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

22 Eventually the two sides reached a compromise: “Some B-52's in Air around the Clock: S.A.C. Begins Training for Possible Establishment of an Airborne Alert,” The New York Times, January 19, 1961, p. 12; Hopkins and Goldberg, Development of the Strategic Air Command, p. 101; Narducci, Strategic Air Command and the Alert Program, pp. 46; “SAC's Deadly Daily Dozen,” Time, March 17, 1961, p. 19.

22 the exact number remained classified: Airborne alert rates can now be found in Lloyd, Cold War Legacy

, p. 681.

22 SAC named the program “Chrome Dome”: A map of the Chrome Dome routes in 1966 appears in Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Studies in International History and Politics, 1993), p. 194. Despite many interviews with SAC airmen, the author never discovered a definitive genesis of the name.

22 Power refused to confirm or deny: “Some B-52's in Air around the Clock,” The New York Times, January 19, 1961, p. 12; The Strategic Air Command Alert Force: History and Philosophy (Briefing) (Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.: Office of the Historian, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, 1988), p. 10.

23 LeMay had moved on: Lloyd, Cold War Legacy

, pp. 666–667. Stats on SAC in 1957 come from ibid., pp. 676–677, 681.

23 Power carried the torch: A good overview of Power's views can be found in “Power Airs SAC Deterrent Capability,” Aviation Week, April 20, 1959, pp. 66 ff.

23 But as missiles grew more sophisticated: Hopkins and Goldberg, Development of the Strategic Air Command, pp. 104–105. For further reading on McNamara's relations with SAC, see Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara

(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993), chaps. 6–9.

23 “backbone of SAC's deterrent strength”:The Mission of SAC: SAC Film Report no. 2 (U.S. Air Force, 1961).

CHAPTER 2: THE ACCIDENT

24 At midmorning on January 17, 1966: The account of the accident comes from two major sources: author's interviews with Wendorf, Rooney, and Messinger; and Report of Major Aircraft Accident.

24 The lower compartment, where Rooney sat:

The author toured a B-52 at Minot Air Force Base on August 23, 2005, and interviewed six airmen with B-52 experience: Mo Wiley, “Monty” Moncrief, Eric DePriest, Stephen Miracle, Harry Bender, and Glynn Breuer. Bender also demonstrated a midair refueling in a B-52 simulator. Additional details of B-52 culture came from retired airmen Max Kennedy and Donald Chase, interviewed by the author on August 25, 2005.

25 Messinger was about to attempt: Background on midair refueling comes from Mike May, “Gas Stations in the Sky,” Invention &Technology 19, no. 4 (Spring 2004), pp. 10–19, and Dennis Casey and Bud Baker, Fuel Aloft: A Brief History of Aerial Refueling, undated (AFHRA). For additional information on the importance of midair refueling to SAC, see Kohn and Harahan, Strategic Air Warfare, pp. 104–108.

26 and they remain so today: In 2008, the Air Force awarded a contract for the next generation of aerial refueling tankers to the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) and the U.S.-based Northrop Grumman. Boeing and the U.S. Government Accountability Office challenged the decision, and the Pentagon decided to recompete the $35 billion contract. As of this writing, the KC-135 and its flying boom remain the state of the art, though some planes use a probe-and-drogue system.

26 The boom is an aluminum tube: The description of a KC-135 refueling a B-52 comes from two sources: author's visit to Minot Air Force Base on August 23, 2005, and author's flight on a KC-135 refueling mission on July 29, 2005. During the refueling flight, boom operator Glen Starkweather answered many questions about the process; the boomer jokes come from him.

28 “It was a dog”: Larry Messinger interview, October 19, 2004.

28. “First you tell the plane to turn”: Harry Bender interview, August 23, 2005.