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Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: There had been all these statistical assurances that weapons wouldn’t detonate in an accident, and then there was a realization that the weapons were nowhere near as safe as everyone had assumed. Jeff Kennedy: Fifteen minutes later, SAC headquarters relieves us of all command decision making. He looked at me and he said, Devlin, I wouldn’t authorize a fucking thing for you. Command and Control The long-hidden story of the day our luck almost ran out. I think every brass on base was mad at me. He said you know “I don’t know how bad it’s gonna be or anything else, get out of here right now and then we’ll get you back in quick as we can.”. What do you do? Vice President Mondale asked that question, whether a nuclear weapon was involved in, of course, Colonel Ryan said “I can’t confirm or deny,” and that’s to the Vice President. Mona Harper But every one of those weapons you build not only threatens your enemy, but poses a threat to yourself. Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: I realized if I joined Sandia, I would be working on atomic bombs, and that was okay with me. Command and control is an approach to management based on strict authority and formal controls.This is primarily associated with military organizations but may be adopted by other organizations as an element of their culture and systems. Kennedy goes into the tube first, I follow him in, and all of a sudden he looks up at me and he says, stay here. Sidney Drell Col. John Moser, Commander, 308th Strategic Missile Wing: I was surprised when I read about the number of nuclear accidents that we had in the Air Force. Lieutenant Allan Childers was a deputy commander of the Titan II Missile Combat Crew. And it didn’t come on, it wasn’t working. Every day. And in Omaha Nebraska, there was the underground headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, known as SAC. This Retro Report co-production looks at a Cold War attempt to find a new use for the bomb. David Pryor Voice of Sgt. Eric Schlosser Sam Hutto, Dairy Farmer: About 3 o’clock in the morning, I decided, well might as well go milk. You know, I don’t know if I’m going to be railroaded out, or you know I don’t know where I stand really. Sid King, Manager, KGFL Radio: So they wouldn’t tell us anything, but one of the local merchants in town found the air force frequencies. open up a valve, to vent that tank so it would stabilize and not collapse. Rodney Holder, Missile Combat Crew: 250 parts per million is when the vapor is in such a high concentration it could start to melt the RFHCO suits. (Enter your ZIP code for information on American Experience events and screening in your area.). Command and Control (CAC) Regulationcan be defined as “the direct regulation of an industry or activity by legislationthat states what is permitted and what is illegal”. Jeffrey Plumb, PTS Team: I was fairly new to working out on the missile sites. As it was falling I was thinking “oh no, oh no, oh no”. Dave Livingston was one of the guys and he was sitting in the back seat and he said to me, somebody’s going to die out here tonight, I just feel it. Elliot Severn and Peter Greenwood Command and Control reads like a character-driven thriller as Schlosser draws on his deep reporting, extensive interviews, and documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act to demonstrate how human error, computer glitches, dilution of authority, poor communications, occasional incompetence, and the routine hoarding of crucial information have nearly brought about our worst nightmare on … James Sandaker, PTS Team: And I headed down the road as fast as I could get that truck to go. So, if we went to war, we were prepared to launch those weapons on command. They think that’s all in the past and that they’re not there anymore and the reality is they’re all over the place. The authors report two key findings related to … I planned on staying in the Air Force for a career. RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany – U.S. Army missile defense assets, Dutch F-35 stealth fighters, and joint command and control systems recently destroyed enemy … That is classified as human error. US Air Force I look back on it now I still can’t believe we left it empty. Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: Bombs are relatively dumb. At the bottom of that, you got to a blast door. Sam Hutto, Dairy Farmer: If you didn’t know they were there you wouldn’t know what it was now. Seller 99.4% positive. Greg Devlin, PTS Team: One of the hard things for us was it seemed like we were waiting, and waiting and waiting for some decision to be made at SAC as specifically what to do, so the time frame of like, man you know, whatever we’re going to do let’s do it. He was on duty the night of the accident in Damascus, Arkansas. Randy Dixon Seventy feet, hitting the thrust mount like it had eyeballs. If the missile collapsed, the entire missile would blow up, but what would happen to the warhead was anybody’s guess. We called back to base, they said we have a maintenance team coming out. ARC (Air Force Radio): Roger on scene commander: the team went to the unit, now they’re on their way out to give a full report. Senator Pryor and governor Clinton and others had already gone to Hot