Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

an engineer listened carefully to the sounds of a PAL: The Sandia engineer’s name was John Kane, and in this case his lock-picking skills exceeded those of technicians at the National Security Agency. See Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S2C,” p. 71.

The W-47 warhead had a far more serious problem: I learned about the unreliability of the W-47 warhead during my interviews with Bob Peurifoy and Bill Stevens. Some of the details can be found in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon , Volume VI, pp. 433–41. Hansen called the W-47, without its safing tape, “an explosion in search of an accident.” Sybil Francis touched on the subject briefly in “Warhead Politics: Livermore and the Competitive System of Nuclear Weapons Design,” thesis (Ph.D.), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Politic Science, 1995, pp. 152–53.

“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.”