Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

Moser was a great believer in checklists. After graduating from Franklin & Marshall College in 1955, he’d joined the Strategic Air Command. Two years later he became the navigator of a KC-97 Stratotanker, an aircraft that refueled B-47 bombers midair. The Stratotanker was a propeller plane, and the B-47 a jet, prone to stalling at low speeds. The two had to rendezvous at a precise location, with the bomber flying behind and slightly below the tanker. At an altitude of eighteen thousand feet, they would connect via a hollow steel boom and fly in unison for twenty minutes, entering a shallow dive so that the tanker could keep up with the bomber. Aerial refueling was a delicate, often dangerous procedure. The crew of the Stratotanker had to coordinate every step carefully, not just with the crew of the B-47 but also with one another. Spontaneous or improvised maneuvers would not be appreciated. Moser later flew as a navigator on KC-135 tankers that refueled B-52s during airborne alerts. The success of these missions depended on checklists. Every move had to be standardized and predictable, as two large jets flew about forty feet apart, linked by a boom, one plane carrying thermonuclear weapons, the other unloading a thousand gallons of jet fuel a minute, day or night, through air turbulence and rough weather.

Colonel Moser asked Mazzaro if the PTS team had done anything in the silo that could have caused the problem. Mazzaro got off the line and returned with an explanation: Airman Powell had dropped a socket into the silo, and the socket had pierced a hole in the stage 1 fuel tank. Mazzaro put the airman on the phone and made him describe what had happened, an unusual decision that violated the chain of command. Hearing the details silenced everyone in the room. Moser realized this was a serious accident that called for an urgent response. He activated the Missile Potential Hazard Net, a conference call that would connect him with SAC headquarters in Omaha, the Ogden Air Logistics Center in Utah, and the headquarters of the Eighth Air Force in Louisiana. But the communications equipment wasn’t working properly, and for the next forty minutes the controller in Little Rock tried to set up the call.

Members of the hazard team were now filling the command post, officers and enlisted men who’d spent years working with the Titan II and its propellants. The missile wing’s chief of safety sat at the conference table, along with the head of its technical engineering branch, a bioenvironmental engineer, an electrical engineer, and the K crew. The “K” stood for “on-call,” and the four-man crew — a commander, a deputy commander, a missile facilities technician, and a missile systems analyst — served as back-up to the launch crew at 4–7. The K crew could help interpret the data coming from the site, pore through the Dash-1 and other operating manuals, offer a second opinion. The skills of everyone in the room focused on the question of how to save the missile. SAC didn’t have a checklist for the problem they now faced, and so they would have to write one.

Moser needed all the technical assistance he could get. He was new to the job, having been in Little Rock for about three months. During that brief time, he’d come to be regarded as smart, fair, and open minded — as someone who was willing to listen. For a SAC wing commander, he was well liked. But Moser didn’t know very much about Titan II missiles. He’d previously served as deputy director of missile maintenance at SAC headquarters and as the commander of missile maintenance at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. Those assignments, however, had required an extensive knowledge of Minuteman missiles — a completely different weapon system. The Minuteman used solid fuel, not liquid propellants. It was smaller than a Titan II, with a less powerful warhead. And each Minuteman complex had ten missiles, not one, with silos dispersed as far as seventeen miles from the launch control center. A Minuteman crew could go months without visiting a silo. The Titan II was the only ballistic missile in the American arsenal that relied on liquid fuel and a combat crew living down the hall. It was a rare, exotic “bird.” Of the more than one thousand long-range missiles that SAC controlled, only fifty-four were Titan IIs.

Moser didn’t pretend to be an expert on the Titan II and, from his first day in Little Rock, had shown an eagerness to learn. Three or four mornings a week, he attended predeparture briefings for the launch crews and the PTS teams. He vowed to spend time at every launch complex, before the end of the year. But some of the complexes were a long way from Little Rock, and he still hadn’t visited them all.

WHEN COLONEL JAMES L. MORRIS arrived at the command post, around 7 P.M., he already knew what had happened at the silo. Morris was the deputy commander for maintenance, and about half an hour earlier, he’d overheard Captain Mazzaro on the radio, sounding excited about something. Morris told job control to call 4–7 and ask Charles Heineman, the head of PTS Team A, what was going on there. Heineman said that Powell had dropped a socket into the silo and poked a hole in the missile. He said that Powell saw a lot of fuel vapor, but no fire. Morris absorbed the news, told job control to track down Jeff Kennedy, and ordered the dispatcher not to contact the launch complex again.

Within an hour of the accident, the pressure in the stage 1 fuel tank had dropped by about 80 percent. A vacuum was forming inside it, as fuel poured out. If the pressure continued to drop, the tank might collapse. After Jeff Kennedy joined Morris in the command post, Colonel Moser briefed them on the situation and instructed them to head to 4–7 by helicopter. Morris would serve as the on-site commander, and Kennedy would help him find out what was happening, whether there was a fire, and what needed to be done. Before leaving Little Rock, Kennedy asked job control to call the launch complex and tell them to get a RFHCO suit ready for him. We’ve been ordered not to call the complex, the dispatcher said, bring your own. Kennedy didn’t have time to gather the necessary gear — a helmet, a fresh air pack, a RFHCO suit the right size — and left the base without it.

The hazard team had come up with a plan: PTS technicians would reenter the silo, vent the stage 1 fuel tank, equalize the pressure, and prevent the missile from collapsing. Time was of the essence, and the reentry had to be done as soon as possible. The PTS men topside had RFHCOs and air packs and a full set of equipment in their trucks. Ideally, they’d go into the complex. But nobody knew where they were. After leaving the complex, they’d probably driven beyond the range of the radios in their helmets. And their trucks didn’t have radios that could contact the base. If they wanted to speak with the command post, they’d have to drive to Damascus and use a pay phone, or call from a nearby house.

The PTS crew that had taken refuge in the control center would have to do the job, wearing the RFHCOs left behind in the blast lock. Because their socket was now lying somewhere at the bottom of the silo, they’d have to remove the pressure cap on the stage 1 fuel tank with pliers. And if that didn’t work, they might have to push open the tank’s poppet valve with a broom handle.

Before Colonel Moser could approve the plan and set it in motion, SAC headquarters joined the discussion via speakerphone. It was about quarter to eight, the Missile Potential Hazard Net was finally up and running, and Lieutenant General Lloyd Leavitt, the vice commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command, was on the line. Leavitt made it clear that, from now on, nothing would be done in the launch control center, the silo, or anywhere else on the complex without his approval. And he would not authorize any specific action until a consensus had been reached that it was the right thing to do.