Hi, I’m the History Guy. I love history, and if
you love history too, this is the channel for you. When you study history it's sometimes
striking how major historical events can turn on seemingly tiny things. A seemingly
unimportant, inconsequential decision might actually end up turning the course of a
major battle, or changing the direction of politics. It's almost scary to think that
human history can turn on something as random, as small as the direction the wind blows,
but it can. On September 16th 1980 there was a strong southwesterly wind blowing
across the plains of North Dakota. That might not seem important, but in fact, it
is history that deserves to be remembered. When it comes to iconic aircraft it's hard to beat
the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. First entering service in 1955, the massive long-range heavy
bomber is still in service today, and the Air Force plans to keep the bomber in service at least
until 2045, giving it an operational life that the airforce describes as “unprecedented.” The
airframe is proven to be exceptionally versatile, allowing it to perform multiple roles,
carry an extensive array of ordnance, and to be continually upgraded. As a
sign of its durability and longevity, B-52s dropped nearly 40% of the ordnance
used during Operation Desert Storm in 1990, some 45 years after the aircraft entered
service. An astounding fact given that the last B-52 manufactured came off the assembly
line in 1962. At 159 foot 4 inches long, with a wingspan of hundred 85 feet, the B-52 is
powered by eight Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines carried in four pods, with each engine capable of
producing 17,000 pounds of thrust. That allows the B-52 to carry approximately 70,000 pounds of
ordnance at speeds up to 650 miles per hour, and distances up to 8,800 miles without refueling.
With a fuel capacity of over three hundred and twelve thousand pounds. And of course the B-52s
most central role in its career has been as a strategic bomber, part of the US nuclear arsenal
designed to deter nuclear war via the concept of mutually assured destruction. And it was
because of that role, that in the late 1950s, the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command
distributed the B-52 fleet across a large number of bases. Thus making the fleet less vulnerable
to a first strike, and guaranteeing the massive retaliation that was the keystone of the mutually
assured destruction strategy. Many of those bases were near the US-Canadian border as that offered
the fastest bomber route to the Soviet Union. One such base was Grand Forks Air Base.
Located 15 miles west of the city of Grand Forks North Dakota, Grand Forks Air Force
Base was originally established as an Air Defense Command Fighter Interceptor Base, with
the 18th fighter interceptor squadron operating the McDonnell F-101b Voodoo jet fighter, ready
to defend US airspace from attack by Soviet strategic bombers. The third largest city in North
Dakota, with a 1960 population of about 35,000, Grand Forks is located in the heart of the Red
River Valley, near the forks of the Red Lake River and the Red River of the North. The valley
is particularly windy, owing to its proximity to the polar jet stream that produces numerous
high low pressure systems, and the relatively treeless terrain. On September 1st 1958,
SAC established the 4133rd Strategic Wing at Grand Forks Air Base. It was renamed the 319th
Bombardment Wing in 1962, operating B-52h bombers. During the Cold War, strategic bombers and air
refueling tankers were kept in ready alert status. SAC crews would typically be on rotational
alert duty for seven days out of a 21 day period. While on alert, crews would fly training
missions to hone their skills, but the readiness status was so that the crews could be prepared to
launch their planes on a moment's notice. Bombers were kept fueled, armed, and ready for takeoff on
alert pads, in a pattern called a Christmas Tree, because of the herringbone shape that allowed
heavy bombers to pull onto the runway as quickly as possible. Experts argue that in the case of
a nuclear strike, crews would have less than 10 minutes to get airborne. Each crew would have a
target, the crews would study their targets in a room called The Vault, becoming familiar with the
targets air defense, and how to get to the target, and assuming that you weren't shot down, how
to get back home even though that home might, in a nuclear war, no longer exist. As one Grand
Forks Air Force Base veteran was quoted in 2016, “We don’t like that we are in the Cold War. But
we're here to make sure that if it gets hot, we're ready to respond.” On September
16th 1980, at approximately 9:00 p.m., the engine on one of those B-52h bombers
on ready status, caught fire as the crew is preparing for takeoff. No official report
on the cause of the fire has been released, but author Eric Schlosser suggested in 2014,
that the cause was a failure to replace a nut on a fuel strainer. The crew was able to exit the
plane, as the fire was limited to the engine area, but the fire proved difficult to fight, as it
was fueled by the plane's supply of jet fuel in its wing tank. Witnesses described
the fire as being like, “a blowtorch.” The Air Force evacuated an area with a 2,000 foot
radius of the fire so that the firefighters would have room to fight, but it turned out to be
a difficult blaze to fight. The fire went on for nearly three hours. As the fire raged, North
Dakota officials were put in a difficult position. North Dakota emergency services Director Ron
Affeldt complained that, “Despite it being his job to coordinate with the Air Force on
outside assistance, communications with the base officials was poor. And he had no way to
talk directly to the people on the scene.” The mayor of Grand Forks, Bud Wessman, was put in the
difficult position of trying to decide what to do for his community. Should he order an evacuation?