Springs, and I was scheduled to go over the next day. Dave Powell, PTS Team: I think about Livingston often. The numbers were a big problem because it only takes a few or one getting out of hand to cause a catastrophic problem. Help me! Free shipping. In the 17th century, a Jesuit missionary nicknamed Black Robe by the natives and his small party of companions try reaching the Huron tribe in Canada all while facing mistrust, Iroquois warring parties and harsh winter conditions. Dave Powell And not that we didn’t care about our lives, but you know it just seemed that it made sense to us that we should stay and let everybody else go. Jeff Kennedy: When we went into the blast lock area, there’s 8 lights bright as hell. But when I got off the phone from this airman, I looked around and people started asking me, saying “what's happening?” And I said, “a Titan Missile is going to explode.” And the question was well what does that mean? Gary Lay Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: According to the Department of Defense, there have been 32 broken arrows, that is serious nuclear weapons accidents that could have endangered the public. We need, we need to get the hell out of this complex because this thing’s going to blow up. Taki Oldham The ratchet’s about 3 feet long and the socket is about 8 pounds. ARC (Pryor): I have not, I’ve heard uh rumors, I won’t go into those right now. Together the two try to move past their experiences during WWII. Oh the scrubbing was immensely painful. Free shipping. It could go almost anywhere. Nobody had ever tried to put them in a safe before, they wouldn’t fit, so we left all of them in the safe with the door open. Col. John Moser, Commander, 308th Strategic Missile Wing: I went out there the next day. Jeff Kennedy: I had got topside and now we get a command from the team chief to go down and turn on an exhaust fan. I got up and took off running, I got five steps away, and a chunk of concrete bigger than a school bus hits the ground right behind me, and it’s got steel rebar hanging out of it. The destructive force if that thing exploded and we can’t stop it. I uh tried to live as normal a life as I can, and uh, and uh, but there isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think about it. What if I did this? What I’m saying is from there on down there was no plan. In 1793 when terror is widespread in France, peasants known as Chouans fight the revolutionaries in attempt to restore the monarchy. The next step I took I just buckled and went down. Based on the critically-acclaimed book by Eric Schlosser, this chilling documentary exposes the terrifying truth about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal and shows what can happen when the weapons built to protect us threaten to destroy us. James Sandaker, PTS Team: I think nowadays people don’t realize that we still have 7000 nuclear weapons. Alla Savranskaia And they’d just keep driving. Air Force) To preserve … That’s when he got on the phone with Secretary Brown. I had a problem that 9 months before that happened, I had synchronized a bunch of heifers, which means you give them a shot of Lutalyse and they all come into heat at the same time. Col. John Moser, Commander, 308th Strategic Missile Wing: General Leavitt was a very dedicated pilot, a very courageous pilot in Korea and Vietnam, but he had no missile background at all that I’m aware of. Col. John Moser Melissa Robledo Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: The Goldsboro accident occurred at a time when the number of nuclear weapons accidents was increasing. All-out nuclear war may be the greatest risk we face with modern weaponry, but it’s not the only one. Jose Favela, Sound Supervisors We would have lost the farm, everything we had, you know if them cows got sick and died. The influence is expressed using a C2 infrastructure that can issue C2 instructions. I’d say we waited from 3:30 to about 6:00 in the evening before we could actually enter the silo. I had a nurse tell me, “if you don’t calm down, you’re going to pass out.” And I couldn’t calm down, I was on fire, I felt like I was on fire. Team Commander Command Post: What unit are you talking about sir? I think we both just looked at each other for a second and, and we’re like “oh my god, what are we gonna do?” That missile was just blowing fuel. So, we were going back in. From the report The Department of … Greg Devlin, PTS Team: They told everybody here, this is a very dangerous situation, we don’t know what’s going to happen, this is a purely voluntary mission only, and if you don’t want go you don’t have to go. I don’t think anybody truly knew what was going to happen with the warhead. Randy Babajtis James Sandaker Greg Devlin, PTS Team: Channel 4 news called and said, you want to tell us about how well the Air Force is treating you since the missile explosion, and I said, yeah I’ll tell them. I immediately started looking at the fuel level reader. But it’s also due to luck. © 2017 WGBH Educational Foundation  After returning from a concentration camp, Susanne finds an ex-soldier living in her apartment. It was almost like you wanted to get down on your knees and pray to the higher power to protect everybody. At Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, there was Colonel Ben Scallorn, the Air Force’s leading expert on the Titan II missile. Beyond the shocking lack of accountability among the scientists who created these machines, and the military that operates them, I was really bothered by the (mis-)treatment of the crewmen who responded to the site. Commander’s trying to clear up, “What do you mean smoke in the bottom of the launch duct, do you see a fire?”