1964 Vale, S.D. Minuteman Missile Accident

foreign 1981 the United States Department of Defense released what they claimed to be was the first comprehensive list of U.S nuclear weapons accidents included on that list were several accidents that had not been reported to the public of the time that they occurred some of which had never been reported prior to the report in 1981 and among those was a previously completely unacknowledged accident that occurred in December of 1964 near the Tiny Town of Vail South Dakota that time when the Warhead fell off of a Minuteman missile reminds us of how important it is to use the right tool for the job it is history that deserves to be remembered a U.S National Park Service history of the Minuteman missile published on the webpage of the Minuteman missile National Historic Site sites the October 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik as the event that drove the development of the Minuteman missile following Sputnik the website Notes One headline proclaimed U.S must catch up with Reds or we're dead the issue was not the 23 inch diameter sphere that produced a small radio beep per se but the park surface explains the huge Soviet rocket that hurled the satellite into space the Soviets had first demonstrated a thermonuclear device in October of 1951 the launch of Sputnik represented more than a touchdown in the game called the Space Race it represented the Soviet ability to deliver a thermonuclear weapon anywhere in the world thus the park surface explains at the urging of his military advisors and under tremendous public pressure president Dwight D Eisenhower reluctantly accelerated America's ICBM program in 1958 Congress increased the appropriation for Minuteman from 50 to 140 million dollars the following year Congress added two billion dollars to the Minuteman budget to be spread out over the next five years one particular issue was that the existing U.S programs to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile the atlas and Titan programs were liquid-fueled such missiles could not be safely stored with the fuel in the missile and would require that they be manually fueled before launch this meant not only taking much longer to launch but also the cost of large teams to maintain and operate the missile The Wall Street Journal noted at the time the missiles were not a push-button Affair but will require a highly trained crew several times as large as the largest bombing crew what the United States needed the journal concluded was a second generation missile that could use solid rocket fuel while the concept made sense in theory there were many technological barriers to overcome in 1956 the job of overcoming those barriers was given to a 42 year old Air Force Colonel and chemical engineer named Edward Hall a 2006 obituary in the New York Times set of Hall as hundreds of millions of dollars were poured into a cash program to jumpstart the American effort Colonel Hall emerged as a technical leader particularly in the rush to develop Rockets using solid not liquid fuel Hall and his team were able to solve the most difficult technical issues within a year earning him the Super K father of the Minutemen ICBM the Minutemen was introduced into the United States strategic Arsenal in 1962 and an improved Minuteman 1B version became operational in 1963. the National Park Service explains that the first solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missile the U.S Air Force would deploy the Minutemen could stand dormant and unmanned for days weeks months and decades on end needing only limited maintenance and upkeep remotely controlled from underground launch control centers miles away from the silos it offered a hair trigger launch response from the time keys were turned to execute a positive launch command until the missile left the silo only took about one minute hence the name Minuteman designed to be produced in large numbers that could be dispersed over a large area to make them difficult to Target the missiles were deployed at several bases including Ellsworth Air Force base near Rapid City South Dakota with the 44th strategic missile Wing the Black Hills Bandit in keeping with the rapid pace of the entire project silos and launch facilities were installed surprisingly quickly the National Park Service notes that by early summer of 1963 the steel fabrication was finished at all 165 South Dakota sites and Crews were completing the silos at the rate of one per day those 165 sites included 150 silos containing the Minuteman 1B missile the Minuteman 1B was 55 feet 11 inches long with approximately 65 000 pounds had an operational range of 5 500 miles and carried a single 600 pound w56 thermonuclear Warhead with a yield of 1.2 megatons or the equivalent of 1.2 million tons of TNT mounted in a Mark 11 re-entry vehicle or RB traveling at some 15 000 miles an hour each missile could deliver a warhead from the United States to the Soviet Union in half an hour by 1964 the 44th 150 Minute Men were in their silos and on strategic alert but in December of 1964 the system was still relatively new retired senior master sergeant Alonzo Hall told South Dakota public broadcasting last year in 1964 I think they were still going through the Growing Pains of trying to figure out who was going to take care of what systems so General radio repair technician that sounds like a group of folks that could take care of the security system on December 5th the crew of a launch control facility codenamed Lima Juan reported A Fault In the inner Zone security system at a launch facility that is a missile silo called named Lima 2 the Rapid City Journal explained in 2017 Lima 2 was one of 150 steel and concrete silos that have been planted underground and filled with Minutemen missiles during