Should he activate the Emergency Broadcast System? The problem was complicated by Air Force policy
as the Air Force was denying to the mayor the most important information that he would need in order
to make his decision. Were there nuclear weapons on board this aircraft? Were they at risk in the
fire? As the Air Force spokesperson said at the time, “Air Force policy is to neither confirm,
nor deny, the presence of nuclear weapons.” But Affeldt thought he already knew the
answer to that question. His regional office had been monitoring radio channels
during the fire and overheard a codeword that indicated a major accident
with a nuclear weapon on board. In fact there were nuclear weapons on the
plane, although that wasn't even officially confirmed until eight years after the fire. On
board that B-52 were a dozen AGM-69 short-range attack missiles. The idea of the short-range
attack missile was to have a supersonic missile that would launch from the bombers, and destroy
air defense sites, as well as to give a standoff capability that allowed bombers to attack
targets from a distance. Built by Boeing, the AGM-69 was fifteen foot ten inches long,
and weighed two thousand two hundred and thirty pounds, had a range of some hundred
and ten nautical miles, and was supersonic, traveling at Mach three. It carried a W-69
thermonuclear warhead, with a blast yield of between 170 and 200 kilotons. Meaning that
each of the twelve missiles inside the burning aircraft was more than ten times as powerful as
the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. But were such missiles really at risk in a fire?
That question was answered by Robert Batzel of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
congressional testimony in 1988. “The fire could not cause the bombs to detonate. That is it would
not cause a thermonuclear explosion. Rather, a fire could cause the conventional high explosives
in the warheads to explode, which would then blow the warheads plutonium cores into microscopic bits
that would then be thrown into the atmosphere to drift downwind.” A scenario that would have
contaminated an estimated 60 square miles of North Dakota and Minnesota, and potentially
affected some 75,000 people. something that Batzel described as, “Probably worse than Chernobyl.
Breathing or ingesting the plutonium could lead to death, tissue damage, or an increased risk of
cancer. And the soils that were contaminated would remain radioactive for 24,000 years.” In fact,
the risk was particularly high for the AGM-69, as scientists had been raising warnings for years
that the high explosives in the warhead were particularly at risk of detonation due to a fire.”
That's what was quoted in the hearing transcript, as noting that the fire in 1980, “Absolutely,
would have caused the high explosives in the warheads to detonate, had the fire reached the
fuselage. High explosives, which are in those particular warheads, would have detonated. It
would have happened in that environment.” he said. But why didn't it? Simply put, the wind
was blowing in the right direction. The approximately 26 mile-per-hour wind
was blowing away from the fuselage, meaning that the blowtorch-like fire
was blown away from the missiles. But how lucky was the wind? Author Eric
Schlosser noted a discussion with a crew member who said that, “Had the aircraft
been assigned a different parking spot, it would have been facing into the
wind, blowing the fire directly towards the fuselage and the bombs inside.” The
difference that prevented a nuclear event, probably worse than Chernobyl, was in the
parking space that the aircraft was assigned. Eventually one of the firefighters
volunteered to go inside the burning plane, and shut off the fuel supply, and the fire
officially burned out when the fuel ran out after burning for nearly three hours. Mayor
Wessman decided not to evacuate Grand Forks, reasoning that the Air Force hadn't evacuated
the 10,000 personnel that were on the Air Force Base. The fire got a little press attention
at the time, largely because the Air Force argued that there was no risk of a thermonuclear
explosion. They apparently left out the risk of nuclear contamination. For their part the Air
Force insists that the fire was no big deal, if the wind had been blowing towards the
fuselage they would have fought the fire much more aggressively. The Air Force still
refuses to release details on the incident. Another fire aboard a B-52 that was
undergoing maintenance at Grand Forks Air Force Base in 1983, caused an
explosion that killed five Airmen, although the Air Force says that
no nuclear weapons were aboard. As a result of Batzel’s testimony in 1990,
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had the AGM-69 missile removed from US aircraft because of
the risk of what could happen in the case of an accidental fire. The weapon was retired in 1993.
Newer nuclear warheads are safer, in that they use high explosives that are less vulnerable to
fire, and most of them include a safety mechanism called a Fire Resistant Pit, that's designed to
reduce the risk of radiation contamination in case the missile does accidentally “cook off.” So
how close were we really in September of 1980 to radiating 60 square miles of North Dakota and
Minnesota? Well, a former vice president of the Sandia nuclear test lab said, “It was one
of the riskier incidents that we faced.” Our nuclear weapons do have lots of safeguards,
and no one has ever died as a result of an accidental explosion of an american nuclear
weapon. But as author Eric Schlosser notes, “Nuclear weapons are just machines, and no
one has yet invented a perfect machine. But when all else fails, we can continue to hope
that the wind will always be in our favor.” I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed my
series of short snippets of forgotten history, about ten minutes long. And if you did enjoy it,
please go ahead and click that thumbs up button, which is there on her left. If you
have any questions or comments, feel free to write those in the comment section,
I will be happy to personally respond. And if you'd like more snippets of forgotten
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