. I loved PTS. And the test revealed that the radioactive fallout from a hydrogen bomb could be even more deadly than the blast itself. March 14, 1961 Yuba City, California, Two nuclear weapons…ground impact…. Sam Hutto, Dairy Farmer: Sheriff Gus Anglin, he didn’t get the information he thought he needed from them to make really good decisions, and finally he just went to running everybody off when they were evacuating. Was this review helpful to you? And here are these about 10 guys, and they start putting on what looks like space outfits and you’re looking at these and you’re thinking I’m 24 years old and they’re all younger than me, and these guys are the experts that are going to go in there and fix this? Rodney Holder, Missile Combat Crew: And it would head out for about five minutes of powered flight to the edge of space, fly for another twenty minutes, and hit its target halfway around the world. We’re forty six miles from this site, we’re gone.” I walked into our living room and looked out the front window and it was still daylight savings time so it wasn’t totally dark and you could see children in the front yard or people walking out to their cars, carrying on their normal everyday lives, and I thought do I run out on the street and say we’ve got a potential nuclear explosion 46 miles from here? He was really hurt bad, and he told me to go find Livingston. Jeff Kennedy:: It’s absolute, total bullshit. Rodney Holder, Missile Combat Crew: that day, September 18th we find out that they have a problem with the oxidizer tank, that the pressure is a little bit low. Jeff Kennedy passed away a couple of years ago. Margaret Kennedy I think I was ready to take on the world at that point. Filmmaker Robert Kenner talks about filming inside of a decomissioned Titan II Missile complex in order to recreate a harrowing event from 1980. Col. Ben Scallorn Deputy Chief of Staff For Missiles, 8th Air Force: Time was of the essence if we were going to accomplish anything. Now I’m not saying it broke down there, don’t, don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. How do you manage weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? This is the test bed, 4-7 was the test bed and we never, nothing like this has ever happened before. I fell down four, five times, get back up. Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: Again and again in looking at these documents, you find an effort to blame the person who dropped the wrench, who used the wrong tool at a minuteman site, blew the warhead off the missile, who brought the seat cushions onto the plane that caught on fire and crashed the plane. But about ten seconds later, we got another Claxton. Rodney Holder Michael McDonough, Re-Recording Mixers I see the socket bouncing off the platform. And the person said, we don’t know. He violated everything. What they considered the best alternative, was go back in and check pressures. Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: It was a bargaining chip, something that we could give up in order to persuade the Soviets to get rid of a class of their missiles. When the crewmembers successfully turned the keys, the 330,000 pound missile would lift up out of the silo. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of. The following is the March 18, 2021 Congressional Research Service report, Joint All-Domain Command and Control: Background and Issues for Congress. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette It’s very hard to talk about, even today. Ryan Loeffler, Sound Recordists Jeffrey Plumb PTS Team: And so I got on the end of it and kind of gave it a little force and I remember saying to him “you got this?” “yeah, I got it, I got it, let go of it.”. Dave Powell, PTS Team: Oxidizer, when you breathe it, it turns to nitric acid. What are market-oriented environmental tools? Allan Childers, Missile Combat Crew: Each stage of the missile had two separate tanks. Get the latest on new films and digital content, learn about events in your area, and get your weekly fix of American history. We anticipated trading them off against Soviet heavy missiles in strategic arms negotiations. As heartless as it sounds, I never had a problem with it, I was doing it for my country, I was doing it to protect my country. James Sandaker, PTS Team: When I got back to the missile site, I saw Kennedy. We had bombers in the air at all times loaded with nuclear weapons. Col. John Moser, Commander, 308th Strategic Missile Wing: Some of the crewmembers were eager to make an exit, so with that in mind, we started discussing should we evacuate the people in the launch control center, or leave them in there. Gus says “do I need to start evacuating?” “Oh no sir, no sir, we’ve got it under control I assure you.” So we went back to the edge of the road, which was just of highway 65. We went up the main highway to a certain point and then you had to pull off the highway on to much smaller roads. I thought that was, that would be the next step and that happened on Thanksgiving. When