Personal Experiences from Inside the Military
Nuclear Weapon Accidents/Incidents
How Many More Are Unreported?Rev. Don Chapin, Capt., USAF, ret., Ph.D.
Updated on April 29, 2009
At this time, long after the cold war has ended, we are now hearing about some of the various operational situations, both American and Russian, where we have been just seconds away from missile launches because of radar "bogies" or false electronic information. No one has mentioned the fact that every-day life at the technical level around nuclear weapons can also be a significant problem.
For NEITHER of the situations described here can I pin down the exact dates, because I was a "young troop" in Gen. LeMay's Strategic Air Command (often called the Marine Corps of the Air Force), with a very strong emphasis on security. At the time, I assumed that all incidents of this nature would be recorded and tracked... I have only recently (in July 2008) found that was NOT the case and that these two very serious incidents of which I was a witness (one of them a very involved witness) are not in any public database.
Background:
As an electronics technician in the special weapons field (which was the nuclear weapons field at the time), I have run across and heard of a number of near misses of nuclear-related "incidences" in the field (some of which are documented). But these were, by far, the worst of those incidences of which I have direct knowledge. Yet, considering the circumstances, I would strongly suspect that they were/are not isolated situations. While there (hopefully) have been advances in technology and operational support to preclude repeat situations of this magnitude, considering the spin that has become typical for political purposes, apparently including within the military, I would hesitate to accept any assurances that situations such as the following have not and cannot be repeated.
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Personnel Selections:
USAF enlisted personnel assigned to the special weapons field were initially in the 96-98th percentile group of all enlistees, had a minimum of a high school diploma and, preferably, already had some degree of electronics knowledge. However, such selection criteria, obviously, does not preclude anyone in that group from accomplishing a normal, human, d _ _ b-a _ _ action.
However, in the time I was in that field, I saw it being rapidly "watered down" with higher ranking enlisted personnel that had no concept of what it meant to have to "stay current" with technical manuals that were written at the 5th-year college level or higher (example, the below-mentioned senior master sergeant, who also had many psychological problems). When I had only two, then three stripes, I often had the responsibility of "training" a senior NCO that wanted to cross-train into the field, often because of the "prestige," but who had no interest in listening to someone of a junior rank, nor had the capability of deciphering those tech manuals. The obvious implications are…
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Incident #1:
Date: Late '50's;
Place: Whiteman Air Force Base, MOI was stationed at Whiteman from 7/57 to 5/59. In this incident, a B-47, carrying a Mark 6/Mod 6 weapon was attempting a landing, but veered off of the runway into the grass and almost immediately caught fire. (The Mark 6/Mod 6 was an atomic bomb design of approximately 20KT yield, an immediate decendent of the implosion-type 'Fat Man' dropped over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 - the gun-type 'Little Boy' had been dropped over Hiroshima on August 6th, but never made it into "production.") Because of the input from someone else that also witnessed that accident, I can pin the date down to between May and July of 1957.
In this accident, the fire department was so concerned about the potential of a huge explosion with that weapon on board that they stayed well back from the burning aircraft. The seat ejection sequence for the B-47, didn't allow for zero-altitude/zero-velocity escapes as many current-generation aircraft do, but I really don't know why the crew couldn't have figured out a way to induce one seat ejection to get out, unless they also figured that the seat rocket blast would have cooked them instantly anyway in those cramped quarters. It was reported that the fire department personnel could hear the aircrew screaming as they burned alive. Afterward, fingernail scratches were found on the inside of the cockpit area as the crew tried to tear the aluminum skin open. Luckily, there was no weapon high-explosive detonation from this incident.
This incident was very similar to that of the Lakenheath AB, England, incident in '56 (below), as reported in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents, http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html, http://www.cdi.org/Issues/NukeAccidents/Accidents.htm and potentially other web sites.- - - - - - -
Incident #2:
Date: Early '60's (estimated to be between 05/63 and 05/64);
Place: An Air Force Base nuclear weapons maintenance facility
at Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico
There were three of us in the maintenance building: a senior master sergeant (the NCOIC) in the front office, a SSGT technician in the south maintenance bay doing a Final Assembly Test (FAT) on a thermonuclear weapon which had about 180 (to 500, depending upon information source) times the capability of the Nagasaki bomb (about 20KT). I was in the center bay, working on spares inventories.
