American Experience (1988) s29e03 Episode Script

1
(indistinct voices on radio)
MAN (on radio):
Contact DCA, you read?
MAN 2:
Roger, loud and clear.
MAN 2:
Roger, station 7,
prepare for pressurization
of stage 2 oxidizer.
MAN 3:
Roger.
(hissing as suits pressurized)
MAN:
I was fairly new to working out
on the missile sites.
At the age of 19, you know,
you've got that "no fear"
mentality.
MAN (on radio):
WCB, we got a transient read
on 54
(hatch opening and hissing)
MAN:
Right above us
was a nine-megaton
thermonuclear warhead.
To see the magnitude
of that weapon
within ten feet from you,
it was a monster
waiting to go off.
When you think about working
on a weapon of mass destruction,
you're counting on everything
to work perfect all the time,
and things just don't work
perfect all the time.
(piece hits floor)
(alarms beeping)
(urgent voices on radio)
MAN 2:
The first thing
that my commander heard
are the words, "Uh-oh."
MAN 3:
The fuel vapors in the silo
are just climbing and climbing
and climbing.
MAN 1:
We need to get the hell out
of this complex
because this thing's
going to blow up.
MAN 4:
Do we let the world know?
Do I run out and say, "We got
a potential nuclear explosion"?
What do you do?
(men chatting)
Complex 3-1 has phase 14
missile age inspection.
Complex 3-2, instructor crew
scheduled for
That day, September 18th,
it was basically five days
before my 24th birthday.
So I was 23.
Lieutenant Childers was 24,
was the deputy.
When we went on alert
in a Titan system,
we were on alert for 24 hours.
That's what a tour was,
24 hours.
We had 18 silos spread
all the way out
to the eastern corner
of Arkansas.
We went up the main highway
to a certain point,
and then you had to pull off
of the highway
onto much smaller roads.
Until you came over
a particular rise,
you wouldn't even know that
the missile complex was there.
HOLDER:
As we drove up
to missile complex 4-7,
it's very unassuming.
There's not a lot there.
There's this huge door
and there are some antennas.
However, underneath that door
was the most powerful warhead
that the U.S. has ever operated.
CHILDERS;
Before you left the base,
they gave you some codes
that gave you access
to the complex.
MAN (on intercom):
MCC, what is your ident code?
MAN:
Ident code is
alpha-niner-victor
CHILDERS:
You would read the code
to the commander
and then you would
take a lighter,
set the codes on fire,
and drop them down into a box
so they would burn up and no one
else could use those codes.
(door buzzes)
All four of the crewmembers went
down three flights of stairs.
At the bottom of that,
you got to a blast door.
(hissing and unlatching)
There were a series of blast
doors: 6, 7, 8, and 9.
So you'd walk through this,
and you'd step
into the middle level
of the launch control center,
with all of the equipment
that you needed
to maintain the missile.
When we took charge
of a complex,
that meant that we owned
that missile
until the next crew came out.
So if we went to war,
we were prepared
to launch
those weapons on command.
MAN:
Apps power, silo soft,
guidance go.
We're standing by
for fire engine.
We never knew
what our specific targets were,
because you didn't really
want to know
who you were going to destroy.
MAN:
Turning on my command,
everybody, turn keys.
On the word "keys,"
we will turn.
Is the crew ready?
Your B-Man?
MAN 2:
B-Man's Ready.
MAN 1:
MFT?
MAN 3:
MFT ready.
MAN 1:
Deputy?
MAN 4:
Deputy ready.
MAN 1:
Crew is ready ready?
CHILDERS:
You had to be prepared to
destroy an entire civilization,
and we were trained on that.
As heartless as it sounds,
I never had a problem with it.
I was doing it for my country,
I was doing it
to protect my country.
The whole reason I sat out there
was to prevent that
kind of thing from happening.
That's what deterrence
was about.
But deterrence is worthless
if you don't demonstrate that
you're willing to do it, too,
and we always had to demonstrate
that I would walk out there
and turn those keys in a second
and I would kill ten million
people and never hesitate.
Every time I went
onto a complex,
every time I saw
a Titan II missile,
I had the same sense
of excitement.
You couldn't see the warhead
from the bottom
because you were
eight stories down,
and the cone of the warhead
disappeared off in the distance.
The warhead on top
of the Titan II
was three times as powerful
as all the bombs
used by all of the armies
in the Second World War,
including both the atomic bombs.
When the crewmembers
successfully turned the keys,
the 330,000-pound missile would
lift up out of the silo.
HOLDER:
And it would head out for about
five minutes of powered flight
to the edge of space,
fly for another 20 minutes,
and hit its target
halfway around the world.
CHILDERS:
Before September 18,
the only warheads
that we thought
would go off
in the United States
would be Soviet warheads.
We never considered
that our own warheads
could detonate
on our own continent.
MAN:
From the very beginning
of the atomic age,
there has been a sense
of this immense power
just being on the verge
of slipping out of our control.
The world's first nuclear device
was fully assembled
in a small tent
in the middle of the desert.
Nobody was sure
what would happen
when this thing would detonate.
They were even concerned
that when the first nuclear
device detonated,
the Earth's atmosphere
would catch on fire
and every single living thing
on Earth would die.
And yet they did the test
anyway.
(explosion roars and echoes)
After the war ended,
an engineering section
of the nuclear weapons program
became known
as the Sandia Laboratory,
and Sandia became America's
first atomic bomb factory.
MAN:
I realized if I joined Sandia,
I would be working
on atomic bombs,
and that was okay with me.
We were driven by the fear
of the Soviet Union.
Anything we conceived of
the military wanted,
and money was free.
SCHLOSSER:
As the technology improved,
as the number of nuclear weapons
in our arsenal increased,
there were soon assembly lines
for making nuclear weapons.
We had bombers in the air
at all times
loaded with nuclear weapons.
