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

three workers at an Atomic Energy Commission base: For details of the Medina explosion, see “Run! Three Do; Injuries Are Minor,” San Antonio Express, November 14, 1963; “‘Just Running’: Panic in Streets for Few Moments,” San Antonio Light, November 14, 1963; “Tons of TNT Explode in Weapons Plant,” Tipton [Indiana] Daily Tribune, November 14, 1963; Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume VII, p. 272; Maggelet and Oskins, Broken Arrow, Volume II, pp. 98–100.

a B-52 encountered severe air turbulence: For details of the Cumberland Broken Arrow, see Airmunitions Letter, No. 136-11-56N, Headquarters, Ogden Air Material Area, March 10, 1964 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), pp. 2–17; Dan Whetzel, “A Night to Remember,” Mountain Discoveries (Fall/Winter, 2007); Maggelet and Oskins, Broken Arrow, p. 198.

Another accident with a Mark 53 bomb: For details of the Bunker Hill Broken Arrow, see “B-58 with Nuclear Device Aboard Burns; One Killed,” Anderson [Indiana] Herald, December 9, 1964; “Memorial Services Held at Air Base,” Logansport [Indiana] Press, December 10, 1964; “Saw Flash, Then Fire, Ordered Plane Abandoned, Pilot Recalls,” Kokomo [Indiana] Morning Times, December 11, 1964; “A Review of the US Nuclear Weapon Safety Program—1945 to 1986,” R. N. Brodie, Sandia National Laboratories, SAND86-2955, February 1987 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 13; “Remedial Action and Final Radiological Status, 1964 B-58 Accident Site, Grissom Air Reserve Base, Bunker Hill, Indiana,” Steven E. Rademacher, Air Force Institute for Environment, Safety, and Occupational Health Risk Analysis, December 2000; and Maggelet and Oskins, Broken Arrow, pp. 204–10. After an accident that exposed five hydrogen bombs to burning jet fuel, the Air Force told the Kokomo Morning Times that there had been “no danger” of a radiation hazard.

a Minuteman missile site at Ellsworth Air Force Base: See “Accidents and Incidents,” Incident #2, p. 182; and “Review of the US Nuclear Weapon Safety Program,” p. 14. The most detailed account can be found in Maggelet and Oskins, Broken Arrow, Volume II, pp. 101–9.

a group of sailors were pushing an A-4E Skyhawk: The story of this long-hidden accident has been told in detail by Jim Little, a retired chief warrant officer with a long career managing nuclear weapons for the U.S. Navy. Little watched the plane roll off the deck of the Ticonderoga. His account of the accident can be found in Maggelet and Oskins, Broken Arrow, Volume II, pp. 113–16, and in his book, Brotherhood of Doom: Memoirs of a Navy Nuclear Weaponsman (Bradenton, FL: Booklocker, 2008), pp. 113–14.

“Brakes, brakes”: Quoted in Little, Brotherhood of Doom, p. 114.

recently graduated from Ohio State University: Webster had flown seventeen combat missions in Vietnam and gotten married the previous year. One of his close friends from high school, Roger Ailes, later the president of Fox News, created a scholarship fund in Webster’s name. See William K. Alcorn, “Webster Scholarship to Help City Youths,” Youngstown [Ohio] Vindicator, July 3, 2006.

“responsibility for identifying and resolving”: President Kennedy also asked to be kept informed about “the progress being made in equipping all Mark 7 nuclear weapons assigned to ground alert aircraft with velocity sensing safety devices.” He returned to the broader issue just nine days before his assassination, issuing a directive that safety rules be adopted for each weapon in the stockpile. Those rules would have to be approved by the secretary of defense — and shared, in writing, with the president of the United States. See “National Security Action Memorandum No. 51, Safety of Nuclear Weapons and Weapons Systems,” May 8, 1962 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), NSA; and “National Security Memorandum No. 272, Safety Rules for Nuclear Weapon Systems,” November 13, 1963 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified).

the Titanic Effect: Donald MacKenzie mentions the “Titanic effect” in the context of software design. “The safer a system is believed to be,” he suggests, “the more catastrophic the accidents to which it is subject.” And as a corollary to that sort of thinking, MacKenzie argues that systems only become safer when their danger is always kept in mind. See MacKenzie’s essay “Computer-Related Accidental Death,” in Knowing Machines, pp. 185–213. The Titanic effect is discussed from pages 211 to 213.

an engineer listened carefully to the sounds of a PAL: The Sandia engineer’s name was John Kane, and in this case his lock-picking skills exceeded those of technicians at the National Security Agency. See Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S2C,” p. 71.