I wore my military uniform with my boots on I, I almost couldn’t walk. Melissa Robledo And they said, “be real evasive about what you talk about.” They keep on talking about “we cannot find it, we cannot find the unit, and that’s how we knew they were trying to figure out what happened to this nuclear warhead? I wanted to go out to the field and work on that Titan II missile, you know, we called it a bird and I wanted to work on the birds, you know? They would not admit that there was even a nuclear warhead. There was a change in the checklist that we were supposed to use a torque wrench from here on out, but that was a recent change. Dave Powell, PTS Team: Anytime I want I can close my eyes and see that socket. Col. Ben Scallorn Larry Anderson Add the first question. ARC (Kennedy): Please help me, where are you? Don Green Jeffrey Plumb, PTS Team: When I arrived at Little Rock Air Force base, I would have been 19, yeah, ah no 18, my birthday is in March so I would have been one month away from being 19. Nobody was sure what would happen when this thing would detonate. Voice of Sgt. The player will have to confront the global terrorist threat and perform 8 combat missions in hot spots in the Middle East. Dave Powell, PTS Team: The difference between PTS people and any other person on a missile site is we get to play with fuel and oxidizer and they don’t. And yet they did the test anyway. A riveting minute by minute account of the accident started by the failure to follow written maintenence procedures. Bob Peurifoy, Director of Weapon Development, Sandia: All it is a two-position on-off switch. Allan Childers, Missile Combat Crew: Captain Mazzaro is crew commander. Col. John Moser, Commander, 308th Strategic Missile Wing: My personal feeling was that it was a ridiculous policy, but nevertheless we had to live with it. He violated the most sacred rule in SAC, which is the two man rule. 1 talking about this. Types of market-oriented environmental tools. Matthew Rebula, Archival Research Michael Abdallah US Navy But a few years ago, the Department of Energy released a declassified document that said there had been more than a thousand accidents and incidents involving our nuclear weapons. Do you think that the people of Arkansas who lived around the Titan II missile site, Governor, were in danger at the time of the explosion? Rodney Holder, Missile Combat Crew: They’re relaying the information that they’ve opened the blast door. Then I see this bus come in. Within only a few months, I knew I couldn’t stay in the Air Force. The first thing that Mazarro heard and that the other team members heard are the words “uh-oh.” Mazzaro said, “What do you mean uh-oh? Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP, Archival Materials Courtesy Of Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: The missile potential hazard team gathered together some of the top figures in the air force to deal with the accident. Crew is ready. James Sandaker, PTS Team: On my way back to the missile site I could hear Kennedy on the radio in the truck. I guess it’d almost be like, you know, you doing something wrong as a kid and you gotta tell your parents about it, you know? Soviet response is automatic as it's seen as a NATO missile. Somebody said, “there it is.” And it was in the ditch in a somewhat, as I recall, somewhat buried. Dave Powell, PTS Team: So we started down the cableway to the silo when all of a sudden I realized that I had forgotten the torque wrench up in the truck. Allan Childers, Missile Combat Crew: Before September 18th, the only warheads that we thought would go off in the United States would be Soviet warheads. Dave Powell, PTS Team: Jeff thought the plan was nuts. Titan Missile Museum Lauren Prestileo, A Robert Kenner Films Production for American Experience. Trinity Test Site, New Mexico, July, 1945. Almost anything could cause it to ignite. Command & Control Systems Program Manager Command and Control Systems provides highly effective, relevant, interoperable and sustainable C2 systems to the Fleet Marine Forces. Eric Schlosser, Author, Command and Control: 19 years before the Damascus accident, a B-52 bomber carrying two powerful hydrogen bombs took off on a routine mission over North Carolina. There’s this instinct to blame the operator, to blame the little guy. I hear a song on the radio, I’ll see something on TV, and bam, there it is, it’s back, you know. You know, the pain I had to deal with was trivial to the fact that I wanted to live, I wanted to survive, I mean I thought of my kids, my wife. Goldsboro, North Carolina, January 24, 1961. Sen. David Pryor, (D) Arkansas: I was there in Hot Springs that night and the phone rang and it was Skip. Col. Ben Scallorn Deputy Chief of Staff For Missiles, 8th Air Force: As we were dumping fuel the oxidizer expands and there’s a possibility that it can rupture a tank, and with a silo full of fuel and you rupture an oxidizer tank and the oxidizer hits the fuel, it’s gone. 75 Years Later, the World’s Never Recovered from Hiroshima and Nagasaki — Cinema Proves It, ‘the bomb’ Review: New Doc on Netflix Is a Surreal Music Video About the End of the World, Writers Guild Of America sets 2018 awards dates, Self - Commander 308th Strategic Missile Wing, Self - Director of Weapon Development, Sandia. 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