We had submarines
that had missiles
carrying nuclear warheads.
It was feared that the Soviets
would have far more missiles
than the United States,
so we went on a huge
missile-building binge.
At one point, we only thought
we needed
50 to 200 nuclear weapons
to completely annihilate
the Soviet Union,
and by the mid-1960s,
we had 32,000 nuclear weapons.
But every one of those weapons
you build
not only threatens your enemy,
but poses a threat to yourself.
MAN:
One more time, ready?
Launch verification
(men running launch drill)
CHILDERS:
September 18
was one of those days
where nothing was going
the way it was supposed to go.
HOLDER:
That day, September 18,
we find out that they have a
problem with the oxidizer tank,
that the pressure
is a little bit low.
CHILDERS:
Each stage of the missile
had two separate tanks.
One was filled with fuel and the
other was filled with oxidizer.
HOLDER:
All you got to do
is mix those two fuels
and you're going to have
an explosion.
We called back to base.
They said, "We had
a maintenance team coming out."
A specialized unit,
they called them the PTS team.
MAN:
The difference
between PTS people
and any other person
on a missile site is,
we get to play with fuel
and oxidizer, and they don't.
I loved PTS.
I loved my job.
My major goal at that time
was to be a PTS team chief,
and be the best PTS team chief
ever.
MAN:
When I arrived
at Little Rock Air Force Base,
I would have been 19, yeah.
Ah, no, 18.
My birthday is in March,
so I would have been
one month away from being 19.
I think I was ready to take on
the world at that point.
I wanted to go out to the field
and work
on that Titan II missile.
You know, we called it a bird,
and I wanted to work
on the birds, you know?
(gas hissing)
POWELL:
Oxidizer, when you breathe it,
it turns to nitric acid.
And you basically drown
in your lungs
if you breathe enough of it.
MAN:
We would work 12-, 14-hour,
up to 16-hour shifts,
and then go to sleep,
and then five hours later or so,
you get up and head back in
for another 12-, 13-,
or 14-hour day.
POWELL:
On September 18,
we'd had a long week,
we had the next day off,
so when we finished
the maintenance task
at the site that we were at,
you know,
we thought we were done.
(men talking)
MAN:
Roger that, we'll send them
back your way.
POWELL:
Our team chief called back
to the base
to tell them
we were on our way back
and they said,
"Well, before you come back,
we want you to stop over at 4-7
at Damascus."
When we got there,
they didn't have the right part.
They had to bring the part out
on a helicopter.
I would say we waited from 3:30
to about 6:00 in the evening
before we could actually enter
the silo.
We'd been on duty
about 11 1/2 hours.
(men talking on radio)
POWELL:
So we started down the cableway
to the silo,
when all of a sudden, I realized
that I had forgotten
the torque wrench
up in the truck.
There was a change
in the checklist
that we were supposed
to use a torque wrench
from here on out,
but that was a recent change.
I had spent three years
basically taking
the pressure cap off
with a ratchet.
And so instead of sending
somebody back
to get the torque wrench,
I grabbed the ratchet
to do that.
The ratchet's
about three feet long
and the socket's
about eight pounds.
And I radioed to the team chief
that we're ready to begin
the checklist
for pressurization
of stage 2 oxidizer tank.
(hatch opens, air hisses)
PLUMB:
We had a problem
with that ratchet.
It wouldn't allow Dave
to actually get the socket
to clip or snap into place
to be secure.
He held the socket
up against the dust cap
and he put the ratchet
up against it.
POWELL:
Basically you hold it with one
hand on that ratchet handle,
and one hand cradles
the head of the ratchet
with the socket on it.
PLUMB:
And so I got on the end of it
and kind of gave it
a little force,
and I remember saying to him,
"You got this?"
"Yeah, I got it, I got it,
let go of it."
POWELL:
And I go to pick it up,
and the socket falls off the end
of the ratchet.
PLUMB:
Just boompf,
right through the hole
and just straight down.
As it was falling,
I was thinking,
"Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no."
I wanted to jump
after that thing.
POWELL:
Anytime I want,
I can close my eyes
and see that socket.
I see the socket
bouncing off the platform.
I see my RFHCO glove
reaching for it.
And I see it falling
in slow motion.
70 feet.
Hitting the thrust mount
like it had eyeballs.
(hissing)
And then a stream of fuel
coming out of the missile.
PLUMB:
I was just in total shock.
I think we both just looked
at each other for a second,
and, and we're like,
"Oh, my God,
what are we going to do?"
That missile was just
blowing fuel.
Then the magnitude set in
as far as what could happen.
The destructive force
if that thing exploded,
and we can't stop it.
SCHLOSSER:
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.
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.
SCHLOSSER:
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.
All it is, is
a two-position on-off switch.
That prevented
a four-megaton disaster.
If the right two wires
had touched,
the bomb would have detonated.
Period.
SCHLOSSER:
The Goldsboro accident occurred
at a time
when the number
of nuclear weapons accidents
was increasing.
PEURIFOY:
I read through all of the known
accident reports.
And it scared
the hell out of me.
MAN:
We were shocked
when we realized,
all these years
we've been thinking
along this nice, neat line.
That's not reality.
SCHLOSSER:
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.
STEVENS:
We knew that fire, for example,
could set off
these electro-explosive devices
inside the warhead
in a random way.
SCHLOSSER:
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.
PEURIFOY:
Of the 20,000 or 25,000 weapons
that we had in stockpile,
I could not in good conscience
swear that they were
adequately safe.
SCHLOSSER:
What they were saying is,
thousands of weapons
in the American nuclear arsenal
were vulnerable
during an accident,
including the most powerful
warhead on an American missile,
the warhead on top
of the Titan II.
HOLDER:
I was sitting down
in the kitchen,
eating a sandwich,
when the klaxon went off.
(alarm beeping)
So I didn't think
too much of it.
