Michael Dobbs - One Minute to Midnight

Concerns about nuclear safety had led Kennedy to refuse permission for loading thermonuclear weapons onto the Super Sabres back in April 1962. Since the weapons were not secured with electronic locking systems, it was impossible to exclude their unauthorized use. The president also worried about inadequate security at some European airfields and the possible theft of American nuclear secrets.

Kennedy’s decision frustrated Curtis LeMay and other Air Force generals. They complained it undermined the effectiveness of their war plans. The Super Sabres were responsible for covering thirty-seven “high priority” Soviet bloc targets, mainly airfields in East Germany. Air Force studies claimed that the use of low-yield atomic weapons against these targets would reduce the “average probability of damage” from 90 to 50 percent. This was unacceptable.

As the missile crisis heated up, the generals stepped up their efforts to get the presidential decision reversed, citing “the gravity of the present world situation.” This time, they succeeded. Even though electronic locks had still not been installed on the weapons, Kennedy let the Air Force have its way on this occasion. The Joint Chiefs sent a message to the U.S. Air Force commander in Europe authorizing deployment of the weapons.

One of the airfields that hosted the F-100 Super Sabres was Incirlik in Turkey. Nuclear safety at Incirlik was “so loose, it jars your imagination,” the commander of the 613th Tactical Fighter Squadron would later recall. “We loaded up everything [and] laid down on a blanket on the pad for two weeks. Planes were breaking down, crews were exhausted.” At the time, it seemed inconceivable that an American pilot would fire a nuclear weapon without authorization. In retrospect, “there were some guys you wouldn’t trust with a .22 rifle, much less a thermonuclear bomb.”

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress piloted by Major Robert T. Graff had taken off from Hawaii three hours before dawn. It flew westward to Johnston Island, an isolated atoll in the South Pacific, a federal bird refuge that now served as a nuclear test site. On the other side of the world, dozens of similar airplanes were flying toward the Soviet Union with a full load of nuclear bombs as part of the massive airborne alert known as “Chrome Dome.” But this mission was different. The flight crew under Major Graff knew for certain that they would be dropping a live 800-kiloton bomb.

The nuclear airdrop in the Pacific was part of Operation Dominic. Angry at the resumption of Soviet testing, Kennedy had given approval for a series of more than thirty atmospheric tests, including several rocket-launched experiments and a firing of a submarine-launched Polaris missile. A successful high-altitude missile test at Johnston on Friday, October 26, had partially made up for a series of setbacks, including a major disaster in July, when a malfunctioning Thor rocket exploded on the launch pad. The rocket complex and adjoining airstrip were demolished, and the entire island contaminated with plutonium. It took nearly three months to clean the place up. Judging by the results of Operation Dominic, airplanes remained a more reliable delivery vehicle for nuclear weapons than missiles.

It was still dark when the B-52 reached the drop zone in the middle of the Pacific, a hundred miles southeast of Johnston. A tiny slither of moon lay close to the horizon. The test had been choreographed like a ballet, with every move carefully rehearsed and timed. From the cockpit of the bomber, flying at forty-five thousand feet, Graff could see the lights of a dozen warships, assigned to monitor the nuclear explosion. Half a dozen other planes packed with sophisticated cameras and dosimeters were arrayed around the target, a U.S. Navy barge with beacons and radar reflectors anchored to the bottom of the ocean.

As the B-52 began a series of racetracklike runs around the target, the pilot radioed wind information to a ballistician in Hawaii whom everybody knew simply as “Kitty.” They were testing a new design from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California that made better use of the available space in the bomb casing. To ensure accurate measurements, it was important that the bomb explode at a precise time, height, and location. Surrounded by navigational charts and overflowing ashtrays, Kitty performed her calculations on a slide rule, and radioed back the necessary offsets for the release of the device.

The key member of the crew was the bombardier, Major John C. Neuhan. A quiet loner completely absorbed in the details of his craft, Neuhan was rated the best bombardier in the Eighth Air Force. He had an almost perfect record. His colleagues attributed his success partly to luck, partly to an extraordinary familiarity with his hand-driven equipment. A rudimentary on-board computer operated mechanically. Electronics consisted of vacuum tubes. Neuhan would check the filaments one by one, to see if they had to be replaced.

Graff made three passes over the drop zone, timing each racetrack pattern to take exactly sixteen minutes. Crew members flicked a series of switches and locks to arm the weapon and permit its release. On the fourth pass, Neuhan announced the countdown over the emergency frequency so that everybody in the array could hear it.

“Three minutes—NOW.”

“Two minutes—NOW.”

“One minute—NOW.”

“Thirty seconds—NOW.”

“Twenty seconds.”

“Ten seconds.”

The crew felt a jolt as high-pressure hydraulics snapped the bomb bay doors open behind them. A yellow warning light on the flight panel signaled “Bomb Doors Open.”

“RELEASE.”

The bombardier used his thumb to press a handheld pickle switch, resembling the button of a video game controller. A gleaming 4-ton oval-shaped canister dropped into the slipstream. Within seconds, three parachutes had deployed to slow the descent of the bomb and allow the B-52 plenty of time to fly through the zone. The navigator started the post-release countdown. The crew closed the thermal curtains in the front of the cockpit, leaving a chink in the center. They turned their heads away. At 87.3 seconds after release, a flash of white light from behind the plane made everyone blink. Several minutes later, they felt a series of gentle shockwaves, as if they had hit a patch of slight turbulence.

The mushroom cloud rose to over sixty thousand feet, dwarfing the retreating bomber. Rabbits placed aboard several of the diagnostic aircraft were blinded by the flash. As the B-52 flew away and the light from the flash subsided, Neuhan looked through the bombsight to check his aim. He was right on target.

A giant moonlike sphere appeared in the sky, with green, violet, and purple streamers running off. The brilliant aurora from the event code-named CALAMITY lingered for a while, then faded into the warm tropical dawn. Nuclear apocalypse had a strange, almost compelling beauty. It was 5:46 a.m. in Hawaii, 11:46 a.m. in Washington, and 6:46 p.m. in Moscow.

On the other side of the world, in the White House, the morning ExComm meeting was about to break up. And in the sky above the Chukot Peninsula, thirteen miles above the surface of the earth, Chuck Maultsby was about to penetrate the border of the Soviet Union.

Had Chuck Maultsby kept to his assigned flight track, he should have been landing back at Eielson Air Force Base after a seven-hour fifty-minute return flight to the North Pole. Instead, he was wandering alone through the pitch-black stratosphere in a flimsy airplane, like a blind man stumbling through the dark. The northern lights had disappeared, but the stars had changed positions, and he had no idea where he was. Strange things kept happening to him that he found difficult to explain.