Command and Control (89 page)

“almost zero confidence that the warhead
would work”
:
Quoted in Francis, “Warhead Politics,” p. 153.

perhaps 75 percent or more
:
Cited in Hansen,
Swords of Armageddon, Volume VI,
p.
435.

a B-52 on a Chrome Dome mission
:
The Palomares accident was the most widely publicized Broken Arrow of the Cold War. In addition to weeks of coverage in newspapers and magazines, the event inspired a fine book by Flora Lewis, a well-known foreign correspondent,
One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). Randall C. Maydew, one of the Sandia engineers who helped to find the weapon, later wrote about the search in
America's Lost H-Bomb! Palomares, Spain, 1966
(Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1977). Barbara Moran made good use of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in writing
The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes, and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2009). I relied on those works, as well as on a thorough description of the accident's aftermath—“Palomares Summary Report,” Field Command, Defense Nuclear Agency, Kirtland Air Force Base, January 15, 1975—and other published sources.

so poor and remote that it didn't appear on most maps
:
See “Palomares Summary Report,” p. 18

“450 airmen with Geiger counters”
:
Quoted in ibid., p. 184.

“unarmed nuclear armament” . . . “there is no danger to public health”
:
Quoted in ibid., p. 185.

“SECRECY SHROUDS URGENT HUNT
”
:
Quoted in ibid., p. 203.

“MADRID POLICE DISPERSE MOB AT U.S. EMBASSY”
:
Quoted in ibid.

NEAR CATASTROPHE FROM U.S. BOMB
”
:
Quoted in ibid.

“There is not the slightest risk”
:
Quoted in “The Nuke Fluke,”
Time
, March 11, 1966.

“the politics of the situation”
:
“Palomares Summary Report,” p. 50.

Almost four thousand truckloads of contaminated beans
:
Cited in ibid., p. 56.

About thirty thousand cubic feet of contaminated soil
:
According to the Defense Nuclear Agency, about 1,088 cubic yards were removed—roughly 29,376 cubic feet. Cited in ibid., p. 65.

“a psychological barrier to plutonium inhalation”
:
Ibid., footnote, p. 51.

the American ambassador brought his family
:
For this and other efforts to control public opinion, see David Stiles, “A Fusion Bomb over Andalucía: U.S. Information Policy and the 1966 Palomares Incident,”
Journal of Cold War Studies
, vol. 8, no. 1 (2006), pp. 49–67.

who claimed to have seen a “stout man”
:
Quoted in “How They Found the Bomb,”
Time
, May 13, 1966.

“It isn't like looking for a needle”
:
Quoted in Lewis,
One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing,
p. 182.

the first time the American people were allowed to see one
:
For the proud display, see ibid., p. 234; Stiles, “Fusion Bomb over Andalucía,” p. 64.

“The possibility of an accidental nuclear explosion”
:
Quoted in Hanson W. Baldwin, “Chances of Nuclear Mishap Viewed as Infinitesimal,”
New York Times
, March 27, 1966.

“so remote that they can be ruled out completely”
:
Quoted in ibid.

“But suppose some important aspect of nuclear safety”
:
“The Nuclear Safety Problem,” T. D. Brumleve, Advanced System Research Department 5510, Sandia Corporation, Livermore Laboratory, SCL-DR-67, 1967 (
SECRET
/
RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified), p. 5.

