Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

King said hello to the sheriff and the state trooper. Let’s go down there and see what’s going on, Anglin suggested. The four men walked down the access road, wondering what was wrong this time, as the evening light grew dim. They reached the perimeter fence and stopped for a second. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a couple of Air Force security officers appeared with M-16 rifles and asked what they were doing there.

“I’m the sheriff of the county,” Anglin said. “And it looks like you’ve got another problem. We’re just trying to figure out what we need to do. Do we need to evacuate people?”

“No, no, we’ve got everything under control,” one of the security officers replied. The command post at Little Rock was on top of the situation.

Anglin and the state trooper turned around and started walking back toward the highway. The sheriff did not look pleased. King started firing questions at the security officers: What exactly is the problem? Is that smoke? Is there a fire? One of the officers was about to answer, then asked King and Phillips if they worked for the sheriff’s department. When King said no, we’re with KGFL, the officer’s response was blunt: “Sir, get your ass out of here.”

The two young men laughed as they returned to their car. “Boy, he wasn’t in too good a mood,” Phillips said. They decided to stick around for a while, alongside the highway, and see what happened next. But first they had to get a message to the station. The transmitter on the Omni wasn’t strong enough to send a signal over the nearby hill on Highway 65, so they drove to the top of it. King asked the technician at the station to contact the Associated Press and KATV, the ABC affiliate in Little Rock. Tell them something’s wrong at the Titan II complex in Damascus, King said. Then they drove down the hill, parked near the access road, and waited.

CHILDERS AND HOLDER TOOK TURNS at the console where the commander normally sat. Mazzaro stood at the other console or paced back and forth in the room. He was one of the finest missile combat crew commanders that either of them had met, but now he seemed distracted. Every few minutes, one of them would push the HAZARD ALERT LOGIC RESET button. It was supposed to turn off any warning lights that were malfunctioning, that were signaling a nonexistent problem. Not long after Powell admitted to having dropped the socket, the RESET button was pushed, and the OXI VAPOR LAUNCH DUCT light went out. That confirmed what Childers and Holder already suspected: there was no oxidizer leak. At least one potential hazard could be ruled out. They knew that the stage 1 fuel tank was leaking and that fuel vapors were filling the silo. But was there really a fire?

Holder thought that once the tank was pierced, fuel vapors began to interact with the oxidized aluminum panels in the silo. He didn’t think there was a roaring fire. It was more likely a smoldering one, hot enough to set off the fire detectors. The PTS crew topside had given conflicting accounts of the cloud leaving the exhaust vent, at first describing it as white, later as “green smoke.” Childers thought there was a fuel leak, pure and simple, that had somehow registered as a fire. Fuel vapors were easily mistaken for smoke. He couldn’t explain, however, why the fire detectors had been triggered. They were mechanical devices containing a sliver of metal that melted at 140 degrees. They should be reliable. Perhaps the hazard warning circuitry had malfunctioned, signaling that the detectors had been triggered when they hadn’t. In any event, the sprays in the silo would help. Water would dilute the fuel, making it less flammable and explosive. And if there was a smoldering fire, the water would extinguish it.

A new set of problems soon emerged. Every five minutes Holder had been recording the stage 1 tank pressures from the PTPMU. The ideal pressure for both the fuel and the oxidizer tanks was 11.5 pounds per square inch (psi). About half an hour after the accident, the fuel pressure had dropped to 5.5, while the oxidizer pressure had risen to 18.6. The combination of water and fuel in the silo created heat, increasing the pressure in the oxidizer tank. If the pressure became too great, the tank would rupture and the oxidizer would pour out. It would mix with the fuel in the silo, causing an explosion.

Meanwhile, the leak was lowering the pressure in the stage 1 fuel tank. The small hole allowed fuel to leave the tank but didn’t let air enter it. The stage 1 fuel tank sat at the bottom of the missile and supported much of its weight. The Titan II’s aluminum skin was about the width of a nickel. In much the same way that a car is supported by the air in its tires, not the rubber, the huge missile was bolstered by the 85,000 pounds of rocket fuel in its stage 1 tank. That tank wasn’t supposed to be empty when the others were full — unless the missile was flying hundreds of miles off the ground. If the fuel tank on the bottom collapsed, the oxidizer tank directly above it would tumble and burst. The two propellants would mix, and the missile would explode.

The pressure levels in both of the stage 1 tanks were now moving in opposite directions: one was rising, due to the heat; the other was falling, due to the leak. The oxidizer tank was likely to rupture when its pressure rose to about 25 or 30 psi. And the fuel tank was likely to collapse when its pressure fell to somewhere between –2 and –3 psi.

At half past seven, about an hour after the accident, the pressure in the fuel tank was 2.6, and the pressure in the oxidizer tank was 18.8.

Holder suggested shutting down the power to the missile. The socket might have struck an electrical panel and started a fire. But even if it hadn’t, having power in the silo might somehow give off a spark that would ignite the fuel vapor. Although the suggestion felt like grasping at straws, Holder thought it was something they could actually do, instead of just sitting there. A checklist was composed with help from the Missile Potential Hazard Team. Everyone agreed that circuit breaker 13, which supplied power to the PTPMU, should be left on so that tank pressure readings could still be obtained.

As Holder read the first sentence of the checklist and prepared to turn off circuit breakers, a light on the commander’s console indicated that the sprays had stopped. The hard water tank in the silo had run out of water. It was supposed to be refilled automatically by the soft water tank topside. But the faulty switch on the hard water tank that Holder and Fuller noticed during the morning inspection had prompted someone, months or even years earlier, to close the pipe linking the two tanks. About a hundred thousand gallons of water had sprayed into the silo, and an additional hundred thousand were still available topside. The crew, however, had no way of getting that extra water. The indicator said the pump in the silo was still pumping, and yet nothing was coming out of it. Childers tried to turn off the pump, concerned that its electric motor might produce a spark. He kept pushing the button but the pump wouldn’t stop.

At about five past eight, the LAUNCH DUCT TEMP HIGH HIGH warning light flashed red. The temperature in the silo had reached 80 degrees, and without the sprays of cold water, it would keep climbing. The pressure in the fuel tank was down to 0.4 psi. The pressure in the oxidizer tank was 19.5 and rising fast.

Captain Mazzaro asked for permission to evacuate the control center. Permission was denied.

The Missile Potential Hazard Team in Little Rock had a plan. The RFHCOs that Powell and Plumb had worn still held about forty minutes of air. The suits in the blast lock hadn’t been used. They were good for at least an hour. According to Little Rock’s plan, the PTS crew would retrieve the RFHCOs from the blast lock, put them on, check the MSA, and report the vapor levels in the equipment area of the silo. If the levels were low enough, the men would proceed to the equipment area and turn on the purge fan. That might clear some of the fuel vapors out of the silo.