I mean, it went off,
it's like, "Okay, they just
They're doing
their procedures."
But about ten seconds later,
we got another klaxon.
(alarm beeping)
I got up and I walked about
halfway down the stairs.
And I looked down and I can see
the commander's console.
Then the commander's console has
lots of red lights flashing,
and so I know something's wrong.
CHILDERS:
Captain Mazzaro
was our crew commander.
The first thing
that Mazzaro heard
and that the other team members
heard are the words, "Uh-oh."
Mazzaro said,
"What do you mean, uh-oh?
What's going on?"
They said, "There's smoke in
the bottom of the launch duct."
Commander's trying to clear up.
"What do you mean, smoke in the
bottom of the launch duct?
Do you see a fire?"
POWELL:
The fuel vapors in the silo
are just climbing
and climbing and climbing.
So I radioed back
that we had a cloud.
A milky white cloud.
I wasn't going to say "fuel"
over the radio.
The reason I didn't want to say
the word "fuel" over the radio
was because, uh,
in case the missile commander
was listening,
I didn't want him to freak out.
PLUMB:
I think David was just scared
to say anything
about really what was happening.
Only being 21 years old.
I guess it'd almost be like,
you know,
you doing something wrong
as a kid
and you got to tell your parents
about it, you know?
You know, how you kind of
just stand there
and you don't want to say
what you just did.
POWELL:
I grabbed Plumb and we walked
back up the cableway.
I immediately started looking
at the fuel level reader.
When it hits
that explosive level,
any spark can set off the fuel.
CHILDERS:
You could run through
each of the tanks on each stage
and see what the pressure was,
and we saw that the pressure
was dropping.
It was dropping fast.
And then all of a sudden,
sprays came on
in the launch duct.
We thought,
"Well, there must be a fire."
It doesn't make any sense,
nothing made any sense.
And I jumped into my checklist.
We did everything
according to checklists.
(voice breaking):
You know, we ran
the oxidizer checklists,
we ran the fuel checklists.
You know,
you stay in the checklist,
it'll take care of you.
HOLDER:
About that time, the PTS team
that had been out working
had gotten back,
and they're standing over
in the short cableway,
and the maintenance team chief
went over and met them
and they started talking.
At that point, I said,
"Okay, guys, what happened?"
And they came in
and then they explained
to the crew at that point
exactly what happened.
And that's when we finally
got him to admit
that he had done something,
that he had dropped it,
and there was a hole,
and he saw vapors coming out.
It was more than "uh-oh."
And that was the first time
we knew.
It was a good half-hour into it.
By then it was basically
out of control.
(alarm beeping)
MAN:
When I became
secretary of defense,
we had tens of thousands
of nuclear weapons.
The numbers were a big problem,
because it only takes a few
or one getting out of hand
to cause a catastrophic problem.
And we worried about that.
We probably didn't worry
about it enough.
The Titan II missiles by 1980
were both old
and much more prone
to accidents.
Why was it still in the arsenal?
(applause)
In part because it was part
of a negotiating strategy.
We anticipated trading them off
against Soviet heavy missiles
in strategic arms negotiations.
SCHLOSSER:
It was a bargaining chip,
something that we could give up
in order to persuade the Soviets
to get rid of a class
of their missiles.
BROWN:
So that was why we still had it,
and it was therefore available
for an accident.
REPORTER:
Nearly 14,000 gallons
of poisonous liquid fuel
poured out,
killing two persons and injuring
more than 20 others.
REPORTER 2:
This would be missile leak
number ten so far in Arkansas.
The Titan II is potentially
an awesome weapon of war
whose only victims so far
have been Americans.
MAN:
September 18, 1980,
I got a call
from the command post,
said we had a serious problem.
I was the new guy.
I had no previous experience
in Titan,
I had no training in Titan,
I had about three months
under my belt
before the accident occurred
on the night of September 18.
I got to the command center,
started to figure out
what was going on.
And then I activated the missile
potential hazard team.
SCHLOSSER:
The missile potential hazard
team
gathered together some of the
top figures in the Air Force
to deal with the accident.
At Barksdale Air Force Base
in Louisiana,
there was Colonel Ben Scallorn,
the Air Force's leading expert
on the Titan II missile.
MAN:
As we're dumping fuel,
the oxidizer expands,
and there's a possibility
that it can rupture a tank,
and with a silo full of fuel
and you rupture an oxidizer tank
and the oxidizer hits the fuel,
it's gone.
SCHLOSSER:
In Denver, there were
executives from Martin Marietta,
who designed and built
the Titan II missile.
And in Omaha, Nebraska, there
was the underground headquarters
of the Strategic Air Command,
known as SAC.
That night,
all the major decisions
would be made
at SAC headquarters
by General Lloyd Leavitt.
MOSER:
General Leavitt was
a very dedicated pilot,
a very courageous pilot
in Korea and Vietnam,
but he had no missile background
at all, that I'm aware of.
As things progressed,
we were trying to do
everything we could.
We knew what was going to happen
if we lost pressure
in the fuel tank.
You know, of course, the missile
was going to collapse
on top of itself.
If the missile collapsed,
the entire missile would
blow up,
but what would happen
to the warhead
was anybody's guess.
There was no one
that we kept on alert
that knew anything
about the warhead.
There was no checklist,
so it became a seat-of-the-pants
operation as things unfolded,
and I used every resource
we had that night
to try to face the problem
and solve the problem.
One of the options was,
if the silo closure door
was opened,
there's a possibility that
the gas could have been vented.
But there was also
a possibility,
if the missile did explode
while that door was open,
it would throw the warhead
out of the silo.
We would not have known
where it went.
It could go almost anywhere.
SCHLOSSER:
25 years earlier,
a weapon similar to the one
on the Titan II
was tested in the South Pacific.
(bang echoing thunderously)
The explosion wound up being
three times more powerful
than they had estimated.