the previous several years in Western South Dakota where the missiles were scattered across 13 500 square miles Lima 2 was near the tiny unincorporated town of Vail north of Sturgis and east of belfouche a narrative events written by the Air Force in 1964 but not released until 2017 after the newspaper of the Rapid City Journal issued a Freedom of Information Act request explains that at 1200 hours Mountain Standard Time a team of two 44th missile Wing communication repairman was dispatched to Lima 2 to troubleshoot the system and rectify the discrepancy the two technicians first had to remove The Silo access hatch and after ruling out other faults proceeded to the equipment room which circles the upper part of The Silo to test a relay called K1 located in the security alarm control box the report explains the procedure the Airmen were using the aural technique of checking the relay that is fuse F1 also located in the control box was removed from the circuit momentarily and then reinstalled a good relay clicks audibly when the fuse makes contact in its holder the problem is that the Airman whose name has been redacted from official reports lacked an important tool specifically designed fuse puller instead the report notes the Airmen lacking a fuse puller utilized a screwdriver to pry one into the fuse from its clip but there was a problem reinserting the fuse the Airman was unsure whether there was a click he tried again but was still unsure he then tried a third time the report reads he again pulled the one end of the fuse away from the clip and then pushed it back to make the contact at 1500 hours Mountain Standard Time simultaneously with the making of this contact a loud explosion occurred in the lunch tube buddy Smith a retired Air Force technician told the Rapid City Journal I wasn't there but I know there were two technicians who ruined their underwear because that ain't supposed to happen at the same time the report writes the missile status indicator launcher panel in the launch control center indicated a fault and a warhead alarm unsure exactly what had happened the report notes that the Airmen expeditiously evacuated to the soft support building where they immediately established contact with the missile combat crew at the launch control facility Hall explained to South Dakota public broadcasting since they used a screwdriver the drawer has capacitors which store power so when they put the screwdriver in there and they lifted that fuse they made contact with the case and that power went directly from the capacitor in the drawer to the chassis straight through the ground and caused the retro rocket to fire calling the accident 8 Personnel error the report explains a maintenance technician inadvertently shorted A Plus Battery potential to ground this application of plus battery voltage coupled with the fault in the Retro cable connector provided a path for sufficient current to flow and ignite the retro rocket the Rapid City Journal explains that the Retro Rockets were housed below the cone of the missile they were supposed to fire when the missile was in outer space to separate the third and final fuel stage from the cone along the cone and its Warhead which were collectively called the re-entry vehicle to fall towards the target the report writes it was subsequently determined that the explosion a re-entry vehicle retro rocket firing had caused the re-entry vehicle to separate at the ball lock interface of the spacer assembly and topple approximately 75 feet to the floor of the launch tube that is to say the five foot tall three foot in diameter cone that included the 1.2 Megaton thermonuclear Warhead fell off the missile and down the space between the missile and The Silo the report dryly noted the technician did not use the authorized available tool to remove the fuse ruined underwear aside the journal notes that the immediate accident could have been much worse had the short circuit gone to the missile rather than the retro rocket retired technician Bob dirksing told a paper it would have been a completely different story I'm sure that there would have been fatalities the boys were down there would have been fried the Air Force declared eight Broken Arrow code meaning an accident involving a nuclear weapon The Silo was cordoned off and a team sent to assess the situation a radiation monitoring team found no alarming radiation levels the Rapid City Journal rights by about 10 pm the scramble to assess the situation was over no but it was injured the missile was slightly damaged but otherwise intact the Warhead was safe inside its cone although the cone was damaged and important to the Air Force the journal continues except for some bail area residents who probably saw the commotion and wondered what was going on the public knew nothing reporting on newly released documents nine news of New South Wales Australia wrote last August no release concerning this incident was made to the press the entire operation was handled in such a way that the nearby communities were not aware and did not exhibit even a mild interest in the operation the Rapid City General noted The Next Step the emergency was over it was time to plan a salvage operation sometime before midnight at Ellsworth the phone rang for Bob Hicks just 20 years old Robert Hicks was a nuclear weapon Specialist of a Minuteman missile maintenance team the University of Arkansas press explains that at the time Hicks was the first nuclear weapons specialist of any missile maintenance team to be awarded to highly qualified rating from the 3901st Strategic missile evaluation Squadron which evaluated each missile wing on an annual basis when the chief of the maintenance missile team called him Hicks told the Rapid City Journal he said the Warhead is no longer on top