Command and control Nuclear weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the illusion of safety

Review by Choice Review

Free-lance journalist Schlosser, author of the best-selling exposes Fast Food Nation (2001) and Reefer Madness (CH, Oct'03, 41-1043), has written a brilliant history of nuclear weapons in the US during the Cold War and after. Basing his work on extensive primary and secondary research (the endnotes take up 128 pages), the author deftly weaves together three topics: a general history of the arms race with a focus on command and control issues; an account of the substantial number of accidents involving nuclear weapons delivery systems; and a meticulously detailed description of a major explosion in a Titan missile silo in Damascus, Arkansas, in 1980. In a such a "big" and complex study, two main themes emerge: first, the US government kept all but the most obvious of the accidents secret and failed to respond in a timely fashion to fix the problems that caused accidents; second, the command and control systems were badly flawed, increasing the possibility of an accidental nuclear war. After reading this beautifully written work, readers will be left with the feeling that the world has been very fortunate to have avoided the accidental explosion of a US-based nuclear weapon. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. A. O. Edmonds emeritus, Ball State University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by New York Times Review

A LITTLE OVER 50 YEARS AGO a South Car- olina doctor (and the grandfather of this reviewer) treated a family for injuries sustained when a sudden, inexplicable explosion tore through their backyard. The injuries were not serious, and after spending the night at the doctor's house they returned home to discover that the object in the 50-foot crater left behind their house was an atomic bomb that had fallen from a passing Air Force plane. The bomb had not been "armed" with its nuclear core; the blast came from the explosives intended to trigger a chain reaction. The crater can still be seen today. That incident, which led to an antinuclear movement in Britain, where the plane was bound, is one of many stories Eric Schlosser, the author of "Fast Food Nation," tells in "Command and Control." During the cold war, nuclear bombs fell out of the sky, burned up in plane crashes and were lost at sea. In the incident Schlosser describes in greatest detail, "the Damascus accident" of Sept. 18,1980, the warhead from a Titan II missile was ejected after a series of mishaps that began when a repairman dropped a socket wrench and pierced a fuel tank. Tactical nuclear weapons scattered across Europe had minimal security; misplaced tools and failed repairs triggered serious accidents; inadequate safety procedures and poor oversight led to dozens of close brushes with nuclear explosions. People have died in these accidents, sometimes as a result of their own carelessness or bad luck, but often while doing their best to protect the rest of us from an accidental nuclear blast. Schlosser's disquieting but riveting book looks at every aspect of nuclear risk, examining problems with the command and control systems that in theory were supposed to provide presidents with the information they would need to make the decision on whether the United States should retaliate against a Soviet strike. Constructing the complex systems needed for this task - linking radar sites and monitor stations around the world into a single network for analysis and control - was well beyond the technological capacity of American engineers for much of the cold war, but they did the best they could. The system they created, which led among other things to the technology that gave us the Internet, was not only subject to glitches and crashes, it was also too brittle to survive any serious Soviet attack, too inflexible to give presidents good choices at what would have been the most critical moments in world history and too subject to error to be relied on. At various points, flocks of birds, sunshine reflecting off clouds and the rising moon over Norway set off alarm bells. One false alert went high enough up the command chain that a general woke the national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in the middle of the night; as he waited for confirmation before calling President Carter, Brzezinski decided not to tell his wife that Soviet missiles were on their way. "Command and Control" is organized a bit like a Caribbean cruise. The main part of the voyage is Schlosser's fascinating account of one of the most serious accidents in the history of the American nuclear program: the crisis near Damascus, Ark., when a Titan missile exploded in a fiery blast, sending its warhead into a ditch 200 yards away. From eyewitness accounts and exhaustive research Schlosser has pieced this story together in great detail. But the cruise ship also stops at several ports along the way, where passengers disembark for tours of various other topics related to the history of American strategic thinking, the development of war-fighting systems, and other accidents involving nuclear weapons and missiles around the world. Almost everything in the book is well reported and clearly explained, but the events and ideas tend to blur. And gripping though the Damascus narrative is on its own terms, readers may have