The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes, and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History

Airborne alert was ready to go, but SAC needed more money. “I feel strongly that we must get on with this airborne alert,” Power told Congress in February. “We must impress Mr. Khrushchev that we have it, and that he cannot strike this country with impunity.” Power's arguments did not convince Eisenhower. It would be “futile and disastrous,” said the president, to strive for constant readiness against any Soviet attack. It was madness to sit around thinking, every minute of the day, that bombs were about to fall on Washington. Airborne alert, he implied, promoted just that type of thinking.

Eventually the two sides reached a compromise. Eisenhower gave SAC permission to start an airborne alert training program, just in case America ever needed such a system in place. On January 18, 1961, Power publicly announced that airborne alert had begun. Reports said that SAC now kept at least twelve bombers in the air at all times; the exact number remained classified. SAC named the program “Chrome Dome,” probably because most of the bombers' flight paths arched over the Arctic Circle, drawing a cap over the top of the world. Power refused to confirm or deny if the flights carried nuclear bombs (they did), but an Air Force spokesman said that “the training is conducted under the most realistic conditions possible.” The flights were still called “indoctrination” or “training” flights because they wouldn't actually be dropping bombs on the USSR — unless, of course, an order came through from the president, and then, in an instant, a training flight would become a bombing mission.

By the time the first Chrome Dome mission went up, LeMay had moved on. In 1957, he had been promoted to Air Force vice chief of staff. Tommy Power was now in charge of the thriving Strategic Air Command. LeMay left Power a force of 1,655 bombers, 68 bases, and 224,014 men. In his nine years at SAC, LeMay had transformed the force from a national joke into a nuclear powerhouse.

Over the next seven years, Power carried the torch through changing times. As engineers made nuclear weapons smaller and lighter and missiles more reliable, other services — especially the Navy, with its nuclear submarines — began to get a larger share of the nuclear pie. By the 1960s, the United States had a nuclear “triad” of long-range land-based missiles, manned bombers, and submarine-launched missiles. SAC controlled everything but the subs and wanted to keep it that way. But as missiles grew more sophisticated and accurate, some asked whether bombers were becoming obsolete. Robert McNamara, who became secretary of defense in 1961, was seen as a missile man, hostile to the continued reliance on manned bombers. But Power, who had circled the burning Tokyo and seen the devastating power of bombers firsthand, argued that the manned bombers, which he called the “backbone of SAC's deterrent strength,” would always have a role in nuclear strategy.

SAC, he insisted, must continue to demonstrate its power through programs like airborne alert. In order to deter nuclear war, said Power, the Soviets had to see America's strength and know that America stood ready to use it.

2. The Accident

At midmorning on January 17, 1966, Captain Wendorf and his crew approached their midair refueling point over southeastern Spain. In the cockpit, Wendorf and Larry Messinger piloted the plane. Twenty feet behind them, facing backward, sat two men side by side: First Lieutenant George Glesner, an electronic warfare officer in charge of defending the B-52 (and arming the nuclear bombs), and the gunner, Technical Sergeant Ronald Snyder. Between the pilots and the defensive team a short ladder led down to a cramped, windowless compartment where Major Ivens Buchanan, the radar officer, and First Lieutenant Stephen Montanus, the navigator, sat facing forward. Mike Rooney, taking a break from his copilot duties, sat in the jump seat a few feet behind Buchanan and Montanus, reading a novel called Thy Tears Might Cease, by the Irish writer Michael Farrell.

The lower compartment, where Rooney sat, was about the size of a big closet — twelve feet long, three feet wide, and barely high enough to stand up in. Crew members called it “the box”—once they were strapped in, they couldn't tell whether it was day or night. At the back of the box crouched a chemical toilet. With the lid down and a cushion on top, it doubled as Mike Rooney's jump seat.

Retired Chrome Dome airmen love to talk about the toilet. More precisely, they love to explain, in great detail, the proper eating strategy for long flights. Steak, bread, and hamburgers were okay; chili or anything “foreign” was off limits. The goal was to avoid having a bowel movement for the duration of the flight. This was partly out of deference to the unfortunate airmen stuck a few grim feet away from the toilet. But crews also had a custom that the first man to do his business in the