“The nation, and indeed the world, will want to know”
:
Ibid., p. 5.

a B-52 was serving as the Thule monitor
:
The Broken Arrow at Thule has received much less attention in the United States than the one at Palomares. But the Thule accident remains of interest in Denmark because the crash not only contaminated Danish soil with plutonium but also raised questions about the behavior of the Danish government. I found two declassified documents to be especially interesting. The first is “Project Crested Ice: The Thule Nuclear Accident,” vol. 1, SAC
Historical Study #113, History and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, April 23, 1969 (
SECRET
/
RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified), NSA. The other is “Project Crested Ice,” a special edition of
USAF Nuclear Safety
magazine that appeared in 1970. The latter has many photographs that show the challenge of decontaminating a large area in the Arctic. A number of recent investigations by Danish authors were also useful: “The Marshal's Baton: There Is No Bomb, There Was No Bomb, They Were Not Looking for a Bomb,” Svend Aage Christensen, Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS Report, 2009, No. 18., 2009; and Thorsten Borring Olesen, “Tango for Thule: The Dilemmas and Limits of the ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny' Doctrine in Danish-American Relations, 1957–1968,”
Journal of Cold War Studies,
vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring 2011), pp. 116–47. And I learned much from the documents in Maggelet and Oskins,
Broken Arrow, Volume II,
pp. 125–50.

three cloth-covered, foam-rubber cushions
:
For details of the accident and the rescue, see “Crested Ice: The Thule Nuclear Accident,” pp. 5–8; “The Flight of Hobo 28,” in
USAF NUCLEAR SAFETY,
special edition, vol. 65 (part 2), no. 1 (JAN/FEB/MAR 1970), pp. 2–4; and Neil Sheehan, “Pilot Says Fire Forced Crew to Quit B-52 in Arctic,”
New York Times
, January 28, 1968; and Alfred J. D'Amario,
Hangar Flying
(Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2008), pp. 233–54. D'Amario served as a copilot on the flight, and he vividly describes what it was like to bail out of a burning B-52 over the Arctic.

about 428 degrees Fahrenheit
:
Cited in “Crested Ice: The Thule Nuclear Accident,” p. 7.

temperature . . . was -23 degrees Fahrenheit
:
Cited in G. S. Dresser, “Host Base Support,” in
USAF Nuclear Safety
, p. 25.

windchill made it feel like -44
:
The wind was blowing at 9 knots (10.3 miles per hour); the temperature was –23 degrees Fahrenheit; and according to a windchill chart compiled by the National Weather Service, that means the windchill was roughly –44 degrees Fahrenheit. See “Host Base Support,” p. 25.

SAC headquarters was notified, for the first time, about the fire
:
Ibid., p. 25.

uncovered skin could become frostbitten within two
:
Ibid.

But he later worked as a postmaster in Maine
:
See Keith Edwards, “Sons Recall Father's Story of Survival in Greenland after SAC Bomber Crash,”
Kennebec Journal
, March 17, 2010.

The radioactive waste from Thule filled 147 freight cars
:
Cited in Leonard J. Otten, “Removal of Debris from Thule,” in
USAF Nuclear Safety
, p. 90.

claims that an entire hydrogen bomb had been lost
:
Those claims are convincingly refuted by “The Marshal's Baton. There Is No Bomb, There was No Bomb, They were Not Looking for a Bomb.”

The B-52 . . . had been on a “training flight”
:
Quoted in Thomas O'Toole, “4 H-Bombs Lost as B-52 Crashes,”
Washington Post and Times Herald,
January 23, 1968.

A handful of people within the Danish government
:
See Olesen, “Tango for Thule,” pp. 123–31.

stored in secret underground bunkers at Thule as early as 1955
:
In a recent article for the base newsletter—the
Thule Times,
published by the Air Force Space Command—a retired lieutenant colonel, Ted A. Morris, described a trip to Greenland in May 1955. Morris and his crew flew there in a B-36 bomber, landed, and practiced the loading of a “live war reserve Mk 17” hydrogen bomb that had been stored at the base. The practice of flying to Thule without nuclear weapons and picking them up there seems to have been routine. “How about all those underground ammo bunkers?,” Adams wrote. “Maybe you thought they were there for the Greenlanders to use instead of igloos.” See Ted A. Adams, “Strategic Air Command at the Top of the World,”
Thule Times
, November 1, 2001.

antiaircraft missiles with atomic warheads were later placed at Thule
: See Norris, Arkin, and Burr, “Where They Were,” p. 32.

