Command and Control (70 page)

steel doorjambs
: . . . weighed an additional thirty-one thousand pounds:
Ibid.

Rodney Holder was once working in the silo
:
Interview with Rodney L. Holder.

Launch Complex 373-4 had been the site of the worst Titan II accident
:
My account of the Searcy accident is based primarily on “Report of USAF Aerospace Safety Missile Accident Investigation Board, Missile Accident LGM-25C-62-006, Site 373-4,” Little Rock Air Force Base, August 9, 1965 (
OFFICIAL USE ONLY
); “Launch Operations and Witness Group Final Report,” submitted to USAF Aerospace Safety Missile Accident Investigation Board, Missile Accident LGM-25C-62-006, Site 373-4, n.d., (
OFFICIAL USE ONLY
); and Charles F. Strang, “Titan II Launch Facility Accident Briefing, Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas,” minutes of the Ninth Explosives Safety Seminar, Naval Training Center, San Diego, California, August 15–17, 1967 (
NO FOREIGN WITHOUT THE APPROVAL OF THE ARMED SERVICES EXPLOSIVES SAFETY BOARD
); and Stumpf,
Titan II
, pp. 215–21.

(serial number 62-0006)
:
Cited in “Witness Group Final Report,” p. 1.

You and the Titan II
: Ibid., p. 11.

an “explosive situation”
:
Ibid., p. 4.

Gary Lay insisted that nobody had been welding
:
See Linda Hicks, “Silo Survivor Tells His Story,”
Searcy Daily Citizen,
May 7, 2000.

the launch checklist went something like this
:
I have presented a somewhat abbreviated version of the checklist. For the complete one, see
Technical Manual, USAF Model LGM-25C
,
Missile System Operation
(Tucson: Arizona Aerospace Foundation, 2005). fig. 3-1, sheets 1–3.

The missile's serial number was 62-0006
:
See “Titan II Class A Mishap Report, Serial Number 62-0006, 18 September 1980, Damascus Arkansas,” Eighth Air Force Mishap Investigation Board, October 30, 1980, p. 0-1.

“Dang,” Holder thought
:
Holder interview.

Spheres Within Spheres

Sergeant Herbert M. Lehr had just arrived
:
Interview with Herbert M. Lehr. I am grateful to Lehr for describing that historic day in New Mexico. His memory, at the age of ninety, seemed better than mine. An account of Lehr's work for the Manhattan Project can be found at the Library of Congress: Herbert Lehr Collection (AFC/2001/001/12058), Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center.

the most expensive weapon ever built
:
By the end of 1945, about $1.9 billion had been spent on the Manhattan Project—roughly $24.7 billion in today's dollars. See Richard G. Hewlett, and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr.,
The New World: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Volume 1, 1939–1946
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), p. 723.

Ramsey bet the device would be a dud
:
For the yield predictions made by Ramsey, Oppenheimer, Teller, and other Manhattan Project scientists, see Richard Rhodes,
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 657.

odds of the atmosphere's catching fire were about one in ten
:
According to the physicist Victor Weisskopf, a fear that the atmosphere might ignite caused one of his colleagues at Los Alamos to have a nervous breakdown. See the interview with Weisskopf in Denis Brian,
The Voice of Genius: Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries
(New York: Basic Books, 2001), pp. 74–75.

“tickling the dragon's tail”
:
For the origins of the term, see Lillian Hoddeson, Paul W. Henriksen, Roger A. Meade, and Catherine Westfall,
Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos During the Oppenheimer Years, 1943–1945
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 346–48. For a firsthand account of the dangerous experiments, see Frederic de Hoffmann, “‘All in
Our Time': Pure Science in the Service of Wartime Technology,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
January 1975, pp. 41–44.

“So I took this heavy ball in my hand”
:
Quoted in James P. Delgado,
Nuclear Dawn: From the Manhattan Project to the Bikini Atoll
(Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2009), p. 59.

the “ultimate explosive”
:
H. G. Wells,
The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1914), p. 117.

“carry about in a handbag
:
Ibid
.,
p. 118.

“The catastrophe of the atomic bombs
”
:
Ibid
.,
p. 254. Wells was an early proponent of world government, and his complex, often contradictory views on the subject are explored in Edward Mead Earle, “H. G. Wells, British Patriot in Search of a World State,”
World Politics
, vol. 2, no. 2 (January 1950), pp. 181–208.

“
it may become possible
”
:
The full text of the letter, as well as Roosevelt's response to it, can be found in Cynthia C. Kelly, ed.,
The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians
(New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007), pp. 42–44.

“
extremely powerful bombs of a new type
”
:
Ibid
.,
p. 43.

Conventional explosives, like TNT
:
I am grateful to members of the New York Police Department Bomb Squad not only for teaching me how high explosives work but also for demonstrating some of them for me in the field. See Eric Schlosser, “The Bomb Squad,”
Atlantic Monthly
, January 1994.

similar to the burning of a log in a fireplace
: Ibid.

temperatures reach as high as 9,000 degrees
:
Cited in Samuel Glasstone, ed.,
The Effects of Nuclear Weapons
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 29. Glasstone's book does an unsurpassed job of explaining what nuclear weapons can do. The original edition appeared in 1950, the last edition in 1977—and the one cited here comes with a round, plastic “nuclear effects computer,” similar to a slide rule, that allows you to calculate the maximum overpressures, wind speeds, and arrival times of various nuclear blasts, depending on how far you're standing from them.

