Command and Control

Eisenhower approved the shipment of nuclear cores: Before leaving office, Truman had formally granted the Department of Defense the authority to have custody of nuclear weapons outside the continental United States — and within the United States “to assure operational flexibility and military readiness.” But Truman did not release any additional weapons to the military. At the end of his administration, the AEC had custody of 823 nuclear weapons — and the military controlled just the 9 weapons sent to Guam during the Korean War. Eisenhower’s decision in June 1953 put the new policy into effect, and within a few years the military had sole custody of 1,358 nuclear weapons, about one third of the American stockpile. For the text of Eisenhower’s order, see “History of Custody and Deployment,” p. 29. For the number of weapons in military and civilian custody during those years, see Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 34; and for a thorough account of the power shift from the Atomic Energy Commission to the Department of Defense, see Feaver, Guarding the Guardians, pp. 128–63.

make the stockpile much less vulnerable to attack: Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff both used this argument. See Feaver, Guarding the Guardians, p. 162, and “History of Custody and Deployment,” p. 37.

he’d pushed hard for dropping them on Chinese troops: In a 1952 memo to the secretary of the Army, Nichols argued that the United States should “utilize atomic weapons in the present war in Korea the first time a reasonable opportunity to do so permits.” The use of nuclear weapons against military targets in North Korea and air bases in northeast China, Nichols thought, might “precipitate a major war at a time when we have the greatest potential for winning it with minimum damage to the U.S.A.” See Kenneth D. Nichols, The Road to Trinity: A Personal Account of How America’s Nuclear Policies Were Made (New York: William Morrow, 1987), pp. 291–92.

“No active capsule will be inserted”: Quoted in “History of Custody and Deployment,” p. 39.

“Designated Atomic Energy Commission Military Representatives”: The acronym for these new keepers of the nuclear cores was DAECMRs. See Feaver, Guarding the Guardians, p. 167, and “History of Custody and Deployment,” p. 111.

The Strategic Air Command stored them at air bases: For the list of the bases and the types of nuclear weapons they stored, see “History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 January 1958—30 June 1958, Historical Study No. 73, Volume I 1958 (TOP SECRET/RSTRICTED DATA/declassified), pp. 88–90.

“to provide rapid availability for use”: Quoted in “History of Custody and Deployment,” p. 37.

On at least three different occasions: In one incident, a technician slipped during the test of a Mark 6 bomb and accidentally pulled out its arming wires, triggering the detonators. See “Accidents and Incidents Involving Nuclear Weapons: Accidents and Incidents During the Period 1 July 1957 Through 31 March 1967,” Technical Letter 20-3, Defense Atomic Support Agency, October 15, 1967 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 1, Accident #1 and #3; p. 2, Accident #5.

a “wooden bomb”: For the effort to develop nuclear weapons with a long shelf life, see Furman, Sandia: Postwar Decade, pp. 660–66, and Leland Johnson, Sandia National Laboratories: A History of Exceptional Service in the National Interest (Albuquerque, NM: Sandia National Laboratories, 1997), pp. 57–8.

“Thermal batteries” had been invented: For the history, uses, and basic science of thermal batteries, see Ronald A. Guidotti, “Thermal Batteries: A Technology Review and Future Directions,” Sandia National Laboratory, presented at the 27th International SAMPE Technical Conference, October 9–12, 1995, and Ronald A. Guidotti and P. Masset, “Thermally Activated (‘Thermal’) Battery Technology, Part I: An Overview,” Journal of Power Sources, vol. 161 (2006), pp. 1443–49.

a shelf life of at least twenty-five years: Cited in Guidotti, “Thermal Batteries: A Technological Review,” p. 3.

the Genie, a rocket designed for air defense: For details about the first air-to-air nuclear rocket, see Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume VI, pp. 2–50, and Christopher J. Bright, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 65–94.

a top secret panel on the threat of surprise attack: Killian’s group was called the Technological Capabilities Panel of the Science Advisory Committee, and “Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack” was the title of its report.

a “lethal envelope” with a radius of about a mile: See Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume VI, pp. 45–46.

“probability of kill”… was likely to be 92 percent: Cited in ibid., p. 46.

“The Department of Defense has a most urgent need”: Quoted in ibid., p. 21.