And the test revealed
that the radioactive fallout
from a hydrogen bomb
could be even more deadly
than the blast itself.
Back in Washington,
they took a map
of the fallout pattern
from the Bravo Test,
and they superimposed it
on a map of the United States.
A similar weapon
detonated over Washington, D.C.,
could release
enough radioactive fallout
to kill everyone
in Washington, D.C.,
everyone in Baltimore,
everyone in Philadelphia,
half the population
of New York City,
with casualties and fatalities
as far north as Boston.
HOLDER:
The fuel tank readings
started going negative,
and at that point,
I felt that it was potentially
going to collapse.
And although there are safety
measures within the warhead,
in the back of my mind,
you always wonder.
I don't think anybody truly knew
what was going to happen
with the warhead.
(men speaking on radios)
PLUMB:
As they were talking
about these tank pressures
and all these different things,
I'm getting
more and more anxious
and more and more anxious,
thinking, "I need,
we need to get out of here.
"We need to get the hell out
of this complex,
because this thing's going
to blow up."
MOSER:
Some of the crewmembers
were eager to make an exit,
so with that in mind,
we started discussing,
should we evacuate the people
in the launch control center
or leave them in there?
The reason to get them
out of the silo,
we had no idea
what was going to happen
to the launch control center
if the missile exploded.
I still thought
we should be there.
We needed to be there.
If we evacuated
that launch control center,
we would be giving up
any ability
to control any of the equipment,
we would be giving up
the capacity
to try any of the ideas
that people were trying
to come up with
in order to save this system.
Rodney and I told
the crew commander
that we wanted to stay behind.
I couldn't leave.
You know, emotionally,
I couldn't go.
From our standpoint,
we could stay
because neither one of us had
children at that time, and
Not that we didn't care
about our lives,
but, you know, it just seemed
that it made sense to us
that we should stay
and let everybody else go.
(people chatting)
MAN:
On the evening of September 18,
people were gathering
in Hot Springs.
Vice President Mondale
was the keynote speaker.
Senator Pryor
and Governor Clinton and others
had already gone to Hot Springs.
And I was scheduled to go over
the next day.
That night we had invited
a friend over for dinner,
and the phone rang.
And it was this airman who
worked on the Titan missiles.
When I got off the phone
from this airman,
I looked around and people
started asking me, saying,
"What's happening?"
And I said, "A Titan missile
is going to explode."
And the question was,
"Well, what does that mean?"
"What it means is, if
that nuclear warhead explodes,
we're incinerated."
You know, I said,
"Little Rock's gone."
I said, "Little Rock is gone.
We're 46 miles from this site,
we're gone."
I walked into our living room
and looked out the front window,
and it was still
daylight savings time,
so it wasn't totally dark,
and you could see children
in the front yard
or people walking out
to their cars,
carrying on
their normal everyday lives,
and I thought,
"Do I run out on the street
"and say we got
a potential nuclear explosion
"46 miles from here?
"Do I grab my friends
and neighbors
and get in the car
and start driving?"
What do you do?
MAN:
I was there in Hot Springs
at night,
and the phone rang
and it was Skip.
And Skip says,
"We have a problem."
He said, "What's the Air Force
saying?"
I said, "The Air Force
is telling people
"it's not happening,
"that's what they've told
the people on the site.
"They're going to tell you that
these things are under control.
But I think you need to be
prepared for an explosion."
(cheering and applause)
MAN:
As the general manager of
the radio station in Clinton,
we were doing
quite a bit of local news,
and you realize in a small town
that you need to have
a police scanner,
because everything comes
off of it.
And the person said,
"We've got a chemical leak
at the Titan II missile silo."
We get there about the same time
the sheriff is getting there,
Gus Anglin.
This is Gus Anglin.
He was the sheriff
of Van Buren County,
very popular sheriff by the way.
And so we decide to walk down
the narrow road
that goes down to the silo.
And when you get down there,
there's, like, this
ten-foot-tall chain link fencing
with barbed wire
around the top of it.
Out of nowhere, here comes
two guys with M-16 rifles.
Gus says, "Do I need
to start evacuating?"
"Oh, no, sir, no, sir, we've got
it under control, I assure you."
So we went back
to the edge of the road,
which was just off Highway 65.
REPORTER:
This is as close as the
military will allow us to get
KING:
So here comes Channel 4,
here comes Channel 11.
Before you know it, we've got
about 25 people out there.
They ignored us.
We'd yell at them
as they'd come by.
We'd go, "Hey, is everything
under control?"
You know,
"Have you fixed it yet?"
And they'd just keep driving.
They wouldn't even acknowledge
that you existed.
MAN:
Sheriff Gus Anglin,
he didn't get the information
he thought he needed from them
to make really good decisions,
and finally he just went
to running everybody off.
When they were evacuating,
he said, you know,
"I don't know how bad it's going
to be or anything else,
"get out of here right now
and then we'll get you back in
quick as we can."
They had roadblocks set up
back two miles from it
diverting traffic
around the area.
I had a problem that nine months
before that happened,
I had synchronized
a bunch of heifers,
which means you give them
a shot of Lutalyse
and they all come into heat
at the same time.
You breed them
all at the same time,
which also means they're all
going to calve at the same time.
Well, their due date
was that day.
We would have lost the farm,
everything we had,
you know, if them cows
all got sick and died.
So, well, we were going back in.
MOSER:
We finally made the decision
to evacuate the crew,
because when the missile
explodes,
if it does explode,
you're risking life of
the four crewmembers on site.
So we thought the best avenue
was to take the crew
out of the control center.
Mike said, "We're going to have
to evacuate."
Uh
It was one of the hardest things
I think anybody could do,
because you were responsible
for a nuclear weapon
that was capable of destroying
an unbelievable amount
of territory
and an unbelievable number
of people,
and you were leaving it behind.
Nobody left it before, nobody
would leave a nuclear warhead.