trouble picking up the broken threads of this highly complex multicharacter tale after so many involved and absorbing excursions - for example, Schlosser's detailed treatment of the bitter interservice rivalries that affected the development of America's nuclear systems and doctrine. For many readers, the most dismaying revelations will not be the ones about accidents and near accidents. Nuclear bomb scares are fun to read about, but after all, the bomb that fell on South Carolina was not armed, and none of the countries making and storing nuclear weapons since 1945 have had to cope with the consequences of an accidental nuclear blast. Substantially more troubling is the story Schlosser tells of the poor strategic thinking at the heart of the nuclear enterprise. For much of the cold war, the plans for using America's nuclear weapons were rigid and inflexible. Compared with them, the mobilization timetables that locked the general staffs of Europe into an inexorable march toward disaster in 1914 were models of flexibility and restraint. As far as Schlosser can tell, the American arsenal is safer than it used to be (though some troubling weak spots remain), and since the end of the cold war we have stepped back from the nuclear brink. But in a world with many other nuclear powers, some much worse at basic safety and security precautions than we are, the chances of accidental nuclear explosions or terrorists capturing nuclear weapons are much too high. Worse, it is very likely that the plans in countries like India and Pakistan are as rigid as those Americans developed a generation ago, and that a collection of misunderstandings might launch a nuclear juggernaut on a course that could not be stopped. All that said, it is hard to see how the nuclear nightmare can be brought to an end. Schlosser traces the many disarmament proposals and efforts from Harry Truman's effort to vest control over nuclear weapons with the United Nations up through President Obama's efforts to outlaw the weapons through international agreement, but he offers small hope that they can ever be abolished. (Schlosser does not even mention one reason countries like Russia and China are dead set against universal nuclear disarmament: America's conventional superiority is so overwhelming that both countries feel they need nuclear arsenals to offset Washington's nonnuclear might.) Over all, Schlosser is a better reporter than policy analyst, and his discussion of what we should do about the problem he so grippingly describes is disappointingly thin. Nevertheless, his core recommendation that the United States explore the possibilities of operating a minimal deterrent, the smallest number of nuclear weapons needed to prevent adversaries from contemplating a nuclear attack on us, may be the most hopeful direction in which we can look. But as technological progress makes nuclear weapons cheaper and easier to build, and creates new and ever more dangerous weapons of mass destruction, the intractable problems of safe storage and nuclear war-fighting doctrine are likely to remain with us for the long term. The human race was smart enough to build these bombs. So far we appear to lack the intelligence needed either to get rid of them or to store them safely. Schlosser's readers (and he deserves a great many) will be struck by how frequently the people he cites attribute the absence of accidental explosions and nuclear war to divine intervention or sheer luck rather than to human wisdom and skill. Whatever was responsible, we will clearly need more of it in the years to come. The Gregg family of Mars Bluff, S.C., whose house was damaged when the Air Force accidentally dropped an atomic bomb in their backyard. WALTER RUSSELL MEAD is the James Clarke Chace professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and editor at large for The American Interest.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 15, 2013]

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Review by Booklist Review

Nuclear bombs must be handled with the proper care, yet that is not always the case. Mentioning harrowing mishaps in the history of the American atomic arsenal, Schlosser singles out one for detailed dramatization, the explosion in 1980 of a Titan II missile. Some airmen were killed and injured, but since the warhead didn't detonate, the safety system appeared to have worked. Color Schlosser skeptical, for, as he recounts this accident, which began with a mundane incident a dropped tool that punctured the missile he delves into nuclear weapon designs. Those are influenced by the requirement that the bomb must always detonate when desired and never when not. Citing experts in the technology of nuclear weaponry who have pondered the never part of the requirement, Schlosser highlights their worry about an accidental nuclear explosion. Underscored by cases of dropped, burned, and lost bombs, the problem of designing a safe but reliable bomb persists (see also The Bomb, 2009, by weapons engineer Stephen Younger). Well researched, reported, and written, this contribution to the nuclear-weapons literature demonstrates the versatility of Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation (2001).