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

SAC’s arguments on behalf of an airborne alert were strengthened by the apparent shortcomings in the American missile program. A week before the launch of Sputnik 1, an Atlas long-range missile had failed spectacularly in the sky above Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was the second Atlas failure of the year. Near the end of the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union had fiercely competed to recruit Nazi rocket scientists. Although the three leading figures in Germany’s V-2 program — Wernher von Braun, Arthur Rudolph, and Walter Dornberger — were secretly brought to the United States and protected from war crimes trials, for almost a decade after the war the Air Force showed little enthusiasm for long-range missiles. The V-2 had proven to be wildly inaccurate, more effective at inspiring terror in London than hitting specific targets. An intercontinental ballistic missile with the same accuracy as the V-2, fired at the Soviet Union from an American launchpad, was likely to miss its target by about one hundred miles. Curtis LeMay thought bombers were more reliable than missiles, more versatile and precise. He wanted SAC to develop nuclear-powered bombers, capable of remaining airborne for weeks. But as thermonuclear weapons became small enough and light enough to be mounted atop a missile, accuracy became less of an issue. An H-bomb could miss a target by a wide margin and still destroy it. Even LeMay admitted that an accurate intercontinental ballistic missile would be “the ultimate weapon.”

During the fall of 1957, the United States had six different strategic missiles in development, with rival bureaucracies fighting not only for money but also for a prominent role in the emergency war plan. On behalf of the Army, Wernher von Braun’s team was developing an intermediate-range missile, the Jupiter, that could travel 1,500 miles and hit Soviet targets from bases in Europe. The Air Force was working on an almost identical intermediate-range missile, the Thor, as well as three long-range missiles — Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman. The Navy was pursuing its own intermediate-range missile, the Polaris, having decided not to deploy the Army’s Jupiter in submarines. The interservice rivalry over missiles was exacerbated by the competition among the defense contractors hoping to build them. The General Dynamics Corporation lobbied aggressively for Atlas; the Martin Company, for Titan; Boeing, for Minuteman; Douglas Aircraft, for Thor; Chrysler, for Jupiter; and Lockheed, for Polaris. President Eisenhower planned to fund two or three of these missile programs and cancel the rest, based on their merits and the nation’s strategic needs. Amid Democratic accusations of a missile gap, Eisenhower agreed to fund all six.

The Sputnik launches also complicated America’s relationship with its NATO allies. The Soviet Union appeared to have gained a technological advantage, and the United States no longer seemed invincible. NATO ministers began to wonder if an American president really would defend Berlin or Paris, when that could mean warheads landing in New York City within an hour. Khrushchev’s boasts about long-range missiles were accompanied by a Soviet “peace campaign” that called for nuclear disarmament and an end to nuclear weapon tests. For years, the World Peace Council, backed by the Soviet Union and Communist China, had been promoting efforts to “Ban the Bomb.” The slogan had a strong resonance in Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and France, countries that felt trapped in the middle of an arms race between the superpowers, that had already endured two world wars and now rebelled against preparations for a third. While public opinion in Western Europe increasingly turned against nuclear weapons, the leadership of NATO sought an even greater reliance on them. The French, in particular, had long argued that the United States should cede control of its nuclear weapons based in Europe. Giving the weapons to NATO would allow the alliance to use them quickly in an emergency — and prevent an American president from withholding them, regardless of any last-minute doubts. It would demonstrate that the fate of Europe and the United States were inextricably linked.