Command and Control

“It can hardly be denied that there is a risk”: Ibid., p. 102.

“one of the most baffling problems”: Ibid., p. 21.

About twenty thousand Air Force personnel: Six thousand flight officers were assigned to nuclear missions at the time, and an additional sixteen thousand people tested, handled, or maintained the weapons. Cited in ibid., p. 32.

“a history of transient psychotic disorders”: Ibid., p. 27.

A few hundred Air Force officers and enlisted men were annually removed from duty: Eighty-eight officers and about twice as many enlisted men were “separated or retired from service” in 1956 due to psychotic disorders. See ibid., p. 29.

perhaps ten or twenty who worked with nuclear weapons: In 1956, the proportion of Air Force officers forced to leave the service because of psychotic disorders was 0.61 per 1,000; the rate among enlisted men was twice as high. Those rates, applied to the roughly twenty thousand Air Force personnel who worked with nuclear weapons at the time, suggest that about ten to twenty of that group would suffer a psychotic breakdown every year. See ibid., p. 29.

“a catalogue of derangement”: Ibid., pp. 120–49.

“A 23-year-old pilot, a Lieutenant”: Ibid., pp. 124–25.

“grandiose, inappropriate, and demanding”… “eight hours on the B-25”: Ibid., p. 125.

“invested with a special mission”: Ibid., pp. 130–31.

“the authorities… covertly wish destruction”: Ibid., p. 131.

“the desire to see the tangible result of their own power”: Ibid., p. 141.

“[An] assistant cook improperly obtained a charge”: Ibid., p. 134.

“Private B and I each found a rifle grenade”: Ibid., p. 135.

“A Marine found a 37-millimeter dud”: Ibid., p. 136.

“the kind of curiosity which does not quite believe”: Ibid., p. 137.

“an accidental atomic bomb explosion may well trigger”: Quoted in ibid., p. 90.

“unfortunate political consequences”: Ibid., p. 83.

“a peaceful expansion of the Soviet sphere”: Ibid., p. 84.

“The U.S. defense posture”: Ibid., p. 95.

put combination locks on nuclear weapons: Ibid., pp. 99–102.

“If such an accident occurred in a remote area”: “The Aftermath of a Single Nuclear Detonation by Accident or Sabotage: Some Problems Affecting U.S. Policy, Military Reactions, and Public Information,” Fred Charles Iklé, with J. E. Hill, U.S. Air Force Project RAND, Research Memorandum, May 8, 1959, RM-2364 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), pp. vii, 32.

An official “board of inquiry”… an “important device for temporizing”: Ibid., p. 62.

“During this delaying period the public information”: Ibid., p. 63.

“avoid public self-implication and delay the release”: Ibid., p. 88.

the electrical system of the W-49 warhead: Bob Peurifoy and William L. Stevens, who both worked on the electrical system, told me the story of how it became the first warhead with an environmental sensing device. Stevens writes about the Army’s resistance to the idea in “Origins and Evolution of S2C at Sandia,” pp. 32–34.

“This warhead, like all other warheads investigated”: Quoted in “A Summary of the Program to Use Environmental Sensing Devices to Improve Handling Safety Protection for Nuclear Weapons,” W. L. Stevens and C. H. Mauney, Sandia Corporation, July 1961 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 6. Another study made clear how it could be done: “A saboteur, with knowledge of the warhead can, through warhead connectors, operate any arm/safe switch with improvised equipment.” See “Evaluation of Warhead Safing Devices,” p. 26.

a “handling safety device” or a “goof-proofer”: Stevens interview.

“to hell with it”: Peurifoy interview.

“environmental sensing device”: Ibid.

A young physicist, Robert K. Osborne, began to worry: My account of how the one-point safety standard developed is based on interviews with Harold Agnew and Bob Peurifoy, as well as the following documents: “Minutes of the 133rd Meeting of the Fission Weapon Committee,” Los Alamos National Laboratory, December 30, 1957; “One-Point Safety,” letter, from J. F. Ney to R. L. Peurifoy, Jr., Sandia National Laboratories, May 24, 1993; and “Origin of One-Point Safety Definition,” letter, from D. M. Olson, to Glen Otey, Sandia National Laboratories, January 6, 1993.

it could incapacitate the crew: The goal was to avoid exposing the engine crew to an “immediate incapacitation dose” of radiation. See “Origin of One-Point Safety Definition,” p. 1.

Los Alamos proposed that the odds… should be one in one hundred thousand: Agnew interview.

odds of one in a million: Ibid.

“Testing is essential for weapons development”: Quoted in May, et al., “History of Strategic Arms Competition, Part 1,” p. 235.

five hundred long-range ballistic missiles by 1961: See “Soviet Capabilities in Guided Missiles and Space Vehicles,” NIE 11-5-58 (TOP SECRET/declassified), p. 1, in Intentions and Capabilities, p. 65.