--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In 1980 in rural Damascus, Ark., two young Air Force technicians (one was 21 years old, the other 19) began a routine maintenance procedure on a 103-foot-tall Titan II nuclear warhead-armed intercontinental ballistic missile. All was going according to plan until one of the men dropped a wrench, which fell 70 feet before hitting the rocket and setting off a chain reaction with alarming consequences. After that nail-biting opening, investigative reporter Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) goes on to tell the thrilling story of the heroism, ingenuity, mistakes, and destruction that followed. At intervals, he steps back to deliver an equally captivating history of the development and maintenance of America's nuclear arsenal from WWII to the present. Though the Cold War has ended and concerns over nuclear warfare have mostly been eclipsed by the recent preoccupation with terrorist threats, Schlosser makes it abundantly clear that nukes don't need to be launched to still be mind-bogglingly dangerous. Mixing expert commentary with hair-raising details of a variety of mishaps, the author makes the convincing case that our best control systems are no match for human error, bad luck, and ever-increasing technological complexity. "Mutually assured destruction" is a terrifying prospect, but Schlosser points out that there may be an even more frightening possibility: self-assured destruction. Agent: Tina Bennett, WME Entertainment. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) presents an unsettling summary of 70 years of the development and management of American nuclear weapons. This chilling, gripping story is ripe with scary accounts of how American scientists, engineers, military officers, and policymakers have struggled to ensure that the U.S. thermonuclear arsenal cannot be stolen, sabotaged, used without authorization, or inadvertently detonated. Schlosser digs deep into declassified documents and interviews with men who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons to present a suspenseful tale that will wake up anyone with the reality that many times the world has come close to nuclear disaster. Schlosser's central story reveals recently declassified details regarding the unknown 1980 near-disaster in a Titan II missile silo near Damascus, AR. Schlosser also examines antinuclear foreign policies, analyzes the operational processes of nuclear missiles and warheads, and reveals personal stories of U.S. bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance workers, and ordinary service-persons. Schlosser's timely work arrives as the nation becomes aware of the recent shake-up of high officials in the air force with responsibility for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. His latest titles is similar in approach to works on the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis (Michael Dobbs's One Minute to Midnight; Don Munton and David A. Welch's The Cuban Missile Crisis) and the April 1986 Chernobyl disaster (Zhores Medvedev's The Legacy of Chernobyl; Marcia Amidon Lusted's The Chernobyl Disaster). Scott Brick narrates with the appropriate gravitas. -VERDICT Highly recommended for all libraries, especially university collections. ["This is a welcome addition to a field dominated by books by nuclear weapons and strategy experts. It will appeal to a general audience as an engrossing read about Cold War history as well as to those interested in nuclear weapons and U.S. national defense policy," read the starred review of the Penguin Pr. hc, LJ 9/15/13.]-Dale Farris, Groves, TX (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The chilling, concise history of America's precarious nuclear arsenal. Investigative journalist Schlosser's (Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, 2003, etc.) vivid and unsettling treatise spreads across a 70-year span of the development and control of nuclear weaponry. At the core of the author's scrutiny is the suspensefully narrated back story of the Arkansas-based Titan II military missile silo. A disastrous mishap in 1980 involving an accidentally punctured fuel tank caused a near-detonation and collapse of the missile, killing a young repairman and sparking an investigation into the hazardous nature of all military nuclear armaments. Schlosser frames this incident around four decades of the Cold War, the Eisenhower and Truman administrations, the Cuban missile crisis, the bravery of servicemen like Gen. Curtis LeMay, and the eerily accurate predictions and statistical determinations of nuclear strategist Fred Ikl. Testimony from a massive list of scientists and engineers further elucidates what Schlosser considers to be the nation's perpetual military defense conundrum: "the need for a nuclear weapon to be safe and the need for it to be reliable." Throughout, he chillingly extrapolates the long-standing history of nuclear near-misses with the engagement of a fiction writer. He also examines the heavily endorsed anti-nuclear foreign policies proselytized by politicians and probes the operational processes of nuclear missiles and warheads, though the specter of decimation at the hands of a weapon of mass destruction looms over each chapter. With this cautionary text, Schlosser, who pinged processed food and the underground economy onto America's cultural radar, succeeds in increasing awareness for more stringent precautions and less of the casual mismanagement of nuclear weapons. Furthermore, he respectfully memorializes those Cold War heroes (and countless others, like nuclear weapon safety lobbyist Bob Peurifoy) who've prevented nuclear holocausts from being written into the annals of American history. An exhaustive, unnerving examination of the illusory safety of atomic arms.