HH 59 : The Destroyer of Worlds

[SilverEagle]

The danger was not impact, the danger was heat, the heat wave from the explosion reaches the circuit before the blast wave, fuses the circuit, and that fires the detonator, the fact that it popped straight off and flew clear of the heat; just dumb luck.

Let's say the first stage collapses on an angle, buckles sideways instead of straight down, so the warhead doesn't pop straight off but gets driven into the side of the silo instead; cooks off in the heat, when the circuit fuses.

Every single strategic warhead you have in the inventory now, has built in safety systems to prevent this, ENDS, FPS, IEM, etcetera, but the W53 in 1980; didn't have any of them.

Really good documentary on the 1980 accident.

You can watch it for free.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperie ... d-control/

[Smitty-48]

I know all about it already, I remember it in real time. My parents were Anti-Nuclear types, I got the briefing about it when I was a kid, Back in 1980, Bob Puerifoy from Sandia was lobbying to get rid of Titan/W53, because they knew it was very unsafe combination, bear in mind, Titan was a rush job, back when they fielded Titan, it was a race against the Soviets to get a heavy ICBM into service, under what was in effect war measures, so they cut corners, the final product was supposed to be the solid fuel boosted LGM-30 Minuteman, they never thought they would keep the liquid fueled Titans after they got the Minuteman, but they did, because the Soviets had gone ICBM crazy, so the US was just keeping everything in the inventory to try to keep the numbers up.

The original W62 on the Minuteman was also unsafe, but the Minuteman itself was inherently safer, the danger was the liquid fuel boosters, the Minuteman was solid fuel, so much, much safer. Liquid fuled ICBM's were a stop gap, they knew they were inherently dangerous, they only put them in service because it was being treated as a war, the brink of World War Three.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I know all about it already, I remember it in real time. My parents were Anti-Nuclear types, I got the briefing about it when I was a kid, Back in 1980, Bob Puerifoy from Sandia was lobbying to get rid of Titan/W53, because they knew it was very unsafe combination, bear in mind, Titan was a rush job, back when they fielded Titan, it was a race against the Soviets to get a heavy ICBM into service, under what was in effect war measures, so they cut corners, the final product was supposed to be the solid fuel boosted LGM-30 Minuteman, they never thought they would keep the liquid fueled Titans after they got the Minuteman, but they did, because the Soviets had gone ICBM crazy, so the US was just keeping everything in the inventory to try to keep the numbers up.

Titan II was actually the rocket used in all 10 Gemini missions. Not a bad one, unless you try to keep it fueled underground for 40 years....

[Smitty-48]

I know all about it already, I remember it in real time. My parents were Anti-Nuclear types, I got the briefing about it when I was a kid, Back in 1980, Bob Puerifoy from Sandia was lobbying to get rid of Titan/W53, because they knew it was very unsafe combination, bear in mind, Titan was a rush job, back when they fielded Titan, it was a race against the Soviets to get a heavy ICBM into service, under what was in effect war measures, so they cut corners, the final product was supposed to be the solid fuel boosted LGM-30 Minuteman, they never thought they would keep the liquid fueled Titans after they got the Minuteman, but they did, because the Soviets had gone ICBM crazy, so the US was just keeping everything in the inventory to try to keep the numbers up.

Titan II was actually the rocket used in all 10 Gemini missions. Not a bad one, unless you try to keep it fueled underground for 40 years....

And have unsupervised teenagers who worked 20 hour shifts to the point of exhaustion fiddling around with them in tight quarters, that's what happened, they sent two kids in there to fiddle around with it, and the kid just dropped the wrench, ain't no NASA safety procedures/support staff, out in the silos at the sharp end.

NASA wouldn't have let those things anywhere near Cape Canaveral, with a W53 sitting on top, they would have looked at you like you were crazy.

[SilverEagle]

[Smitty-48]

One of the problems with SAC, was that is was all Bomber Jockeys, SAC was all about the B-52, Missileers were the black sheep of the family, Missileers didn't get promoted to the top levels, the bomber crews ruled the roost, but the thing is, they didn't know anything about the missiles, nor did they care, the Titan II's were just left to be ticking time bombs, because the bosses at SAC basically ignored them.

[Speaker to Animals]

One of the problems with SAC, was that is was all Bomber Jockeys, SAC was all about the B-52, Missileers were the black sheep of the family, Missileers didn't get promoted to the top levels, the bomber crews ruled the roost, but the thing is, they didn't know anything about the missiles, nor did they care, the Titan II's were just left to be ticking time bombs, because the bosses at SAC basically ignored them.

We didn't have Missile Command back then?


Looks like they reorganized it in 2009:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force ... ke_Command

[Smitty-48]

The Missileers weren't in charge of anything in 1980, for years beforehand, the Missileers wanted MX to replace Titan II, but SAC wanted the B-1 to replace B-52, MX threatened the funding for the new bomber, so guess who won that argument?

[Speaker to Animals]

The Missileers weren't in charge of anything in 1980, for years beforehand, the Missileers wanted MX to replace Titan II, but SAC wanted the B-1 to replace B-52, MX threatened the funding for the new bomber, so guess who won that argument?

Yeah, I was just looking at the old chain of command. For some reason I thought we had a Missile Command.

We probably should separate strategic bombing from ICBMs. That's two different worlds.

It's almost like the multicultural fallacy applied to the military. Only one group gets to drive the bus at a major command. While they might have similar goals and roles, they are too different to mix up like that. In my opinion, anyway. It's about radically different cultures. A bomber wing is not anything like a missile base.

[Smitty-48]

They had bomber pilots in charge of all the missile wings, so if something went wrong, the Colonel was basically asking a 19 year old kid what he should do about it. When the 19 year old kid told him what to do, some bomber pilot General at Omaha overruled them; it's just dumb luck one of those Titan II's never went critical mass.

And I mean, nine megatons yield, ground level detonation, right in the middle of the CONUS? Yikes, Cormac McCarthy; Castle Bravo for the masses.

Here's what the lethal fallout plume looks like for that, superimposed on the Northeast;




Move that ground zero west to Little Rock, that might actually be worse, because the full sized plume is probably around 3000 miles, so you have even more people in the path of it, airburst wouldn't be quite as bad, but surface burst, that would be the worst, the lower it pops, the more fallout you get.

9Mt's detonating just below ground level, kicking all that ground up into the mushroom cloud; radioactive volcano.