The whole time I was leaving,
I kept thinking,
"I need to stay,
I should have stayed."
I look back on it now,
I still can't believe
we left it empty.
(alarm beeping, men talking)
We had all these
classified checklists.
Nobody had ever tried
to put them in a safe before
They wouldn't fit.
So we left all of them
in the safe with the door open.
We thought, "We're going
to go out the regular way,
we'll open a door up."
HOLDER:
As we started to open
the blast door,
we immediately saw vapor.
Once we closed that door,
that cut off
our main escape route.
We were instructed to evacuate
through the emergency
escape hatch,
which we had never actually
fully opened.
CHILDERS:
It was just a metal tube
with a ladder in it,
buried a good 40 feet
under the ground.
There's a light at the top,
and it's supposed to shine down
into the escape route,
and it didn't come on.
It wasn't working.
Nothing was working.
It was a hell of a thing
to climb up five stories
in the dark with this mask on,
and you couldn't breathe,
and it filled up with vapors
and you couldn't see anything.
We knew there was
very little wind that night,
and all of the vapors
that were being evacuated
out of the launch duct
were settling over the site.
JAMES SANDAKER:
I was at home
with my wife and kid,
and I got a call
from job control,
and they said they had a problem
out at 4-7.
They told everybody here,
"This is a very dangerous
situation,
"we don't know what's going
to happen,
"this is a purely
voluntary mission only,
and if you don't want to go,
you don't have to go."
(engine roaring)
The PTS group,
it was like a brotherhood.
There's no question that
we weren't going to be the team
that was going out there.
Dave Livingston was
one of the guys,
and he was sitting
in the back seat
and he said to me,
"Somebody's going to die
out here tonight.
I just feel it."
And I said, "Dave, don't say
something like that, man.
Don't even say it."
And he goes,
"No, I got a bad vibe, man,
Somebody's going to die
out here, man."
HOLDER:
We know at this point
that there's a helicopter
on the way,
and Jeff Kennedy was on there.
He was one of the best,
if not the best,
team chief in the wing.
DAVE POWELL:
Jeff Kennedy was
the kind of guy that
he would never ask you
to do anything
he wouldn't do himself.
KENNEDY:
When I got out on site,
Powell came running up to me
and said, "Jeff, I fucked up
like you wouldn't believe."
I know that I need
to get the tank readings
to find out how serious
the leak is.
POWELL:
Jeff thought the longer we wait,
the more dangerous it gets.
What Jeff
didn't tell anybody was
we're going to go down
into that silo
and look at those pressures.
So we run across the silo
to the escape hatch.
Kennedy goes
into the tube first,
I follow him in,
and all of a sudden,
he looks up at me and he says,
"Stay here."
We violated the most sacred rule
in SAC,
which is the two-man rule.
Nobody goes to certain parts
of the silo
without being accompanied
by another person.
He felt like that he could get
in and out quicker
if he went by himself.
KENNEDY:
Stage one fuel was now
at a negative imbalance.
There's 14,000 gallons of fuel
that have leaked out
of the tank.
So now we have less
than 30 pounds of pressure
before stage one oxidizer blows.
POWELL:
Kennedy shows the readings
that he just got
and says we still had time
to save it, but we had to move.
We had to move now.
CHILDERS:
The commander was furious
that he had violated
the two-man policy
by going down there
and didn't even have
a crew member with him;
he was just on his own.
He violated everything.
KENNEDY:
15 minutes later,
SAC headquarters relieves us
of all command decision making.
Now, here's SAC headquarters
that has never stepped foot
on a complex.
That just pissed me off.
(phones ringing)
BEN SCALLORN:
Time was of the essence
if we were going
to accomplish anything.
Every minute that passed by,
we were further, simply because
we're dumping more fuel
and everything is getting worse.
HOLDER:
People started showing up
from base.
Communications,
portable vapor detectors,
they were bringing all kinds
of maintenance equipment.
KING:
You think all of these experts
must be coming in
to work on this thing.
Then I see this bus come in,
and here are these
about ten guys,
and they start putting on
what looks like space outfits.
And you're looking at these
and you're thinking,
"I'm 24 years old
and they're all younger than me,
"and these guys are the experts
that are going to go in there
and fix this?"
All I saw was just young guys
that were being thrown
to the lions.
DEVLIN:
One of the hard things
for us was
it seemed like we were waiting
and waiting and waiting
for some decision
to be made at SAC
as specifically what to do.
So the time frame of, like,
"Man, you know, whatever
we're going to do, let's do it."
(phone ringing)
MOSER:
The SAC command center
finally decided that
we had to know
what the status was
in the silo,
if we could get back in.
What they considered
the best alternative
was go back in
and check pressures.
DEVLIN:
When we find out
what the plan is,
we have to break
into a nuclear missile complex,
which has never been done before
in history.
CHILDERS:
If we had stayed
in the control center,
we could have opened every door
they had to break their way in.
HOLDER:
The plan was to go down
and go through the blast doors,
get into the control center,
and depending on the fuel
and oxidizer readings,
they wanted to get
to the missile itself,
open up a valve
to vent that tank
so it would stabilize
and not collapse.
KENNEDY:
It's absolute, total bullshit.
You know, I said,
"Colonel, why don't we just
go down the escape hatch?"
"Kennedy, this plan
has come down,
it's the plan we're going
to go with, and that's it."
POWELL:
Jeff thought the plan
was nuts.
But on the other hand, you're
This is what you do;
you're a PTS guy.
This is the plan that came down
and you suck it up
and you do it.
MOSER:
We were directed to ask
for volunteers to go back in.
I personally wasn't in favor
of sending anybody else in
after all the time.
It was the wee hours
of the morning,
this has been going on
for many hours at this point,
probably eight hours.
But I guess you go back
and say, as a good soldier,
your boss says "Do this"
and you eventually do it.