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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On September 18, 1980, at about six thirty in the evening, Senior Airman David F. Powell and Airman Jeffrey L. Plumb walked into the silo at Launch Complex 374-7, a few miles north of Damascus, Arkansas. They were planning to do a routine maintenance procedure on a Titan II missile. They'd spent countless hours underground at complexes like this one. But no matter how many times they entered the silo, the Titan II always looked impressive. It was the largest intercontinental ballistic missile ever built by the United States: 10 feet in diameter and 103 feet tall, roughly the height of a nine-story building. It had an aluminum skin with a matte finish and U.S. AIR FORCE painted in big letters down the side. The nose cone on top of the Titan II was deep black, and inside it sat a W-53 thermonuclear warhead, the most powerful weapon ever carried by an American missile. The warhead had a yield of 9 megatons--about three times the explosive force of all the bombs dropped during the Second World War, including both atomic bombs. Day or night, winter or spring, the silo always felt the same. It was eerily quiet, and mercury vapor lights on the walls bathed the missile in a bright white glow. When you opened the door on a lower level and stepped into the launch duct, the Titan II loomed above you like an immense black-tipped silver bullet, loaded in a concrete gun barrel, primed, cocked, ready to go, and pointed at the sky The missile was designed to launch within a minute and hit a target as far as six thousand miles away. In order to do that, the Titan II relied upon a pair of liquid propellants--a rocket fuel and an oxidizer--that were "hypergolic." The moment they came into contact with each other, they'd instantly and forcefully ignite. The missile had two stages, and inside both of them, an oxidizer tank rested on top of a fuel tank, with pipes leading down to an engine. Stage 1, which extended about seventy feet upward from the bottom of the missile, contained about 85,000 pounds of fuel and 163,000 pounds of oxidizer. Stage 2, the upper section where the warhead sat, was smaller and held about one fourth of those amounts. If the missile were launched, fuel and oxidizer would flow through the stage 1 pipes, mix inside the combustion chambers of the engine, catch on fire, emit hot gases, and send almost half a million pounds of thrust through the supersonic convergent-divergent nozzles beneath it. Within a few minutes, the Titan II would be fifty miles off the ground. The two propellants were extremely efficient--and extremely dangerous. The fuel, Aerozine-50, could spontaneously ignite when it came into contact with everyday things like wool, rags, or rust. As a liquid, Aerozine-50 was clear and colorless. As a vapor, it reacted with the water and the oxygen in the air and became a whitish cloud with a fishy smell. This fuel vapor could be explosive in proportions as low as 2 percent. Inhaling it could cause breathing difficulties, a reduced heart rate, vomiting, convulsions, tremors, and death. The fuel was also highly carcinogenic and easily absorbed through the skin. The missile's oxidizer, nitrogen tetroxide, was even more hazardous. Under federal law, it was classified as a "Poison A," the most deadly category of man-made chemicals. In its liquid form, the oxidizer was a translucent, yellowy brown. Although not as flammable as the fuel, it could spontaneously ignite if it touched leather, paper, cloth, or wood. And its boiling point was only 70 degrees Fahrenheit. At temperatures any higher, the liquid oxidizer boiled into a reddish brown vapor that smelled like ammonia. Contact with water turned the vapor into a corrosive acid that could react with the moisture in a person's eyes or skin and cause severe burns. When inhaled, the oxidizer could destroy tissue in the upper respiratory system and the lungs. The damage might not be felt immediately. Six to twelve hours after being inhaled, the stuff could suddenly cause headaches, dizziness, difficulty breathing, pneumonia, and pulmonary edema leading to death. p>Powell and Plumb were missile repairmen. They belonged to Propellant Transfer System (PTS) Team A of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing, headquarters was about an hour or so away at Little Rock Air Force Base. They'd been called to the site that day because a warning light had signaled that pressure was low in the stage 2 oxidizer tank. If the pressure fell too low, the oxidizer wouldn't flow smoothly to the engine. A "low light" could mean a serious problem--a rupture, a leak. But it was far more likely that a slight change in temperature had lowered the pressure inside the tank. Air-conditioning units in the silo were supposed to keep the missile cooled to about 60 degrees. If Powell and Plum didn't find any leaks, they'd simply unscrew the cap on the oxidizer tank and add more nitrogen gas. The nitrogen maintained a steady pressure on the liquid inside, pushing downward. It was a simple, mundane task, like putting air in your tires