Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

The Air Force also used concurrency to speed the deployment of other ballistic missiles. Led by the Army Corps of Engineers, tens of thousands of workers dug hundreds of silos to hide missiles beneath the landscape of rural America. It was one of the largest construction projects ever undertaken by the Department of Defense. In addition to Arkansas, underground launch complexes were placed in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. Between Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, missile silos were dispersed across an area extending for thirty-two thousand square miles.

About an hour north of Santa Barbara, along a stretch of the central California coast with forty miles of pristine beaches and rocky cliffs, the Air Force built a missile research center and the first operational missile site. Later known as Vandenberg Air Force Base, it provided a clear shot to target sites at Eniwetok and Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. Like the missile complexes in America’s heartland, Vandenberg was rushed to completion. Within a few years of its opening in 1957, the base had launchpads, silos, underground control centers, storage facilities, administrative buildings, and a population of about ten thousand.

Although concurrency sped the introduction of new weapons, it also created problems. A small design change in a missile could require costly changes in silo equipment that had already been installed. The prototype of a new airplane could be flight-tested repeatedly to discover its flaws — but a missile could be flown only once. And missiles were expensive, limiting the number of flight tests and the opportunity to learn what could go wrong. A successful launch depended on an intricate mix of human and technological factors. Design errors were often easier to correct than to anticipate. As a result, the reliability of America’s early missiles left much to be desired. “Like any machine,” General LeMay noted, with understatement, “they don’t always work.”

The first intercontinental missile deployed by the United States, the Snark, had wings, a jet engine, and a range of about six thousand miles. It was a great-looking missile, sleek and futuristic, painted a fiery red. But the Snark soon became legendary for landing nowhere near its target. On long-distance flights, it missed by an average of twenty miles or more. During one test launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a Snark that was supposed to fly no farther than Puerto Rico just kept on going, despite repeated attempts by range safety officers to make it self-destruct. When the slow-moving missile passed Puerto Rico, fighter planes were scrambled to shoot it down, but they couldn’t find it. The Snark eventually ran out of fuel and crashed somewhere in the Amazonian rain forests of Brazil. Air Force tests later suggested that during wartime, only one out of three Snarks would leave the ground and only one out of ten would hit its target. Nevertheless, dozens of Snarks were put on alert at Presque Isle Air Force Base in Maine. The missile carried a 4-megaton warhead.

Again and again, the symbolism of a missile seemed more important than its military usefulness. The Army’s Redstone missile was rushed into the field not long after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. Designed by Wernher von Braun and his team of German rocket scientists at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, the missile was a larger, more advanced version of the Nazi V-2. The Redstone often carried a 4-megaton warhead but couldn’t fly more than 175 miles. The combination of a short range and a powerful thermonuclear weapon was unfortunate. Launched from NATO bases in West Germany, Redstone missiles would destroy a fair amount of West Germany.

The intermediate-range missiles that President Eisenhower offered to NATO were also problematic. The Thor missiles sent to Great Britain were stored aboveground, lying horizontally. They had to be erected and then fueled before liftoff. It would take at least fifteen minutes to launch any of the missiles in a Thor squadron and even longer to get them all off the ground. The missiles’ lack of physical protection, lengthy countdown procedures, and close proximity to the Eastern bloc guaranteed that they’d be among the first things destroyed by a Soviet attack. The four-minute warning provided by Great Britain’s radar system wouldn’t offer much help to the RAF officers in charge of a Thor squadron that might need as much as two days to complete its mission. They might not have time to launch any Thors. The missiles would, however, be useful for a surprise attack against the Soviet Union — a fact that gave the Soviets an even greater incentive to strike first and destroy them. Instead of deterring an attack on Great Britain, the Thors seemed to invite one.

The military value of the Jupiter missiles offered to Italy and Turkey was equally dubious. Jupiters were also slow to launch, stored aboveground, and exposed to attack. Unlike the Thors, they stood upright, encircled by launch equipment hidden beneath metal panels. When the panels opened outward before liftoff, a Jupiter looked like the pistil of a huge, white, sinister flower. Sixty feet high, topped by a 1.4-megaton warhead, and deployed in the countryside, the missiles were especially vulnerable to lightning strikes.

In the days and months following Sputnik, the Atlas missile loomed as America’s great hope, its first ICBM, designed to hit Soviet targets from bases in the United States. But producing a missile that could reliably reach the Soviet Union took much longer than expected. An Air Force missile expert later described its propellant system as a “fire waiting to happen.” Liquid oxygen (LOX), the missile’s oxidizer, was dangerously unstable. About twenty thousand gallons of LOX had to be stored in tanks outside the Atlas, at a temperature of -297 degrees Fahrenheit — and then pumped into the missile during the countdown. The margin for error was slim. During a series of dramatic, well-publicized mishaps at Vandenberg, Atlas missiles exploded on the launchpad, veered wildly off course, or never left the ground. Nevertheless, the first Atlas went on alert in 1959. At a top secret hearing two years later, an Air Force official admitted to Congress that the odds of an Atlas missile hitting a target in the Soviet Union were no better than fifty-fifty. General Thomas Power, the head of SAC, who much preferred bombers, thought the odds were closer to zero.

Developed as a backup to Atlas, the Titan missile incorporated a number of new technologies. It had a second stage that ignited in the upper atmosphere, enabling the launch of a heavier payload. Although it relied on the same propellants as the Atlas, the Titan would be based in an underground silo, gaining some protection from a Soviet attack. The missile would be filled with propellants underground, about fifteen minutes before launch, and then would ride an elevator to the surface before ignition. The elevator was immense, capable of lifting more than half a million pounds. But it didn’t always work. During a test run of the first Titan silo, overlooking the Pacific at Vandenberg, a control valve in the elevator’s hydraulic system broke. The elevator, the Titan, and about 170,000 pounds of liquid oxygen and fuel fell all the way to the bottom of the silo. Nobody was hurt by the explosion, though debris from it landed more than a mile away. The silo was destroyed and never rebuilt.

While Atlas and Titan missiles were being prepared for their launch complexes, the Air Force debated whether to deploy another liquid-fueled, long-range missile: the Titan II. It would be more accurate and reliable, carry a larger warhead, store propellants within its airframe, launch from inside a silo, and lift off in less than a minute. Those were compelling arguments on behalf of the Titan II, and yet critics of the missile asked a good question — did the Air Force really need four different types of ICBM? It had already committed to the development of the Minuteman, a missile that would be small, mass-produced, and inexpensive. The Minuteman’s solid fuel would burn slowly from one end, like a big cigar, and didn’t pose the same risks as liquid propellants.