And we had enough brave souls
to volunteer
to go back in the silo.
DEVLIN:
Rex Hukle and I
were the first guys to go in.
They said, "You only have
30 minutes of air.
There is no crew down there,
the crew is already evacuated,"
so they said,
"You're going to have to cut
and break your way
into this missile complex."
SCALLORN:
When they got
to the exhaust duct,
they took a reading
and the meter pegged out,
which is 250 parts per million.
HOLDER:
250 parts per million
is when the vapor
is in such a high concentration,
it could start to melt
the RFHCO suits.
Almost anything
could cause it to ignite.
SCALLORN:
General Leavitt directed them
to press on.
I knew it was
the wrong thing to do.
Whatever was going to happen
was not going to be good.
DEVLIN:
We got to the portal door.
We used bolt cutters
and a great big crowbar
to pry open the main lock
and then go down
three levels of steps
to get to your first
6,000-pound blast lock door
with great big hydraulic pins
that lock it in place.
We were getting close
to the 30 minutes of air
and then they said, "You guys
got it hooked up, come on back.
"We're going to send
Kennedy and Livingston in
to replace you."
MOSER:
Those guys were brave.
They knew what they were
getting into
when they went back in
on the underground
What could happen to them.
HOLDER:
I was sitting
in a security police vehicle,
listening and hearing
what's going on.
The next team went in,
which was going to be Kennedy
and Livingston.
MAN (over radio):
AR to CC, stand by.
HOLDER:
They're relaying the information
that they've opened
the blast door.
KENNEDY:
When we went
into the blast lock area,
there's eight lights,
bright as hell.
I'm less than ten feet away
from it and I can't even see it.
HOLDER:
So they immediately evacuated
and started topside.
KENNEDY:
I had got topside,
and now we get a command
from the team chief
to go down
and turn on an exhaust fan.
Livingston taps himself
on the chest, and he went down.
HOLDER:
After that, within seconds,
I saw the explosion.
(booming explosion)
(radio static)
MOSER:
All of a sudden,
I lost all communications.
PTS-1, do you copy?
I repeat, PTS-1, do you copy?
MOSER:
Everything you ever read
or heard
about a nuclear explosion,
all communications were lost
until things settled out.
And that's the first thing
I, uh
that's the first thing
that entered my mind,
that we had a nuclear explosion
out there
and we may have a shock wave
coming into Little Rock
Air Force Base
and all the surrounding
communities,
and that's the first thing
I thought about.
And all the people would be dead
out there on site, of course,
and I just
it was unimaginable
what was going through my mind.
It was almost like
you wanted to get down
on your knees and, uh
and, uh, pray
to the higher power
(laughs)
uh, to protect everybody.
HUTTO:
About 3:00 in the morning,
I decided,
"Well, might as well go milk."
And just before I got
to the roadblock,
you drop off a hill
on Highway 65, there's a spot
that you can see the ground
at the missile base.
Just as I got to that spot,
it blew.
(booming explosion)
You felt it
more than you saw it.
I mean, I was
a mile and three quarters,
two miles away from it,
and it almost shook my truck
off the road.
KING:
I was sitting on the hood
of Gus's sheriff's car,
just kind of sitting there,
and had on slip-on shoes
and was kicking one off and on.
Then all of a sudden,
it was just, "Ka-whoom!"
KING:
Everybody was running
as hard as they could
to get out of there
because we may be living
our last few minutes.
MAN:
Go, go, go!
KING:
I thought,
when I jumped in my car
and drove as hard as I could,
that I was probably outrunning
a nuclear blast, you know?
I thought, "This Dodge Omni
is going to outrun this thing."
(booming explosion)
CHILDERS:
The sky just lit up.
It really looked like the sun
was coming up,
which is why our initial
reaction was,
"The nuclear bomb went off,
the nuclear warhead exploded."
(glass shattering)
CHILDERS:
So much gravel and rocks
were coming down.
It was smashing windshields
and putting holes in trucks.
I was literally trying
to crawl underneath a truck,
and it started to move
and I crawled out again
real fast,
and somebody drove it off.
(tires screeching)
(debris falling)
MAN:
Oh my God!
CHILDERS:
The stuff stopped falling,
but there was flames everywhere
and you could hear this roar.
And you looked down there,
you could see
this steam and fire
coming out of the complex.
DEVLIN:
All I know is
the first thing to hit me
was wind.
It was like, "Boom!"
Just like a concussion, man,
it was like, "Bang!"
And you're blown backwards,
you have no control
over anything.
(booming explosion)
As I was sliding on my back,
burning, going up the street,
my left eye opened
and I could see glowing steel
blowing past me,
And in my heart, I said,
"It's over.
You're not going to live
through this."
You know, "I just hope
it's not painful."
(men screaming)
I got up and took off running.
I got five steps away,
and a chunk of concrete
bigger than a school bus
hits the ground right behind me,
and it's got steel rebar
hanging out of it.
As I'm running,
I feel this whack hit my ankle
and just shatters my ankle.
The next step I took,
I just buckled and went down.
That's when I started to realize
that my face and neck and back
were all on fire.
CHILDERS:
And I was picking people up
and carrying them up the road,
trying to get them away
from the debris.
(tires screeching)
MAN:
Evacuate, evacuate!
CHILDERS:
All you heard was,
"Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate!"
Air Force Colonel said,
"The other two
who are on the site,
they have to be dead."
And we looked down
at the site and said,
"I'm with you, Colonel,
they have to be dead."
I got into the last truck
that was there
with a bunch of hurt guys,
and I said, "Let's go."
(sirens blaring)
KENNEDY:
As soon as it blew,
I can remember being flipped
ass over tea kettle.
When I woke up,
I was laying on my back,
my legs were up
against the complex fence.
I was screaming and crying.
There was nobody there.
You only had yourself.
You know, the pain
I had to deal with
was trivial to the fact that
I wanted to live,
I wanted to survive.
