Command and Control

Hanson and Morris got into the front seat of the truck. Morris would stay in touch with the command post on the Security Police Net, and Hanson would talk to Livingston on the radio network at the launch complex. The two radio systems were incompatible. If General Leavitt wanted to give Livingston an order, Leavitt would have to tell Moser, who would have to tell Morris, who would have to tell Hanson, who would have to tell Livingston. Although Hanson had brought along a repeater to strengthen the signal, reception on the complex was spotty.

Carrying a flashlight and a vapor detector, Livingston went through the hole in the fence. He saw a cloud of white vapor streaming from the silo’s exhaust vents, like steam from a boiling kettle. He entered the complex, crossed the gravel near the hardstand, and approached one of the vents. Hanson had told him to get the vapor detector as close as possible to the cloud, without getting engulfed in it if the wind shifted. Livingston stuck the probe into the mist, and the needle on the gauge shot all the way to the right.

The portable vapor detector has pegged out, Livingston said.

Hanson told Morris, who informed the command post. The news was shared with everyone on the net.

Colonel Scallorn thought the mission was over — the detector had pegged out.

Sergeant Hanson told Livingston to put his hand over the vent and try to get a sense of the vapor temperature. Hanson had meant to bring a thermometer from the base but had forgotten it.

Scallorn kept expecting someone on the net to call it off and bring this boy back to the truck. He didn’t understand why they were sending anyone into the complex at two in the morning. They’d already waited more than seven hours to do something. It seemed too late now.

Livingston put his hand over the metal grate. He could feel the heat through his glove.

Colonel Morris told the command post that he was bringing Livingston back.

Livingston returned from the complex, took off his helmet, and leaned against the bed of the pickup.

“It’s hot as hell over there,” he said.

At the command post, members of the K crew assumed that the mission was over. The fuel vapor hadn’t dissipated — like Martin Marietta had suggested it would — and the portable vapor detector couldn’t reveal how high the level really was. It was at least 250 ppm, the cutoff mark that everyone had agreed upon. SAC headquarters ordered Devlin and Hukle to enter the launch complex.

The men put on their helmets and air packs and grabbed their equipment. They had a lot more gear than Livingston. Between the two of them, Devlin and Hukle carried a portable vapor detector, flashlights, the hydraulic hand pump, and a tool bag holding screwdrivers, Crescent wrenches, and pliers. They also brought a couple of crowbars.

The outer steel door and the door at the bottom of the entrapment area were locked — and could no longer be jimmied open with a credit card. Devlin and Hukle would have to break into the launch complex with crowbars. Nobody knew how difficult that would be since nobody there had ever done it.

The two young airmen in RFHCO suits, holding their flashlights and crowbars and tools, went through the hole in the fence.

PART FOUR OUT OF CONTROL

Decapitation

On January 23, 1961, a B-52 bomber took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina, for an airborne alert. The flight plan was a long, circular route along the East Coast. At the end of the first loop, the B-52 met its tanker a couple of minutes early and refueled. At the end of the second loop, after more than ten hours in the air, the bomber refueled again. It was almost midnight. Amid the darkness, the boom operator of the tanker noticed fuel leaking from the B-52’s right wing. Spray from the leak soon formed a wide plume, and within two minutes about forty thousand gallons of jet fuel had poured from the wing. The command post at Seymour Johnson told the pilot, Major Walter S. Tulloch, to dump the rest of the fuel in the ocean and prepare for an emergency landing. But fuel wouldn’t drain from the tank inside the left wing, creating a weight imbalance. At half past midnight, with the flaps down and the landing gear extended, the B-52 went into an uncontrolled spin.

Major Tulloch heard a loud explosion and ordered his crew to bail out, as the plane started to break apart at an altitude of ten thousand feet. Four of the men ejected safely, including Tulloch. First Lieutenant Adam C. Mattocks managed to jump through the escape hatch, while the bomber was upside down, and survived. Major Eugene Shelton ejected but suffered a fatal head injury. The radar navigator, Major Eugene H. Richards, and Technical Sergeant Francis R. Barnish died in the crash.