Walske, was concerned about the risks of nuclear accidents
:
Bill Stevens spoke to me about Walske's interest in weapon safety. At the time, Walske also served as the head of the Military Liaison Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission. See Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S
²
C,” p. 85.

range from one in a million to one in twenty thousand
:
Stevens interview.

“probability of a premature nuclear detonation”
:
See “Standards for Warhead and Bomb Premature Probability MC Paragraphs,” in Appendix G, Ibid., p. 216.

“normal storage and operational environments”
:
Ibid.

“the adoption of the attached standards”
:
“Letter, To Brigadier Military Applications, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, From Carl Walske, Chairman of the Military Liaison Committee to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 14 March 1968,” in Appendix G, ibid., p. 215.

the test of an atomic cannon
:
The weapon, nicknamed “Atomic Annie,” was fired as the Grable shot in the UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE nuclear tests during the spring of 1953.

trucks, tanks, railroad cars
:
For the animals and inanimate objects subjected to the detonation of the Grable atomic artillery shell, see “Shots Encore to Climax: The Final Four Tests of the UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE Series, 8 May–4 June 1953,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA 6018F, January 15, 1982, pp. 127–58; and “Military and Civil Defense Nuclear Weapons Effects Projects Conducted at the Nevada Test Site: 1951–1958,” Barbara Killian, Technical Report, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, May 2011. Details of the Grable shot are mentioned throughout the latter report.

more than three thousand soldiers, including Bill Stevens
:
For the people involved in the test, see “Shots Encore to Climax,” pp. 120–27.

The official list of nuclear accidents
:
The Pentagon's “official” list of Broken Arrows now mentions thirty-two accidents, from 1950 until 1980. According to the Department of Defense, an “accident involving nuclear weapons” is “an unexpected event” that results in any of the following: “Accidental or unauthorized launching, firing, or use . . . of a nuclear-capable weapon system” that could lead to the outbreak of war; a nuclear detonation; “non-nuclear detonation or burning of a nuclear weapon or radioactive weapon component”; radioactive contamination; “seizure, theft, or loss of a nuclear weapon,” including the jettison of a bomb; “public hazard, actual, or implied.” But at least one third of the accidents on the Pentagon's list involved nuclear weapons that were not fully assembled and could not produce a nuclear yield. Far more dangerous, yet less dramatic, accidents—like the unloading of Mark 7 bombs fully armed—have been omitted from the list. Countless mundane accidents posed a grave risk to the public, both actual and implied. For the official list, see “Narrative Summaries of Accidents Involving U.S. Nuclear Weapons, 1950–1980,” U.S. Department of Defense, (n.d.).

at least 1,200 nuclear weapons had been involved
:
Bill Stevens likes to err on the conservative side, relying on the Pentagon's definition of an “accident.” One Sandia weapon report used the term more broadly, including events “which may have safety significance.” For the number of these events, see Brumleve, “Accident Environments,” p. 154.

“During loading of a Mk 25 Mod O WR Warhead”
:
“Accidents and Incidents,” Incident #8, p. 29.

“A C-124 Aircraft carrying eight Mk 28 War reserve Warheads”
:
Ibid., Incident #17, p. 63.

Twenty-three weapons had been directly exposed to fires
:
Cited in “Accident Environments,” p. 69.

blinding white flash
:
At Sandia the acronym BWF was used as a shorthand for that phrase, and it was something that nobody there cared to see.

he'd watched a bent pin nearly detonate an atomic bomb
:
Stan Spray was not the source of this information.

The Navy tested many of its weapons
:
Sandia thought that these “Admiral's Tests” were unnecessary; when electromagnetic radiation triggered the rocket motors of a missile aboard an aircraft carrier, the lab took a different view. See Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S
²
C,” pp. 58–60.

Lightning had struck a fence at a Mace medium-range missile complex
:
See “Accidents and Incidents,” Incident #2, p. 122.