Suddenly, the SSGT burst through the maintenance door, yelling, "RUN, IT'S TICKING."
The three of us ran out the front door and, knowing we didn't have the time to get any further, we tried "covering up" in a shallow ditch across the road from the facility. We had NO idea what was going on inside the weapon… whether it might go full TN (thermonuclear) capability (in which case we and some of the base would be vaporized, and the island a full-scale disaster area, far worse than Nagasaki), full HE (high explosive, without the atomic-TN chain going), or low-order HE with just some of the explosive going off, in which case we MIGHT live through it.
There were seven critical "switches" in this particular weapon, some for safety but most for operational applications, and I could visually place each of them as I had given classes on that fuzing and firing circuit to our other technicians. (and "fuzing" is the correct spelling)
After about five minutes - the longest minutes in my life - we decided that it wasn't going to blow in any of those modes, so we (very weakly) crawled out of that ditch to reenter the building and initiate the necessary reporting. It was then that the SSGT, who had been acting in the capacity of a technician, related what had happened.
During the FAT, using the T-138 portable test set with a rotary selector switch for specific functions, the sequence for this weapon was to plug both test cables into the top receptacles and go through specific test steps. The cables were then pulled from the top receptacles and one of them plugged into the side receptacle for an additional set of tests. This cable was then extracted from the side receptacle and both cables then re-inserted into the top receptacles for the last test steps.
However, in this case, the SSGT, "in order to save a little time," left the second cable in the top receptacle when he pulled one cable from the top and plugged it into the side receptacle… a very clear checklist procedure violation. Then, when he rotated the tester selector switch, he heard "strange noises" inside the weapon, whereupon he rapidly exited the maintenance bay and shouted the warning.
Naturally, even though we could have torn the weapon apart to do our own postmortem, we were not "qualified" to do so and had to send the weapon back to Albuquerque, NM (Sandia Labs), for the tear-down and analysis.
Several weeks later we received a very abbreviated result - of the seven critical "switches," in the weapon, six had "fired," in sequence, for a full TN surface burst. Therefore, only one "operational" switch had not closed and that was simply because it was normally pre-set to a position where it was up to the orders received by the aircrew, immediately prior to "delivery," as to where it was to be positioned. That was how close we were to a very major disaster. (Ref. the 1961, Goldsboro, NC, incident, below)
Just a couple weeks after the results of that weapon tear-down was announced, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) initiated their well-known Two-Man Policy(1) for nuclear weapon access: (paraphrased) ANY time there is a human presence around a weapon there had to be at least a second person there as well, of equal knowledge with respect to weapon operation. The theory was that this would preclude another incident such that with which we were involved. This policy has long since morphed into the USAF no-lone-zone policy, Air Force Instruction 91-104 and AFPD 91-1, Nuclear Weapons and Systems Surety, now addressed as the more PC Two Person Policy.
(1) More precisely, per http://www.3973cds.com/3973cdsapjk.htm, "The (more current) SAC "Two Man" Policy is: "A policy pertaining to nuclear weapon handling procedures (Both aircraft and missile weapons) that requires not less than two authorized persons to be with any assembled nuclear weapon or any major component at all times when it is not secured in a locked storage structure." Speculations:
Now, if that weapon had gone off, who would have realized that it had happened because of somebody not following a checklist and that there was no intentional sabotage or "enemy action" that required a retaliatory response?
Getting back to the global stage, what about these other countries that are developing a similar capability? Where are they going to get the reliable personnel to properly maintain their stockpile(s)? … And what would happen if one of their weapons went off in a similar manner… without traceability, who would be blamed?
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How many other "Broken Arrow" or "Bent Spear" incidents have never made it into public records? MANY!!! Why??? The military branches don't want this publicized!!