before long drive. Powell had served on a PTS team for almost three years and knew the hazards of the Titan II. During his first visit to a launch complex, an oxidizer leak created a toxic cloud that shut down operations for three days. He was twenty-one years old, a proud "hillbilly" from rural Kentucky who loved the job and planned to reenlist at the end of the year. Plumb had been with the 308th for just nine months. He wasn't qualified to do this sort of missile maintenance or to handle these propellants. Accompanying Powell and watching everything that Powell did was considered Plumb's "OJT," his on-the-job training. Plumb was nineteen, raised in suburban Detroit. Although an oxidizer low light wasn't unusual, Air Force technical orders required that both men wear Category I protective gear when the silo to investigate it. "Going Category I" meant getting into a Rocket Fuel Handler's Clothing Outfit (RFHCO)--an airtight, liquidproof, vaporproof, fire-resistant combination of gear designed to protect them from the oxidizer and the fuel. The men called it a "ref-co." A RFHCO looked like a space suit from an early-1960s science fiction movie. It had a white detachable bubble helmet with a voice-actuated radio and a transparent Plexiglas face screen. The suit was off white, with a long zipper extending from the top of the left shoulder, across the torso, to the right knee. You stepped into the RFHCO and wore long johns underneath it. The black vinyl gloves and boots weren't attached, so the RFHCO had roll-down cuffs at the wrists and the ankles to maintain a tight seal. The suit weighed about twenty-two pounds. The RFHCO backpack weighed an additional thirty-five and carried about an hour's worth of air. The outfit was heavy and cumbersome. It could be hot, sticky, and uncomfortable, especially when worn outside the air-conditioned silo. But it could also save your life. The stage 2 oxidizer pressure cap was about two thirds of the way up the missile. In order to reach it, Powell and Plumb had to walk across a retractable steel platform that extended from the silo wall. The tall, hollow cylinder in which the Titan II stood was enclosed by another concrete cylinder with nine interior levels, housing equipment. Level 1 was near the top of the missile; level 9 about twenty feet beneath the missile. The steel work platforms folded down from the walls hydraulically. Each one had a stiff rubber edge to prevent the Titan II from getting scratched, while keeping the gap between the platform and the missile as narrow as possible. The airmen entered the launch duct at level 2. Far above their heads was a concrete silo door. It was supposed to protect the missile from the wind and the rain and the effects of a nuclear weapon detonating nearby. The door weighed 740 tons. Far below the men, beneath the Titan II, a concrete flame deflector shaped like a W was installed to guide the hot gases downward at launch, then upward through exhaust vents and out of the silo. The missile stood on a thrust mount, a steel ring at level 7 that weighed about 26,000 pounds. The thrust mount was attached to the walls by large springs, so that the Titan II could ride out a nuclear attack, bounce instead of break, and then take off. In addition to the W-53 warhead and a few hundred thousand pounds of propellants, many other things in the silo could detonate. devices were used after ignition to free the missile from the thrust mount, separate stage 2 from stage 1, release the nose cone. The missile also housed numerous small rocket engines with flammable solid fuel to adjust the pitch and the roll of the warhead midflight. The Titan II launch complex had been carefully designed to minimize the risk of having so many flammables and explosives within it. Fire detectors, fire suppression systems, toxic vapor detectors, and decontamination showers were scattered throughout the nine levels of the silo. These safety devices were bolstered by strict safety rules. Whenever a PTS team member put on a RFHCO, he had to be accompanied by someone else in a RFHCO, with two other people waiting as backup, ready to put on their suits. Every Category I task had to be performed according to a standardized checklist, which the team chief usually read aloud over the radio communications network. There was one way to do everything--and only one way. Technical Order 21M-LGM25C-2-12, Figure 2-18, told Powell and Plumb exactly what to do as they stood on the platform near the missile. "Step four," the PTS team chief said over the radio. "Remove airborne disconnect pressure cap." "Roger," Powell replied. "Caution. When complying with step four, do not exceed one hundred sixty foot-pounds of torque. Overtorquing may result in damage to the missile skin." "Roger." As Powell used a socket wrench to unscrew the pressure cap, the socket fell off. It struck the platform and bounced. Powell grabbed for it but missed. Plumb watched the nine-pound socket slip through the narrow gap between the platform and the missile, fall about seventy feet, hit the thrust mount, and then ricochet off the Titan II. It seemed to happen in slow motion. A moment later, fuel sprayed from a hole in the missile like water from a garden hose. "Oh man," Plumb thought. "This is not good." Excerpted from Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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