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

“the adoption of the attached standards”: “Letter, To Brigadier Military Applications, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, From Carl Walske, Chairman of the Military Liaison Committee to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 14 March 1968,” in Appendix G, ibid., p. 215.

the test of an atomic cannon: The weapon, nicknamed “Atomic Annie,” was fired as the Grable shot in the UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE nuclear tests during the spring of 1953.

trucks, tanks, railroad cars: For the animals and inanimate objects subjected to the detonation of the Grable atomic artillery shell, see “Shots Encore to Climax: The Final Four Tests of the UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE Series, 8 May–4 June 1953,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA 6018F, January 15, 1982, pp. 127–58; and “Military and Civil Defense Nuclear Weapons Effects Projects Conducted at the Nevada Test Site: 1951–1958,” Barbara Killian, Technical Report, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, May 2011. Details of the Grable shot are mentioned throughout the latter report.

more than three thousand soldiers, including Bill Stevens: For the people involved in the test, see “Shots Encore to Climax,” pp. 120–27.

The official list of nuclear accidents: The Pentagon’s “official” list of Broken Arrows now mentions thirty-two accidents, from 1950 until 1980. According to the Department of Defense, an “accident involving nuclear weapons” is “an unexpected event” that results in any of the following: “Accidental or unauthorized launching, firing, or use … of a nuclear-capable weapon system” that could lead to the outbreak of war; a nuclear detonation; “non-nuclear detonation or burning of a nuclear weapon or radioactive weapon component”; radioactive contamination; “seizure, theft, or loss of a nuclear weapon,” including the jettison of a bomb; “public hazard, actual, or implied.” But at least one third of the accidents on the Pentagon’s list involved nuclear weapons that were not fully assembled and could not produce a nuclear yield. Far more dangerous, yet less dramatic, accidents — like the unloading of Mark 7 bombs fully armed — have been omitted from the list. Countless mundane accidents posed a grave risk to the public, both actual and implied. For the official list, see “Narrative Summaries of Accidents Involving U.S. Nuclear Weapons, 1950–1980,” U.S. Department of Defense, (n.d.).

at least 1,200 nuclear weapons had been involved: Bill Stevens likes to err on the conservative side, relying on the Pentagon’s definition of an “accident.” One Sandia weapon report used the term more broadly, including events “which may have safety significance.” For the number of these events, see Brumleve, “Accident Environments,” p. 154.

“During loading of a Mk 25 Mod O WR Warhead”: “Accidents and Incidents,” Incident #8, p. 29.

“A C-124 Aircraft carrying eight Mk 28 War reserve Warheads”: Ibid., Incident #17, p. 63.

Twenty-three weapons had been directly exposed to fires: Cited in “Accident Environments,” p. 69.

blinding white flash: At Sandia the acronym BWF was used as a shorthand for that phrase, and it was something that nobody there cared to see.

he’d watched a bent pin nearly detonate an atomic bomb: Stan Spray was not the source of this information.

The Navy tested many of its weapons: Sandia thought that these “Admiral’s Tests” were unnecessary; when electromagnetic radiation triggered the rocket motors of a missile aboard an aircraft carrier, the lab took a different view. See Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S2C,” pp. 58–60.

Lightning had struck a fence at a Mace medium-range missile complex: See “Accidents and Incidents,” Incident #2, p. 122.

Four Jupiter missiles in Italy had also been hit by lightning: See ibid, Accident #2, pp. 51–52; Incident #39, p. 69; and Incident #41, pp. 86–87.

Stan Spray’s group ruthlessly burned, scorched, baked: My account of the Nuclear Safety Department’s work is based on interviews with Stevens, Peurifoy, and other Sandia engineers familiar with its investigations. Spray has contributed to a couple of papers about the safety issues that were explored: “The Unique Signal Concept for Detonation Safety in Nuclear Weapons, UC-706,” Stanley D. Spray, J. A. Cooper, System Studies Department, Sandia National Laboratories, SAND91-1269, 1993; and “History of U.S. Nuclear Weapon Safety Assessment: The Early Years,” Stanley D. Spray, Systems Studies Department, Sandia National Laboratories, SAND96-1099C, Version E, May 5, 1996.

a “supersafe bomb”: See “Project Crescent: A Study of Salient Features for an Airborne Alert (Supersafe) Bomb,” Final Report, D. E. McGovern, Exploratory Systems Department I, Sandia Laboratories, SC-WD-70-879, April 1971 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified).

“under any conceivable set of accident conditions”: “Project Crescent,” p. 7.

mistakenly dropped from an altitude of forty thousand feet: Peurifoy interview.