I mean, I thought of my kids,
my wife.
I said, "I am not going to die
in this complex."
I went to stand up
and I fell right down.
My leg was broken.
I fell down four, five times,
got back up.
All the time that I'm walking,
I can hear Livingston,
"Oh my God, help me.
Please, somebody help me."
Because of my leg being broken,
I determined that
I could not get him.
This is something that
I fought with for eons.
If Livingston had known
that I was there,
would that have been enough
of an adrenaline rush,
to know somebody's
got to get some help?
Off the complex was a truck.
I had to make it from one end
of the complex to the other.
When I got to the truck
and I radioed for help,
the truck went dead.
SANDAKER:
On my way back
to the missile site,
I could hear Kennedy
on the radio in the truck.
(switching through
radio frequencies)
KENNEDY (on radio):
Help! Help me!
Help me!
Can anybody read me?
SANDAKER:
And I headed down the road
as fast as I could get
that truck to go.
I got partway there,
and two security policemen
were in the road
and they waved me down.
(knocking)
Who's bringing them?
What?
Who's bringing people here?
They've got them in trucks.
SANDAKER:
And he told us to evacuate
and not go down there.
And I said, "Screw you.
Our friends are down there,
we're going."
I'm not gonna wait here.
KENNEDY (on radio):
Please help me!
Where are you?
SANDAKER:
When I got back
to the missile site,
I saw Kennedy.
He was burnt, and
he had a hole in his leg
the size of your fist.
He was really hurt bad, and
he told me
to go find Livingston.
We put our helmets on
and we went onto the site.
It was like another world.
Ordnance guys had told us
that the warhead
was full of plastic explosives
that could be laying
all over the ground,
so somehow we were not supposed
to step on them.
There was giant chunks
of concrete blasted all over
that looked like the size
of semi trucks.
There's a strange glow
coming out of where the silo
used to be.
And when we got back
to the truck,
they had already found
Livingston,
and I was angry because
they didn't have an ambulance.
I put him in the back
of a pickup truck.
And we
I held him.
He begged me
not to tell his mother,
like he had done
something wrong.
(sirens blaring)
DEVLIN:
When we arrived at the hospital,
I was hyperventilating,
breathing, because the burn pain
was so great.
I had a nurse tell me,
"If you don't calm down,
you're going to pass out."
And I couldn't calm down.
I was on fire,
I felt like I was on fire.
MAN:
Take it easy, Dev.
I went to the hospital that
Kennedy and Livingston went to.
And we were there
for a few hours, I think.
And then the doctor comes out
and informs us
that David Livingston
had passed away
and that Kennedy was, like,
hanging by a thread.
You just keep replaying things
in your head.
"What if I did this?
What if I did that?"
The ifs and buts.
You know, and you just keep
replaying it.
JEFFREY PLUMB:
Dave Powell was a lot closer
to David Livingston
than most people knew.
I remember looking over
when I was at the funeral,
and I remember Powell
just weeping.
He feels responsible
for the death of David,
he really does.
He felt responsible
for the death of his friend.
KENNEDY:
As soon as I found out
Livingston died,
I wanted nothing more to do
with the Air Force.
We were in the hospital two days
before a single solitary
Air Force personnel
were out at that hospital.
DEVLIN:
They came in every eight hours
on my face, neck, and back,
and they used a scrub pad
It was like a Brillo pad
And they scrubbed all the skin,
the dead skin, off
so that the new skin
would grow back.
All the scrubbing was
immensely painful.
The Air Force was
in a really big hurry
to get me back to the base
so that no one could get to us,
there could be no interviews,
and you would not be speaking
to the press.
(phone ringing)
SKIP RUTHERFORD:
The phone rang about 3:30
with a call from one
of the airmen that said,
"It just blew."
The first thing I did was
look around and say,
"I'm alive, we're alive,
my family's alive,
my neighborhood's alive."
And my response was,
"Where's the warhead?"
And the person said,
"We don't know."
MAN (on radio):
will once again, partly,
will be up
throughout the remainder
of the night
and into the morning
When you were trying to talk
to the Air Force to find out,
is there a nuclear warhead?
Was one involved?
Did you find it?
Was it you know,
what condition was it in?
Had it burst open?
Was there uranium spread
all over the area?
They would not admit that there
was even a nuclear warhead.
We could not tell
the local populace
or any of the political
or law enforcement people
that we had a warhead
on the missile.
That was, we could not
confirm nor deny that we had
a nuclear weapon on-site,
and that was SAC and national
policy at that time.
My personal feeling was that
it was a ridiculous policy,
but nevertheless,
we had to live with it.
Sheriff, has the Air Force
told you very much?
Haven't told me a darned thing.
Does that make you mad?
Yes, it does.
KING:
So they wouldn't
tell us anything,
but one of the local merchants
in town
found the Air Force frequencies.
MAN:
Could you give us a status
on those EOD and disaster
preparedness people?
MAN (on Air Force radio):
Still walking up the hill.
KING:
They know that you're
listening to them,
and they said, "Be real evasive
about what you talk about."
They keep on talking about,
"We cannot find it,
we cannot find the unit."
And that's how we knew
they were trying to figure out
what happened to this
nuclear warhead.
Where did it go?
MAN (on radio):
Roger, on-scene commander.
The team went to the unit,
now they're on their way out
to give a full report.
MAN:
Team commander command post,
what unit are you
talking about, sir?
MAN (on radio):
Let's not talk about that.
MAN (on radio):
It's laying in a ditch.
Besides, it's not even up close.
It blew it out and it's laying
in the ditch, it's all exposed.
MOSER:
I went out there the next day.
Somebody said, "There it is."
And it was in the ditch
and 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:
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.
KENNER:
Was there a chance that
that bomb could have detonated?
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.
TOM BROKAW:
The governor of the state
of Arkansas is Bill Clinton.
