Jan 14, 2017 04:47 AM
(This post was last modified: Jan 14, 2017 04:49 AM by C C.)
1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Dam..._explosion
"The initial explosion catapulted the 740-ton silo door away from the silo and ejected the second stage and warhead. Once clear of the silo, the second stage exploded. The W53 warhead landed about 100 feet (30 m) from the launch complex's entry gate; its safety features operated correctly and prevented any loss of radioactive material."
Command and Control
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperien...roduction/
EXCERPTS (from transcipt): [...] Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: There had been all these statistical assurances that weapons wouldn’t detonate in an accident, and then there was a realization that the weapons were nowhere near as safe as everyone had assumed.
Bill Stevens, Head of Nuclear Safety, Sandia: We knew that fire for example could set off these electro-explosive devices inside the warhead in a random way.
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: During a fire, the solder might melt on a circuit board. It created all kinds of new electrical pathways that could completely circumvent a safety device.
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: Of the 20 or 25 thousand weapons that we had in the stockpile I could not in good conscience swear that they were adequately safe.
[...]
Col. John Moser, Commander, 308th Strategic Missile Wing: I went out there the next day. Somebody said, “there it is.” And it was in the ditch in a somewhat, as I recall, somewhat buried. And then someone called the nuclear people at Sandia to assess whether or not we had a hazardous situation.
Bob Peurifoy, Director Of Weapon Development, Sandia: The phone rang. They said, “we had a problem.” I knew I had to get to Damascus. We helicoptered into the silo. I was apprehensive. I knew that the warhead could have been armed. Ready to fire.
Robert Kenner, Filmmaker (off Camera): Was there a chance that that bomb could have detonated?
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: Yes. It was only after we had landed I learned that because of the absence of any power source, the risk of a nuclear detonation was approximately zero.
- - - - - - -
INTRO: [...] the long-hidden story of a deadly accident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Arkansas in 1980. [...] the chilling new documentary exposes the terrifying truth about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal and shows what can happen when the weapons built to protect us threaten to destroy us. The film features the minute-by-minute accounts of Air Force personnel, weapon designers, and first responders who were on the scene that night. Command and Control reveals the unlikely chain of events that caused the accident and the feverish efforts to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States – a warhead 600 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. [...]
- - - - - - - -
MORE EXCERPTS: [...] James Sandaker, PTS Team: I think nowadays people don’t realize that we still have 7000 nuclear weapons. They think that’s all in the past and that they’re not there anymore and the reality is they’re all over the place.
Harold Brown, Secretary of Defense: Nuclear accidents continue to the present day, although there have not been nearly as many occasions of things being dropped or blown out of silos. In part, that’s because there are fewer of them. On the other hand, the degree of oversight and attention has, if anything, gotten worse, because people don’t worry about nuclear war as much.
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: Since the beginning of the atomic age the United States has built about 70,000 nuclear weapons. None of them have ever detonated by accident. That’s due to the skills of our weapons designers, whose safety recommendations were finally adopted and the bravery of our military personnel. But it’s also due to luck. Pure luck. And the problem with luck is eventually it runs out. Nuclear weapons are machines. And every machine ever invented eventually goes wrong.
Allan Childers, Missile Combat Crew: It doesn’t matter how much you plan, it doesn’t matter how many checklists you have, somebody’s got a ringer somewhere they’re going to throw out there at you.
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: Nuclear weapons will always have a chance of an accidental detonation. It will happen. It may be tomorrow, or it may be a million years from now, but it will happen.
[...]
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: According to the Department of Defense, there have been 32 broken arrows, that is serious nuclear weapons accidents that could have endangered the public. But a few years ago, the Department of Energy released a declassified document that said there had been more than a thousand accidents and incidents involving our nuclear weapons. Not only had the public not been told about these hundreds and hundreds of accidents, but even the man responsible for the safety of our nuclear weapons wasn’t being told about accidents involving those weapons.
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: When I was the director of weapon development I was unaware of a large number of accidents and incidents because I had no access to the information.
Col. John Moser, Commander, 308th Strategic Missile Wing: I was surprised when I read about the number of nuclear accidents that we had in the Air Force. I knew about some of those, but I didn’t know there were so many.
