Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

The nose cone not only protected the warhead from heat, it also contained the weapon’s arming and fuzing system. On the way up, a barometric switch closed when it reached a specific altitude, allowing electricity to flow from the thermal batteries to the warhead. On the way down, an accelerometer ignited the thermal batteries and armed the warhead. If the warhead had been set for an airburst, it exploded at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet when a barometric switch closed. If the warhead had been set for a groundburst — or if, for some reason, the barometric switch malfunctioned — it exploded when the piezoelectric crystals in the nose cone were crushed upon impact with the target. Instead of being vaporized by reentry, the warhead was kept cool and intact long enough to vaporize everything for miles around it.

Three strategic missile wings were formed to deploy the Titan II, each with eighteen missiles, located in Arkansas, Kansas, and Arizona. The Air Force felt confident that the Titan II would be more reliable than its predecessors. At first, perhaps 70 to 75 percent of the missiles were expected to hit their targets, and as crews gained experience, that proportion would rise to 90 percent. Newspapers across the country heralded the arrival of the Titan II, America’s superweapon, “the biggest guns in the western world.” The missile would play a dual, patriotic role in the rivalry with the Soviet Union. It would carry SAC’s deadliest warhead — and also serve, in a slightly modified form, as the launch vehicle to send NASA’s Gemini astronauts into space. At Little Rock Air Force Base, the introduction of the Titan II was greeted with a nervous enthusiasm. The first launch crews had to train with cardboard mock-ups of equipment, and the number of operational launch complexes in Arkansas soon exceeded the number of crews qualified to run them. Vital checklists were still being written and revised as the missiles were placed on alert.

Ben Scallorn became a site maintenance officer for the 308th Strategic Missile Wing, eventually overseeing half a dozen Titan II launch complexes. He liked the new job and didn’t hesitate to wear a RFHCO and work long hours beside his men. Launch Complex 373-4 in Searcy was one of his sites. After the fire killed fifty-three workers there, he was part of the team that pulled the missile from the silo. It was a sobering experience. Thick black soot covered almost everything. But handprints could still be seen on the rungs of ladders, and the bodies of fallen workers had left clear outlines on the floor. Scallorn could make out the shapes of their arms and legs, the positions of their bodies as they died, surrounded by black soot. All that remained of them were these pale, ghostly silhouettes.

JEFF KENNEDY WAS FURIOUS. They were just sitting there in the dark, at the end of the access road, with their thumbs up their asses, doing nothing, while the missile got ready to blow. Colonel Morris said they’d been ordered to wait for further instructions — period. The decisions were being made elsewhere, and nothing, nothing was to be done without the approval of SAC headquarters. Morris hadn’t shared Kennedy’s latest plan with the command post, and nobody had asked to hear it. In fact, none of the PTS guys or launch crew members on the scene had been asked to give an opinion of what should be done.

Kennedy thought that was bullshit. They were there. They were ready to go. They had all the knowledge and experience you needed. What were they waiting for? Every minute they waited to do the job would make the job more dangerous.

At about 10:15, almost four hours after the accident, the Disaster Response Force arrived. But its commander, Colonel William Jones, had no authority at the site — a disaster hadn’t occurred yet. The five vehicles in his convoy pulled off Highway 65 and parked along the access road. Members of his team got out of their trucks, introduced themselves, and distributed Crations and cans of water.

Colonel Morris asked the flight surgeon who’d come with the ambulance, Captain Donald P. Mueller, to do him a favor. Mueller had never worked with the Disaster Response Force before. He was twenty-eight years old and happened to be the doctor on call at the base hospital that night. Morris asked him to speak with Mazzaro, the missile crew commander. Morris was concerned about Mazzaro: he didn’t look well. He seemed anxious and tense. Mueller spent about forty-five minutes with Mazzaro, who admitted to feeling worried about his pregnant wife. Mazzaro wanted someone to call his wife and tell her that he was safe. Mueller assured him that she’d already been contacted — and that Fuller’s wife, who was also pregnant, had been contacted, too. Both women knew their husbands were safe. The news made Mazzaro feel better, and he lay down in the back of the ambulance to rest.

SERGEANT BROCKSMITH WAS HAVING TROUBLE supervising the evacuation of local residents. Colonel Jones and Colonel Morris would periodically sit in his truck and use his radio to speak with the command post. When one of them was on the Security Police Net, Brocksmith’s officers couldn’t communicate with each other. And his officers didn’t have maps of the area. And they didn’t have an evacuation plan or any formal guidance about how an evacuation should proceed. The only map that Brocksmith had in his truck showed the location of nearby Titan II complexes. But it didn’t show where any houses, farms, schools, or even streets were located.

The Missile Potential Hazard Team instructed Brocksmith to post officers in a roughly three-quarters-of-a-mile radius around 4–7. Two Missile Alarm Response Teams were available for the job, and a couple of Mobile Fire Teams (MFTs) had been sent from Little Rock. That gave Brocksmith ten military police officers to secure the area. The MARTs were trained to guard Titan II sites, the MFTs to defend the air base from sabotage and attack, using machine guns, grenade launchers, and M-16 rifles. The MFTs — most of whom had never seen a Titan II complex — left their machine guns and grenade launchers in Little Rock. Brocksmith established roadblocks on Highway 65 and stationed officers on County Roads 836 and 26, a pair of dirt roads that crossed the highway north and south of the missile complex. The officers on County Road 836 were forced to stop short of their assigned position. They’d encountered an old wooden bridge, and they were afraid to drive their truck over it.

The military police had no legal jurisdiction on civilian property and couldn’t order anyone to evacuate. As officers knocked on doors in the middle of the night, carrying flashlights and M-16s, they found that most of the houses were empty. Sheriff Anglin or the state police had already been there. The handful of residents who’d refused to leave their homes generally fell into two categories: some were stubborn and defiant, while others, like Sam Hutto, were sneaky. Hutto kept returning to his farm, on back roads, to look after the cows.

The roughly two hundred officers in the security police squadron had been recalled to Little Rock Air Force Base. Sergeant Donald V. Green was serving as a referee at a football game when he heard about the recall. Green quickly went home, changed into his uniform, and reported for duty. He was in his early thirties, born and raised in Old Town, Florida, a small rural community about forty miles west of Gainesville. He lived on the base with his wife and six-year-old son. And he loved being a military police officer, despite how most people viewed the job. Being a cook or a cop, those were the only two jobs at SAC that nobody seemed to want. Too often, he thought, guys who’d flunked out of every technical school in the Air Force would be assigned to the military police. But the camaraderie among the officers was strong, their work interesting and important — even if it was rarely appreciated.