Command and Control

“responsibility for identifying and resolving”: President Kennedy also asked to be kept informed about “the progress being made in equipping all Mark 7 nuclear weapons assigned to ground alert aircraft with velocity sensing safety devices.” He returned to the broader issue just nine days before his assassination, issuing a directive that safety rules be adopted for each weapon in the stockpile. Those rules would have to be approved by the secretary of defense — and shared, in writing, with the president of the United States. See “National Security Action Memorandum No. 51, Safety of Nuclear Weapons and Weapons Systems,” May 8, 1962 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), NSA; and “National Security Memorandum No. 272, Safety Rules for Nuclear Weapon Systems,” November 13, 1963 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified).

the Titanic Effect: Donald MacKenzie mentions the “Titanic effect” in the context of software design. “The safer a system is believed to be,” he suggests, “the more catastrophic the accidents to which it is subject.” And as a corollary to that sort of thinking, MacKenzie argues that systems only become safer when their danger is always kept in mind. See MacKenzie’s essay “Computer-Related Accidental Death,” in Knowing Machines, pp. 185–213. The Titanic effect is discussed from pages 211 to 213.

an engineer listened carefully to the sounds of a PAL: The Sandia engineer’s name was John Kane, and in this case his lock-picking skills exceeded those of technicians at the National Security Agency. See Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S2C,” p. 71.

The W-47 warhead had a far more serious problem: I learned about the unreliability of the W-47 warhead during my interviews with Bob Peurifoy and Bill Stevens. Some of the details can be found in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume VI, pp. 433–41. Hansen called the W-47, without its safing tape, “an explosion in search of an accident.” Sybil Francis touched on the subject briefly in “Warhead Politics: Livermore and the Competitive System of Nuclear Weapons Design,” thesis (Ph.D.), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Politic Science, 1995, pp. 152–53.

“almost zero confidence that the warhead would work”: Quoted in Francis, “Warhead Politics,” p. 153.

perhaps 75 percent or more: Cited in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume VI, p. 435.

a B-52 on a Chrome Dome mission: The Palomares accident was the most widely publicized Broken Arrow of the Cold War. In addition to weeks of coverage in newspapers and magazines, the event inspired a fine book by Flora Lewis, a well-known foreign correspondent, One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). Randall C. Maydew, one of the Sandia engineers who helped to find the weapon, later wrote about the search in America’s Lost H-Bomb! Palomares, Spain, 1966 (Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1977). Barbara Moran made good use of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in writing The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes, and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009). I relied on those works, as well as on a thorough description of the accident’s aftermath—“Palomares Summary Report,” Field Command, Defense Nuclear Agency, Kirtland Air Force Base, January 15, 1975—and other published sources.

so poor and remote that it didn’t appear on most maps: See “Palomares Summary Report,” p. 18

“450 airmen with Geiger counters”: Quoted in ibid., p. 184.

“unarmed nuclear armament”… “there is no danger to public health”: Quoted in ibid., p. 185.

“SECRECY SHROUDS URGENT HUNT”: Quoted in ibid., p. 203.

“MADRID POLICE DISPERSE MOB AT U.S. EMBASSY”: Quoted in ibid.

NEAR CATASTROPHE FROM U.S. BOMB”: Quoted in ibid.

“There is not the slightest risk”: Quoted in “The Nuke Fluke,” Time, March 11, 1966.

“the politics of the situation”: “Palomares Summary Report,” p. 50.

Almost four thousand truckloads of contaminated beans: Cited in ibid., p. 56.

About thirty thousand cubic feet of contaminated soil: According to the Defense Nuclear Agency, about 1,088 cubic yards were removed — roughly 29,376 cubic feet. Cited in ibid., p. 65.

“a psychological barrier to plutonium inhalation”: Ibid., footnote, p. 51.

the American ambassador brought his family: For this and other efforts to control public opinion, see David Stiles, “A Fusion Bomb over Andalucía: U.S. Information Policy and the 1966 Palomares Incident,” Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 8, no. 1 (2006), pp. 49–67.

who claimed to have seen a “stout man”: Quoted in “How They Found the Bomb,” Time, May 13, 1966.

“It isn’t like looking for a needle”: Quoted in Lewis, One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing, p. 182.

the first time the American people were allowed to see one: For the proud display, see ibid., p. 234; Stiles, “Fusion Bomb over Andalucía,” p. 64.

“The possibility of an accidental nuclear explosion”: Quoted in Hanson W. Baldwin, “Chances of Nuclear Mishap Viewed as Infinitesimal,” New York Times, March 27, 1966.