1980 Titan Missile explosion Arkansas

3,510 Views | 18 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by Fonzie Scheme
petey88
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American Experience: Command and Control, documentary was on PBS last week, rather chilling account of the missile that exploded in a silo in Arkansas. The nuclear warhead was found in a ditch nearby after the explosion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/command-and-control/player/

VanZandt92
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Wow
CanyonAg77
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AG
There are several systems on the weapons to prevent accidentally setting off the nuke when not intended. But it seems I have read that this warhead had somehow gone through many of the safeguards. I don't remember the actual numbers, but I think it was something like 5 switches had to trip for an explosion, and 4 had tripped, or something similar.
Cinco Ranch Aggie
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Wow. I had never heard of this, but then again I was 13 and more interested in baseball, girls, Star Wars than the news ...
Hogties
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I lived about 40 miles from there when it happened. Big news back then.
HHAG
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Command and Control is based on a great book, by Eric Schlosser. He covers a bunch of incidents where nukes were mishandled. Lots of sheer dumb luck kept the different branches of the military from blowing themselves up.
Vestal_Flame
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It is a really fine book.
aalan94
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Quote:

There are several systems on the weapons to prevent accidentally setting off the nuke when not intended.

Yes, but a nuclear warhead is also a very complex technical device. You don't bang on it and it goes off. In fact, if you do bang on it, it probably will not go off. Any serious shock can damage the initiation system and cause it to fail. This sort of explosion is a very big danger for a dirty nuke, but unlikely for an actual detonation.

For this reason, the mere fact that some dictator in a far away land has nuclear weapons and missiles at the same time does not mean he has the capability of delivering them effectively. He may so have that capability, but there are other steps in terms of hardening your warhead. The shock of impact, the flight and reentry are all very violent actions, which require a very well-engineered device.
Schall 02
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Great book.
BQ78
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Quote:

Lots of sheer dumb luck kept the different branches of the military from blowing themselves up.

I hope he does not make this claim, becasue it was more due to safeguards and good engineering IMO.
Joe Schillaci 48
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In 1966 near Palomares (sp) Spain, B 52 and KC 135 collided. I think four survived on the B 52. All crew members died on the KC 135.

B 52 was carrying 4 nukes. Two had conventional explosions but nukes did not detonate due to safeguards . One was found on land after considerable searching by TDY Air Force troops from all over Europe.

The last one was found by the Navy in the Mediterranean several months later.

We are still cleaning up contaminated soil.

It was horrific that we lost about 6 airmen but it could have been a huge disaster if it were not for the safeguards built into the nukes.

There was a large contingent of Soviets also looking for the lost nuke. We found it first.

We had constant flights of B 52's over Europe from Turkey to Norway. Cold War was serious business.
Joe Schillaci 48
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Yumakazi said:

Lots of sheer dumb luck kept the different branches of the military from blowing themselves up.
I think we were trained a lot better than you think. The term "dumb luck" is a reach, especially if you are speaking of the Americans.

Perhaps you meant the term "dumb luck" in reference to the Soviets.
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oragator
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pepe the dog said:

Yumakazi said:

Lots of sheer dumb luck kept the different branches of the military from blowing themselves up.
I think we were trained a lot better than you think. The term "dumb luck" is a reach, especially if you are speaking of the Americans.

Perhaps you meant the term "dumb luck" in reference to the Soviets.


Don't think anyone is questing military training or dedication.
But the only reason the bomb that landed in South Carolina didn't go off was because one switch similar to a light switch didn't flip when it crashed.
The Arkansas incident they knew the rocket was going to blow and even the best experts at the time didn't know if the fire would be enough to set off the plastic explosives. And even if it didn't reach critical mass it could have dumped its radioactivity over a vast stretch of inhabited land. As it turned out, the explosion blew the warhead off the missile and into a ditch, which was a random result. But if you watch the documentary above, at the time the few folks who knew in Little Rock legitimately wondered if they would survive the night 40-50 miles away. And we were in that grave peril because someone simply dropped a socket to a wrench, that was all it took to almost trigger a nuclear weapon. Best trained guys in the world, best procedures in the world aren't sufficient long term if that was all it took.
We were lucky to come through that era without a detonation.
BQ78
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Which goes to the point that it was not dumb luck but good designs that prevented disaster. In the case of the South Carolina bomb they had enough triggers and in the case of the Titan missile there was no radioactive release. Ingenuity not dumb luck was the savior. If the book and program are saying luck, than they are sensationalizing to sell books/ get viewers, which degrades their credibility.
Schall 02
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The book discusses at length how the "good" safety designs were consistently rejected by the AF / SAC fir fear that weapons would become duds.

It took years of advocacy (by an Aggie engineer!) for simple safety improvements to be made.
$240 Worth of Pudding
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Check out Bob Peurifoy and the photo of him in his Class A Winter uniform replete with AMC's at the 11:05 mark of that video.
BQ78
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So I just watched this show and I will say it was quite good, well done and interesting. If I were to change one thing I would have eliminated the interviews with the non-DoD personnel who spouted a bunch of hyperbole, especially the Schlosser dude. He must have written his book with sensationalism in mind. Without knowing a thing about him, I'll bet anything he is a journalist, probably of the #fakenews variety. His creditability died at his first appearance with that urban legend story of the Trinity scientists not sure if they would blow up the world. None of them thought that, but yes they did look into the possibility. At the end he gives that "dumb luck" saved the military from a nuclear detonation and all I got to say is BS, by his own count there were thousands of incidents and not one detonation, so BS.

As a SAC crew dog on alert that day (I always seemed to be on alert whenever something happened big in the world between 1980 and 1984), I found the references and uses of checklists throughout the incident quite interesting. One of the strengths and weaknesses of SAC was the checklist, the checklists almost always addressed any situation you faced, however there were some times it did not and so you either were indecisive or if you were decisive, you better get it right, because as they said in the show and we always spouted as a mantra, "To err is human, to forgive is not a SAC policy." I guess the best story I know of rigidity to checklist and SAC was one my father told me from his days of being an engineer on Atlas ICBMs. As a young EE out of A&M in the late 50s he got called to an ICBM site due to a propulsion problem they were having on one of the missiles. Every time they tanked the missile, which they did twice a day to test the system, they were burning up a $10,000 part (and that is in 1950s dollars). My dad and one other engineer were sent to solve the problem. When my dad got to the base he put his suitcase down in his hotel room and did not come back for three days, he also did not sleep, at all, during those three days. After they tanked the missile the first time he was on-site and they burned up the part, he told them they should stop running that checklist until they found the problem, they shot that up to the Wing Commander and he said no, for national security they had to run the checklist. So now in addition to finding the problem, they had to remove and replace the $10,000 part every 12 hours and that was about a three hour job in itself, completely ridiculous. After three days they finally fixed the problem but not before my dad said both he and his fellow engineer started hallucinating from fatigue and lack of sleep. He said it was the craziest thing he ever had to do. How easy would it have been for them to drop a wrench and puncture a tank while so fatigued?

The thing that blows me away about that incident is that with all the people on the radio, why did no one question the order to turn on the exhaust fan, that was really dumb but I suppose at 3 a.m. most of the participants where probably stressed and exhausted by that time. Certainly points out the need to always try to have some of your people rested and on the ball during a crisis.
petey88
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PBS rebroadcast tomorrow night, if anyone interested check PBS.org to see if on in your area.
Fonzie Scheme
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Going through the audiobook of Command and Control right now. Quality stuff, plus it's read by Scott Brick, who's pretty much the best in the business.

If you've read the book, how about the props for Robert Peurifoy '52. Sadly, he passed away in March.
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