Command and Control

The hazard team had come up with a plan: PTS technicians would reenter the silo, vent the stage 1 fuel tank, equalize the pressure, and prevent the missile from collapsing. Time was of the essence, and the reentry had to be done as soon as possible. The PTS men topside had RFHCOs and air packs and a full set of equipment in their trucks. Ideally, they’d go into the complex. But nobody knew where they were. After leaving the complex, they’d probably driven beyond the range of the radios in their helmets. And their trucks didn’t have radios that could contact the base. If they wanted to speak with the command post, they’d have to drive to Damascus and use a pay phone, or call from a nearby house.

The PTS crew that had taken refuge in the control center would have to do the job, wearing the RFHCOs left behind in the blast lock. Because their socket was now lying somewhere at the bottom of the silo, they’d have to remove the pressure cap on the stage 1 fuel tank with pliers. And if that didn’t work, they might have to push open the tank’s poppet valve with a broom handle.

Before Colonel Moser could approve the plan and set it in motion, SAC headquarters joined the discussion via speakerphone. It was about quarter to eight, the Missile Potential Hazard Net was finally up and running, and Lieutenant General Lloyd Leavitt, the vice commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command, was on the line. Leavitt made it clear that, from now on, nothing would be done in the launch control center, the silo, or anywhere else on the complex without his approval. And he would not authorize any specific action until a consensus had been reached that it was the right thing to do.

Leavitt was in his early fifties, short, compact, and self-confident. He’d been a member of the first class to enter West Point after the Second World War. While the heroism of that war was celebrated in popular books and films, his classmates were soon risking their lives in a conflict that was largely ignored by the public. Leavitt became a fighter pilot and flew one hundred combat missions during the Korean War. He routinely encountered enemy planes and antiaircraft fire. During one mission, his F-84 was hit by flak and suffered an electrical failure; Leavitt had to fly 250 miles without flight instruments or a radio, before landing safely at an American base. During another, his plane spun out of control amid a snowstorm; Leavitt had to bail out at eight thousand feet and felt lucky to be found by South Korean troops, not Communist guerrillas. He later flew 152 combat missions in Vietnam. The two conflicts, as well as training flights, took the lives of many good friends. Of the 119 West Pointers who graduated from flight school with Leavitt, 7 were killed in Korea, 2 in Vietnam, and 13 in airplane accidents. The odds of being killed on the job, for his classmates, was about one in six.

Some of Leavitt’s most dangerous missions occurred during peacetime. From 1957 to 1960, he flew U-2 spy planes. The U-2 was designed to fly long distances and take photographs at an altitude of seventy thousand feet, without being detected or shot down. In order to do so, the plane had to be kept as light as possible. And the small size of the pilot’s survival kit imposed certain restrictions. Before leaving on a mission to photograph Soviet airfields and radar sites in Siberia, Leavitt was given a choice: bring a life raft or a warm parka. He wasn’t allowed to bring both. Leavitt chose the parka, figuring that if he had to bail out over the Bering Sea, he’d freeze to death — with or without the raft. U-2 pilots flew alone, in a tiny cockpit, wearing cumbersome pressure suits and maintaining complete radio silence, for as long as nine hours. The plane was difficult to fly. It was fragile and stalled easily. Strong g-forces could break it apart midair. To save weight, it had only two sets of landing gear, one in the front and the other in the back. “Landing the U-2,” Leavitt wrote in his memoir, “was like landing a bicycle at 100 mph.” Of the thirty-eight U-2 pilots with whom he trained, eight died flying the plane.

The Missile Potential Hazard Net was rarely activated, and the commander of SAC usually led it. But General Richard H. Ellis was out of town — and so Leavitt, the second in command, took his place. Leavitt got on the net from the balcony of SAC’s underground command post, overlooking the world map. Although he’d flown B-52s for a year, worked at the Pentagon, commanded an Air Force training center, and served on the staff of a NATO general, Leavitt still had the manner of an old-fashioned fighter pilot: cocky, decisive, self-reliant. He did not, however, have firsthand experience working with Titan II missiles. Nor did Colonel Russell Kennedy, the director of missile maintenance at SAC headquarters, who joined Leavitt on the balcony. They would have to rely on the advice and the expertise of others.

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