of the missile on the paper notes that was enough to cause me to get dressed pretty quickly Hicks recalled taking a specially designed truck used for carrying Warheads in 20 degree weather Hicks and another Airmen were in such a hurry to reach the scene that the truck was pulled over by a South Dakota highway patrolman Hicks recalled that the officer said y'all seem to be in a hurry but Hicks of course couldn't tell him why the University of Arkansas press writes that the trooper commented that it was late for a trip to the missile Fields Hicks told him that they traveled whenever the need dictated the trooper didn't ask for their questions and wished safe travels to the team when they arrived takes notes that there were around a dozen people at the scene the general rights as we later joked Hicks recalled in his slight Texas drawl they were standing around not knowing whether to scratch their watch or wind their butts Hicks installed a work cage a device that could be used to inspect the entire missile and accompanied an explosive Ordnance technician who wasn't trained to operate the cage into the silo as they descended in the cage Hicks used a socket on a long metal pole to install igniter safety pins which would break the electrical connections between the stages rendering the missile safe or unable to Launch the University of Arkansas press writes that when they got to the bottom of the launch tube they found the re-entry vehicle lying horizontally against the launch tube wall on the floor the brief 1981 acknowledgment of the accident reported that when the RV struck the bottom of the silo the arming fusing attitude control subsystem containing the batteries was torn loose thus removing all source of power from the RV but also noted that the RV structure received considerable damage well Hicks in the EOD technician determined that there was no immediate risk the Press writes that the damage was sufficient to prevent the standard re-entry vehicle handling equipment to be used for recovery in the end it was Hicks that suggested the solution using a cargo net with sufficient weight capacity to lift the cone from the silo while the suggestion of a 20 year old Airman was at first written off by the senior officer at the scene who told Hicks Airmen when I want an opinion from you I'll ask you after discussion he was asked to explain the idea more thoroughly the process was painstaking taking nearly two hours to lift the Warhead Lee 75 feet out of The Silo and Hicks the other one qualified to drive the special truck drove the damaged missile code back to the base Air and Space forces magazine noted in 2017. in March of 1965 the base newspaper quietly named Hicks as the maintenance man of the month for his division without reference to the accident soon after he received an Air Force Commendation Medal for his courageous actions while some recommendations in the report that was released in 2017 have been redacted two were left unclassified the existing retro rocket circuitry does not provide enough protection against short circuits and the present method of testing the K1 relay by removing the F1 fuse is unsafe despite the successful recovery of the missile there was yet one more twist in 2022 another report compiled by nuclear research organization the Sandia Corporation in 1965 was acquired by the Rapid City Journal in response to a Freedom of Information Act request this report criticized the Air Force for going it alone to recover the Warhead without consulting the agencies that had designed it warning that after this accident the Warhead was in such a condition that an improper recovery procedure could have had serious consequences if not actually leading to a detonation in the improper procedure could have perhaps placed the nuclear system in a more critical state in all the Air Force estimated that the accident costs them 1.85 million dollars in 2017 dollars by 1973 the Minuteman 1 missiles had been replaced by the more capable Minuteman 2 missile with some cells were all decommissioned by the end of 1995. but today 450 Minuteman 3 missiles remain in the U.S nuclear Arsenal but none of those are in South Dakota the last of the Minuteman missiles in South Dakota Minuteman twos were decommissioned in April of 1994 and the 44th missile Wing was deactivated the following July in 2017 Popular Mechanics noted that the missile were the accident occurred today sits empty and the property is now the home of a honey extracting business perhaps what is most surprising about the entire incident is that there was no public acknowledgment of the accident at all until 17 years after it occurred and important information including that the nuclear agency had determined that the Air Force increased the risk in their Salvage operation were withheld from the public for 57 years perhaps the United States Air Force hoped that the 1964 Minuteman missile accident near Vale South Dakota would become forgotten history I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guide check out our community on the historyguyguild.mocals.com our webpage at thehistoryguy.com and our merchandise at teespring.com or book a special message from the history guy on Cameo and if you'd like more episodes of Forgotten history all you have to do is subscribe foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 314,693

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy

Id: a0EPilC9Bv8

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/No_Potato_1398]

The history guy has a fantastic video library.

[u/Payinchange]

The bow tie is his gimmick. His cadence reminds me of NPR radio. Crazy that there was almost a nuclear accident in Vale and the public had no clue. Thanks for posting, OP.

[u/Cool-Radish-1132]

not many yt videos about south dakota out there