B-52 had just fallen from the sky. See Dobson, Goldsboro Broken Arrow, pp. 55–60.

The Air Force assured the public: See Noel Yancey, “In North Carolina: Nuclear Bomber Crashes; 3 Dead,” Fort Pierce News Tribune (Florida), January 24, 1961.

The T-249 control box and ready/safe switch … had already raised concerns at Sandia: Interviews with Peurifoy and Stevens. Some of the limitations of the T-249, known as the Aircraft Monitor and Control Box, had been addressed two years earlier in “A Survey of Nuclear Weapon Safety Problems,” pp. 19–23.

all of the weapons were armed: Stevens interview. See also Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S2C at Sandia,” p. 60.

A seven-month investigation by Sandia: See ibid.

“It would have been bad news — in spades”: “Goldsboro Revisited,” p. 1.

“One simple, dynamo-technology, low-voltage switch”: Ibid., p. 2.