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: Again and again in looking at these documents, you find an effort to blame the person who dropped the wrench, who used the wrong tool at a minuteman site, blew the warhead off the missile, who brought the seat cushions onto the plane that caught on fire and crashed the plane. There’s this instinct to blame the operator, to blame the little guy. If the system worked properly, somebody dropping a tool couldn’t send a nuclear warhead into a field.
ARC (News): No special precautions have been ordered at other Titan missile bases around the country because of that explosion in Arkansas.
ARC (News): In Arkansas the system itself apparently did not fail. A mechanic’s wrench fell from a ledge and struck the missile, puncturing a fuel tank. That is classified as human error.
ARC (News): The air force says the Titan is not to blame, that it was human error that caused the accident.
ARC (Hans Mark): The accident that I’ve described here is unrelated to the state or the age of this system.
Dave Powell, PTS Team: I was served with an article 15 for dereliction of duty because I chose to use the ratchet instead of the torque wrench. Sgt Kennedy got a letter of reprimand for violating the two man rule.
ARC (Kennedy): I gave them my all, and what did I get from them. A letter of reprimand. A letter of reprimand.
James Sandaker, PTS Team: After the accident I thought that Kennedy and Devlin and the others that were hurt would be treated like heroes because they were. And they were treated like crap.
[...]
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: 19 years before the Damascus accident, a B-52 bomber carrying two powerful hydrogen bombs took off on a routine mission over North Carolina. During the mission, the plane experienced a fuel leak and suddenly the B-52 began to break apart mid-air. As the fuselage was spinning and heading back towards Earth, the centrifugal forces pulled on a lanyard in the cockpit, and that lanyard was pulled exactly the way it would be if a crewmember wanted to release its hydrogen bombs over enemy territory.
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: Bombs are relatively dumb. They sort of think that if you drop the bomb out of the bomb bay, you must have intended to do that.
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: One of the weapons in particular went through all of its arming steps to detonate, and when that weapon hit the ground, a firing signal was sent. And the only thing that prevented a full-scale detonation of a powerful hydrogen bomb in North Carolina was a single safety switch.
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: All it is a two-position on-off switch. That prevented four megaton disaster. If the right two wires had touched, the bomb would have detonated. Period.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Dam..._explosion
"The initial explosion catapulted the 740-ton silo door away from the silo and ejected the second stage and warhead. Once clear of the silo, the second stage exploded. The W53 warhead landed about 100 feet (30 m) from the launch complex's entry gate; its safety features operated correctly and prevented any loss of radioactive material."
Command and Control
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperien...roduction/
EXCERPTS (from transcipt): [...] Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: There had been all these statistical assurances that weapons wouldn’t detonate in an accident, and then there was a realization that the weapons were nowhere near as safe as everyone had assumed.
Bill Stevens, Head of Nuclear Safety, Sandia: We knew that fire for example could set off these electro-explosive devices inside the warhead in a random way.
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: During a fire, the solder might melt on a circuit board. It created all kinds of new electrical pathways that could completely circumvent a safety device.
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: Of the 20 or 25 thousand weapons that we had in the stockpile I could not in good conscience swear that they were adequately safe.
[...]
Col. John Moser, Commander, 308th Strategic Missile Wing: I went out there the next day. Somebody said, “there it is.” And it was in the ditch in a somewhat, as I recall, somewhat buried. And then someone called the nuclear people at Sandia to assess whether or not we had a hazardous situation.
Bob Peurifoy, Director Of Weapon Development, Sandia: The phone rang. They said, “we had a problem.” I knew I had to get to Damascus. We helicoptered into the silo. I was apprehensive. I knew that the warhead could have been armed. Ready to fire.
Robert Kenner, Filmmaker (off Camera): Was there a chance that that bomb could have detonated?
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: Yes. It was only after we had landed I learned that because of the absence of any power source, the risk of a nuclear detonation was approximately zero.
- - - - - - -
INTRO: [...] the long-hidden story of a deadly accident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Arkansas in 1980. [...] the chilling new documentary exposes the terrifying truth about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal and shows what can happen when the weapons built to protect us threaten to destroy us. The film features the minute-by-minute accounts of Air Force personnel, weapon designers, and first responders who were on the scene that night. Command and Control reveals the unlikely chain of events that caused the accident and the feverish efforts to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States – a warhead 600 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. [...]