1.4 million pounds per square inch
:
Cited in Schlosser, “The Bomb Squad.”

tens of millions degrees Fahrenheit
:
See Glasstone,
Effects of Nuclear Weapons,
p. 24.

many millions of pounds per square inch
:
Ibid., p. 29.

the largest building in the world
:
Cited in Michael Kort,
The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 22.

“the Introvert”
:
See Hoddeson et al.,
Critical Assembly,
p. 86.

“The more neutrons—the more fission”
:
“Survey of Weapon Development and Technology” (WR708), Sandia National Laboratories, Corporate Training and Development, February 1998 (
SECRET
/
RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified), p. 112.

“We care about neutrons!”
:
Ibid.

“precision devices”
:
For Kistiakowsky's thinking about how to create a symmetrical implosion, see George B. Kistiakowsky, “Reminiscences of Wartime Los Alamos,” in Lawrence Badash, Joseph O. Hirschfelder, and Herbert P. Broida, eds.,
Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 1943–1945
(Boston: D. Reidel Publishing, 1980), pp. 49–65. The reference to precision devices appears on page 54.

the exploding-bridgewire detonator
:
For the story behind the invention of this revolutionary new detonator, see Luis W. Alvarez,
Alvarez:
Adventures of a Physicist
(New York: Basic Books, 1987), pp. 132–36. For a brief overview of the technology, see Ron Varesh, “Electric Detonators: Electric Bridgewire Detonators and Exploding Foil Initiators,”
Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics
, vol. 21 (1996), pp. 150–54.

Hornig was instructed to “babysit the bomb”
:
Cited in Donald Hornig and Robert Cahn, “Atom-Bomb Scientist Tells His Story,”
Christian Science Monitor,
July 11, 1995. For more details of that night atop the tower, see also “60th Anniversary of Trinity: First Manmade Nuclear Explosion, July 16, 1945,” Public Symposium, National Academy of Sciences, July 14, 2005, pp. 27–28; and “Babysitting the Bomb: Interview with Don Hornig,” in Kelly,
Manhattan Project,
pp. 298–99
.

This is what the end of the world will look like
:
See James G. Hershberg,
James B. Conant: Harvard
to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 234.

[Weisskopf] thought that his calculations were wrong
:
See Brain,
Voice of Genius,
p. 75.

“The hills were bathed in brilliant light
”
:
See O. R. Frisch, “Eyewitness Account of ‘Trinity' Test, July 1945,” in Philip L. Cantelon, Richard G. Hewlett, and Robert C. Williams, eds.,
The American Atom: A Documentary History of Nuclear Policies from the Discovery of Fission to the Present
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), p. 50.

“
The whole country was lighted by a searing light”
:
Quoted in “Appendix 6. War Department Release on New Mexico Test, July 16, 1945,” in Henry DeWolf Smyth,
Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, 1940–1945: The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb Under the Auspices of the United States Government
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945), p. 254.

“
Now we are all sons of bitches”
:
Bainbridge was disturbed by the immense explosion—but also exhilarated and relieved. Had the nuclear device failed to detonate, he would have been the first person to climb the tower and investigate what had gone wrong. See Kenneth T. Bainbridge, “A Foul and Awesome Display,”
Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientist
(May 1975), pp. 40–46. The “sons of bitches” line appears on page 46.

the “inhuman barbarism” of aerial attacks
:
The full text of Franklin Roosevelt's statement can be found in Bertram D. Hulen, “Roosevelt in Plea; Message to Russia, Also Sent to Finns, Decries ‘Ruthless Bombing,'”
New York Times
, December 1, 1939.

attacked the Spanish city of Guernica, killing a few hundred civilians
:
The Basque government claimed that almost one third of the city's five thousand inhabitants were killed by the attack. The actual number was mostly likely two to three hundred. But most of Guernica's buildings were destroyed, and the aim of the attack was to terrorize civilians. See Jörg Diehl, “Hitler's Destruction of Guernica: Practicing Blietzkrieg in Basque Country,”
Der Spiegel
, April 26, 2007.

bombed and invaded . . . Nanking . . . killing many thousands
:
More than seventy-five years later, the number of people killed in Nanking remains a controversial subject. Chinese scholars now assert that between three and four hundred thousand civilians were massacred while Japanese nationalists claim that those estimates are absurd and that no war crimes were committed. For a fine, aptly titled introduction to the controversy, see Bob Todashi Wakabayashi, “The Messiness of Historical Reality,” in Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, ed.,
The Nanking Atrocity: Complicating the Picture
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), pp. 3–28.

“The ruthless bombing from the air”
:
Quoted in Hulen, “Roosevelt in Plea.”

“The immediate aim is, therefore, twofold
”
:
Quoted in Richard R. Muller, “The Orgins of MAD: A Short History of City-Busting,” in Henry D. Sokolski, ed.,
Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, Its Origins and Practice
(Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2004), p. 34.

The first “firestorm”
:
The historian Jörg Friedrich has written a masterful account of the British effort to destroy Germany with fire. His chapters on the weaponry and the strategies used to kill civilians are especially haunting. For the destruction of Hamburg and the desire to create firestorms, see Jorg Friedrich,
The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 90–100; and another fine, unsettling book—Keith Lowe,
Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg
(New York: Scribner, 2007).

killed about forty thousand
:
Cited in Lowe,
Inferno
, p. 276.

attack on Dresden, where perhaps twenty thousand civilians died
:
Long a source of debate, estimates of the death toll in Dresden have ranged from about thirty-five thousand to about half a million. In 2008 a panel of historians concluded the actual number was between eighteen and twenty-five thousand. Cited in Kate Connolly, “International Panel Rethinks Death Toll from Dresden Raids,”
Guardian
(London)
,
October 3, 2008.