As you can see, he's standing by
in Little Rock this morning
to talk with us
about the situation.
Do you think that
the people of Arkansas
who lived around the Titan II
missile site, Governor,
were in danger at the time
of the explosion?
Well, Tom, of course
as regards to nuclear explosion,
all we can do is to trust
the experts there.
They say there was never
a danger of a nuclear explosion.
REPORTER:
As far as the community
itself is concerned
and the danger from possible
radioactive leak,
if the warhead itself
has been
if there is a warhead
and if it has been damaged,
have you heard anything
from Washington confirming
whether there is
one there or not?
I have not.
I've heard rumors,
I won't go into those right now.
I remember that
Vice President Mondale,
he was trying to find out,
"Did this have a real warhead?
Did this missile was it armed
with a nuclear warhead?"
MOSER:
You know, when Vice Commander
Colonel Ryan
went to Hot Springs,
Vice President Mondale
asked that question,
whether a nuclear weapon
was involved,
and of course,
Colonel Ryan said,
"I can't confirm or deny,"
and that's
to the vice president.
That's when he got on the phone
with Secretary Brown.
BROWN:
The first thing
I wanted to know was
whether there had been
any scattering
of nuclear material,
or still worse,
a nuclear explosion.
And when I heard that
there had not been,
my level of attention went
way down.
Accidents were not unusual
in the Defense Department.
There was at least
there must have been several
every day.
ERIC SCHLOSSER:
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.
PEURIFOY:
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.
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.
SCHLOSSER:
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.
No special precautions
have been ordered
at other Titan missile bases
around the country
because of that explosion
in Arkansas.
NEWS ANNOUNCER:
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.
NEWS ANNOUNCER:
The Air Force says the Titan
is not to blame
That it was human error
that caused the accident.
The accident
that I've described here
is unrelated to the state
or the age of this system.
I was served with an article 15
for dereliction of duty
because I chose
to use the ratchet
instead of the torque wrench.
Sergeant Kennedy got
a letter of reprimand
for violating the two-man rule.
I gave them my all.
And what did I get from them?
A letter of reprimand.
A letter of reprimand.
SANDAKER:
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.
Some of the officials here
at the air base
apparently have also
changed their attitude
towards some of the men who
risked their lives that morning.
DEVLIN:
Channel 4 News called and said,
"You want to tell us
"about how well the Air Force
is treating you
since the missile explosion?"
I said, "Yeah, I'll tell them."
I worked three-and-a-half years,
did a good job
for three-and-a-half years,
and then I wound up hurt
from this explosion,
and then all of a sudden,
they don't want you anymore.
You know,
I don't know if I'm going
to be railroaded out,
or you know, I don't know
where I stand, really.
Oh man, were they mad.
I think every brass on base
was mad at me.
When I wore my military uniform
with my boots on,
I almost couldn't walk.
I couldn't even move the boot
because my ankle was shattered,
there's no Achilles tendon.
So I just went in and said,
"Colonel, would it be possible
for me to wear a gym shoe
on my left foot?"
He looked at me and he said,
"Devlin, I wouldn't authorize
a fucking thing for you."
I planned on staying
in the Air Force for a career.
Within only a few months,
I knew I couldn't stay
in the Air Force.
I kind of lost it, um,
after that accident.
I just had a meltdown.
I went into the TV room where
we all played cards one evening,
and there was beer bottles
all over the place,
and I just started throwing
a bunch of beer bottles
all over the place
and took my frustrations out
on that.
The base commander, he gave me
an honorable discharge
which I was thankful for,
but that was not my goal,
was to leave the military
at that time.
There was an old motto
that went around
that to err was human,
to forgive wasn't SAC policy.
MOSER:
We have a checklist
in our command post
that calls for us
to notify the OES.
Now, I'm not saying
it broke down there.
Don't misconstrue
what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is
from there on down,
there was no plan.
This is the test bed,
4-7 was the test bed,
and we never
nothing like this
has ever happened before.
MOSER:
Even though, you know,
I'd just had three months there,
I was in charge,
and a senior guy is responsible
for the whole operation.
I expected I was going
to lose my job,
let's put it that way,
after that happened.
I thought that was
that would be the next step,
and that happened
on Thanksgiving.
My regret was that
I took orders from my boss,
I clicked my heels
like a good soldier
and tried to execute
those orders as best I could.
(rifles fire a salute)
And as a result of that,
we lost life.
POWELL:
I think about Livingston often
What it'd be like
to still have him around
and call him up on the phone.
Jeff Kennedy passed away
a couple of years ago.
I have no doubt that Jeff died
from being involved at Damascus,
no doubt in my mind.
I hear a song on the radio,
I'll see something on TV,
and bam, there it is,
it's back, you know?
It's very hard to talk about,
even today.
I tried to live
as normal a life as I can,
but there isn't a day goes by
that I don't think about it.
30, whatever, 35 years,
whatever it's been.
Every day.
NEWS ANNOUNCER:
It went like clockwork,
6,500 pounds of explosives
set to go at high noon.
(beeping)
(booming explosions)
SCHLOSSER:
Seven years
after the Damascus accident,
the last Titan II
was deactivated.
(cow mooing)
HUTTO:
If you didn't know
they were there,
you wouldn't know
what it was now.
It just looks like a small hill.
SANDAKER:
I think nowadays,
people don't realize that
we still have 7,000
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.
BROWN:
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.
SCHLOSSER:
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.
CHILDERS:
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.
PEURIFOY:
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.
This is just a nightmare
Soon I'm gonna wake up
Someone's gonna bring me round
Just like everybody
Stepping over heads
Running from the underground
This is your warning
Four minute warning
I don't wanna hear it
I don't wanna know
I just wanna run and hide
This is just a nightmare
Soon I'm gonna wake up
Someone's gonna bring me round
This is our warning
Four minute warning.