- - - - - - - -
MORE EXCERPTS: [...] James Sandaker, PTS Team: I think nowadays people don’t realize that we still have 7000 nuclear weapons. They think that’s all in the past and that they’re not there anymore and the reality is they’re all over the place.
Harold Brown, Secretary of Defense: Nuclear accidents continue to the present day, although there have not been nearly as many occasions of things being dropped or blown out of silos. In part, that’s because there are fewer of them. On the other hand, the degree of oversight and attention has, if anything, gotten worse, because people don’t worry about nuclear war as much.
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: Since the beginning of the atomic age the United States has built about 70,000 nuclear weapons. None of them have ever detonated by accident. That’s due to the skills of our weapons designers, whose safety recommendations were finally adopted and the bravery of our military personnel. But it’s also due to luck. Pure luck. And the problem with luck is eventually it runs out. Nuclear weapons are machines. And every machine ever invented eventually goes wrong.
Allan Childers, Missile Combat Crew: It doesn’t matter how much you plan, it doesn’t matter how many checklists you have, somebody’s got a ringer somewhere they’re going to throw out there at you.
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: Nuclear weapons will always have a chance of an accidental detonation. It will happen. It may be tomorrow, or it may be a million years from now, but it will happen.
[...]
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: According to the Department of Defense, there have been 32 broken arrows, that is serious nuclear weapons accidents that could have endangered the public. But a few years ago, the Department of Energy released a declassified document that said there had been more than a thousand accidents and incidents involving our nuclear weapons. Not only had the public not been told about these hundreds and hundreds of accidents, but even the man responsible for the safety of our nuclear weapons wasn’t being told about accidents involving those weapons.
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: When I was the director of weapon development I was unaware of a large number of accidents and incidents because I had no access to the information.
Col. John Moser, Commander, 308th Strategic Missile Wing: I was surprised when I read about the number of nuclear accidents that we had in the Air Force. I knew about some of those, but I didn’t know there were so many.
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: Again and again in looking at these documents, you find an effort to blame the person who dropped the wrench, who used the wrong tool at a minuteman site, blew the warhead off the missile, who brought the seat cushions onto the plane that caught on fire and crashed the plane. There’s this instinct to blame the operator, to blame the little guy. If the system worked properly, somebody dropping a tool couldn’t send a nuclear warhead into a field.
ARC (News): No special precautions have been ordered at other Titan missile bases around the country because of that explosion in Arkansas.
ARC (News): In Arkansas the system itself apparently did not fail. A mechanic’s wrench fell from a ledge and struck the missile, puncturing a fuel tank. That is classified as human error.
ARC (News): The air force says the Titan is not to blame, that it was human error that caused the accident.
ARC (Hans Mark): The accident that I’ve described here is unrelated to the state or the age of this system.
Dave Powell, PTS Team: I was served with an article 15 for dereliction of duty because I chose to use the ratchet instead of the torque wrench. Sgt Kennedy got a letter of reprimand for violating the two man rule.
ARC (Kennedy): I gave them my all, and what did I get from them. A letter of reprimand. A letter of reprimand.
James Sandaker, PTS Team: After the accident I thought that Kennedy and Devlin and the others that were hurt would be treated like heroes because they were. And they were treated like crap.
[...]
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: 19 years before the Damascus accident, a B-52 bomber carrying two powerful hydrogen bombs took off on a routine mission over North Carolina. During the mission, the plane experienced a fuel leak and suddenly the B-52 began to break apart mid-air. As the fuselage was spinning and heading back towards Earth, the centrifugal forces pulled on a lanyard in the cockpit, and that lanyard was pulled exactly the way it would be if a crewmember wanted to release its hydrogen bombs over enemy territory.
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: Bombs are relatively dumb. They sort of think that if you drop the bomb out of the bomb bay, you must have intended to do that.
Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: One of the weapons in particular went through all of its arming steps to detonate, and when that weapon hit the ground, a firing signal was sent. And the only thing that prevented a full-scale detonation of a powerful hydrogen bomb in North Carolina was a single safety switch.
Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: All it is a two-position on-off switch. That prevented four megaton disaster. If the right two wires had touched, the bomb would have detonated. Period.
