Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

Oxidizer lines were attached to the stage 1 and stage 2 tanks, and both were full in about an hour. The lines were thick, heavy hoses through which the propellant flowed. Airman Erby Hepstall and Airman Carl Malinger put on RFHCO suits and entered the silo to disconnect the lines. Malinger had never been inside a Titan II silo before. He was nineteen years old and new to the Air Force, accompanying Hepstall that day for on-the-job training. The removal of the stage 2 lines, near the top of the missile, went smoothly. Hepstall and Malinger rode the elevator down to disconnect the lines from stage 1. Standing on a platform near the bottom of the missile, they unscrewed one of them. A powerful stream of oxidizer, like water suddenly released from a fire hydrant, hit Malinger’s chest and the faceplate of his helmet and knocked him down. Hepstall tried to reconnect the line, but it wouldn’t screw back on. Oxidizer poured from the missile, fell into the W below it, and then rose as a thick, reddish brown cloud of vapor.

Inside the top level of the control center, Lieutenant Matthews was preparing his lunch when a Klaxon sounded. Down below, the deputy commander, Second Lieutenant Charles B. Frost, sat at the launch control console. Frost wore a headset and monitored the PTS team on the radio. He pushed a button on the console and turned off the Klaxon, assuming that a puff of oxidizer had set it off when the lines were disconnected. That happened all the time. The Klaxon sounded again, and Frost heard screams over the radio.

“Oh my God, the poppet.”

“What was the poppet?” Frost said into his headset. “What’s wrong?”

Matthews came down the stairs as warning lights flashed on the console: OXI VAPOR LAUNCH DUCT, VAPOR SILO EQUIP. AREA, VAPOR OXI PUMP ROOM.

“Get out of here, let’s get out,” a voice yelled over the radio.

“Where are you?” Frost asked. The sounds on the radio were chaotic. People were talking at the same time, they were shouting and screaming and drowning one another out. Frost pushed the override button, blocking everybody else’s radio transmission, and ordered: “Come back to the control center.”

“I can’t see,” somebody said.

Lieutenant Matthews walked over to the blast door protecting the control center. He tried to open the door and see what was going on. The blast door wouldn’t open. And Matthews got a whiff of something that smelled a lot like Clorox bleach. It smelled like oxidizer.

In the control trailer topside, Airman Linthicum, the trainee running his first recycle, heard the shouting on the radio but couldn’t understand what was being said. Linthicum ran out of the trailer, trying to get better reception on a portable headset, and saw a reddish cloud rising from the exhaust vents. Another member of the PTS crew left the trailer, found Sergeant Thomas — the most experienced technician at the site — and told him something had gone wrong. Thomas was twenty-nine years old. He saw the oxidizer, ran to the access portal, and asked the control center for permission to enter the launch complex.

Lieutenant Frost granted the permission, unlocking the outer steel door for Thomas and then the door at the bottom of the entrapment area. All the hazard lights on Frost’s console seemed to be flashing at once, including FUEL VAPOR LAUNCH DUCT, which made no sense. Frost kept asking the PTS team chief where they were in the checklist when the accident happened, hoping to find the right emergency checklist for dealing with it. But the radio still didn’t work properly. Frost pulled out different tech manuals and flipped through their pages. He wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do.

“Hey, I smell Clorox,” Matthews said. He told the missile crew to set up a portable vapor detector in front of the door, to close the blast valve and the blast damper, protecting the air supply of the control center.

The missile facilities technician, Senior Airman Glen H. Wessel, placed a vapor detector near the blast door. He could smell oxidizer. The detector quickly registered one to three parts per million; somehow the stuff was getting into the control center. Wessel told his commander that the room was being contaminated with oxidizer. They both tried to open the blast door, but it wouldn’t budge. The crew was locked inside the control center.

The two PTS technicians waiting in the blast lock, serving as backup, had no idea what was happening in the silo. They could hear screams on the radio, but nobody would answer them. And then the door from the long cableway suddenly swung open, and Hepstall appeared. Oxidizer had turned the faceplate of his helmet white. It was so opaque you couldn’t see his face.

Hepstall pulled off the helmet. He was sobbing. He said Malinger’s still down there, we have to go and get him out. If anything happens to Malinger, he said, I’ll never forgive myself.

Hepstall had left his trainee in the silo, amid a thick cloud of oxidizer, found his way to the elevator, and ridden it five levels to the long cableway.

The door to the blast lock opened, and Sergeant Thomas walked inside. He saw Hepstall sobbing, heard that Malinger was missing, and put on one of the backup team’s RFHCO suits. Without a moment’s hesitation, Thomas had decided to search for Malinger.

Hepstall offered to go with him and grabbed a fresh helmet. Wearing the RFHCOs, they opened the door and headed down the long cableway toward the silo. The air was becoming thick with oxidizer.

The PTS backup team waited anxiously in the blast lock. Moments later, the door swung open. Hepstall stumbled inside and fell to the ground coughing. He hadn’t made it very far. The new helmet leaked, and oxidizer was getting into his RFHCO. Hepstall took off the suit, got into another one, and left for the silo again.

On the bottom floor of the control center, Wessel was amazed by how hard it was to open the escape hatch. The ratchet that you needed to use felt really heavy. He and the ballistic missile analyst technician, Danford M. Wong, took turns with it, wearing their gas masks. They were highly motivated. The blast door still wouldn’t open, and this looked like their only way out.

Lieutenant Frost was still attempting, without success, to reach the PTS team in the silo, Sergeant Thomas, and the PTS guys in the trailer, using the telephone and the radio. It wasn’t easy with a gas mask on. Frost would pull off the mask momentarily, speak, put the mask back on, and listen for some response. Nobody answered him. And then, clear as a bell, he heard Malinger shouting over the radio.

“My God, help us, help us, we need help.”

“Hey, door eight is locked, we’re locked in, you guys get out,” Frost told him.

Malinger kept repeating that he needed help, and Frost tried to make him understand that the blast door was stuck.

The emergency phone rang, and Frost answered it. Someone was outside blast door 8, asking for help.

“Hey, you guys, get out of here, get out of here now,” Frost said, “just get out, door eight is locked, so you guys get out.”

Wessel and Wong could hear the commotion on the floor above them and cranked the ratchet on the escape hatch as fast they could.

Blast door 8 swung open, and Malinger ran into the control center, carrying his helmet, yelling that Sergeant Thomas was dead. A cloud of oxidizer followed him, and then Hepstall came in, without a helmet, and collapsed onto the floor. He landed near the stairs, as Malinger kept screaming. None of it made sense to the missile crew.

Commander Matthews said, “Come help me,” to Frost, and they entered the blast lock. Sergeant Thomas lay unconscious on the floor. They picked him up, carried him into the control center, and shut the door. Thomas was having convulsions, his head nodding side to side in the RFHCO helmet. Malinger took off the helmet and started to give him mouth-to-mouth.