Best of The History Guy: Nuclear Accidents

foreign on June 13th 1944 the first V1 flying bomb was launched against the city of London in the first V1 bombing campaign as many as a hundred v1s an hour were falling on the city and in the first 80 days as many as 6 000 people were killed and 17 000 were injured in the following September the Germans would unleash an even more terrifying weapon in the V2 a ballistic missile that flew so high and so fast that it could not be intercepted by anti-aircraft weapons it was the rocket that launched the Space Age over the next decades rockets and missiles would come to dominate military technology and create a unique and surprising threat to Mexico the U.S missiles that wandered across our Southern border during the Cold War are history that deserves to be remembered on May 2nd 1945 a man in Austria walked up to a private of the U.S 44th Infantry Division and said in broken English my name is Magnus Von Braun my brother invented the V2 we want to surrender in that moment the U.S has captured one of the most sought after of the German scientists over whom the East and West were competing in the waning stages of the second world war along with Werner Von Braun the Americans captured the plans to the V2 rocket and over 300 train carloads of spare V2 parts these parts would become the core of a program to develop and test U.S missiles both for military use and eventually to support the manned space program officials becoming part of the Hermes project which was started in 1944 in response to German rocket attacks in Europe to support the project the Army developed a missile launching site within what was then called The White Sands Proving Ground the military testing area they've been the site of the test of the world's first atomic bomb Trinity in July 1945 the missile launched side first called Army launch area number one and then launch complex 33 would be the location where captured V2 Rockets would be fired as sounding Rockets or rockets for scientific tests as well as to develop new U.S Rockets the department of the Interior noted the historical significance of the site when it nominated complex 33 for the national register of historic places in 1985. the site test-fired 67 V2 Rockets between 1946 and 1951. the first major rocket firings conducted in the United States the V2 was the first vehicle to carry scientific instruments into the upper atmosphere and the first large rocket with a liquid propellant motor the V2 provided the technological base upon which the United States would build to develop the Saturn family of rockets that eventually carried Americans to the moon and Beyond the project had several goals according to the program's final report first it had gained experience in handling and firing large missiles and trained Army Personnel to launch them second Hermes had provided vehicles for experiments which aided the design of future missiles third Hermes had tested components for future missiles fourth Hermes had obtained ballistic data on high altitude trajectories as well as developing various means of tracking such trajectories fifth the V2 program had provided vehicles for upper atmosphere and biological research but the project would continue the development of new missiles notably Hermes missiles the Hermes missiles were an attempt to create a ramjet-powered supersonic cruise missile these missiles would use a V2 engine to accelerate the rocket to a speed and altitude where the ramjets would then start the rocket was sometimes described as the world's first multi-stage rocket with the upper stage including a broad wing for flight test of a split Wing ducted airfoil Ramjet although no active Ramjet was yet included the missile was 51.5 feet tall had a gross weight of 31 750 pounds and the liquid oxygen alcohol-fueled engine produced sixty thousand pounds of thrust the first test of what they had labeled the Hermes II was on May 29th 1947. and it went the wrong direction the website this day in aviation explained in 2020 the plan was for the rocket to Arc towards the North heading for the far end of The Proving Grounds instead the Hermes 2 arched to the South the rocket peaked at 35 nautical miles passed over Fort Bliss in El Paso and after about five minutes of flight hit the ground about one and a half miles from the Buena Vista airport in ciudad Juarez Mexico according to the New York daily news on May 31st an experiment with push button warfares and a modified German V2 rocket Soaring Over El Paso and Juarez at a speed of 12 miles a minute and scared the Daylights out of residents of both cities according to the El Paso Times the rocket exploded on top of a Rocky Knoll three and a half miles south of the Juarez business district and it's grouped at a crater 50 feet wide well no one was killed by the rocket the news noted that the explosion started a panic in the Mexican city and Jarred windows out of the central fire station in El Paso women knelt in the streets of Juarez to pray window panes were shattered plaster was dislodged in homes some thought and Adam Bomb had hit the news noted that the United States was quick to apologize to Mexico for bombing our Southern neighbor with a Nazi Terror weapon and in fact managed to blame the Germans claiming it was a defective German gyroscope that sent the missile South instead of North while the U.S army reportedly pay for the damaged windows and the state department expressed its official regrets for bombing Mexico the accident gained surprisingly little further attention it was possibly the first but not the last missile that would stray across the border on October 11th of the same year there was an explosion in the zanalyuka mountains about 35 miles south of Juarez the Mexican military identified the explosion as coming from a V2 although officials at White Sands denied that there had been any launches the V2 and the Hermes were the Genesis of both the United States military rocket program and its manned space program but as their strategic situation changed new rocket systems were developed according to the defense contractor Lockheed Martin the MGM 31 missile was developed as a reaction to the Soviet intervention following the Hungarian uprising of 1956. the Lockheed Martin webpage explains in 1957 NATO officials fearing further Soviet aggression Into the Heart of Europe decided to act swiftly should any member of NATO be attacked they declared the United States would be forced to respond with a large-scale nuclear strike but to enforce the strategy U.S officials needed an imposing weapon on the ground in West Germany something to make the Soviets think twice about any attempts to expand the Iron Curtain Westward that weapon would be a two-stage solid-fueled ballistic missile named after a general the Army John J Pershing the 10 275 pound 34.6 foot missile had an operational range of 460 miles and could be equipped with a w-50 nuclear warhead with a yield up to 400 kilotons built to be a shoot and Scoot weapon on a mobile transporter erector launcher the missile was equipped by both U.S army and West German air force troops and units were stationed in West Germany in 1964. but there was a problem with the missiles stationed in Europe as there was no range in Europe large enough for troops to practice launching the weapon thus both American and West German troops would come to the United States for routine training and practice the weapons range was too large to test on the White Sands Missile rained and so sites were developed to allow troops to launch missiles that would then land at White Sands among the locations used was the black Mesa test range a place where the Canon or the Post newspaper of Fort Sill Oklahoma said the dust gives the whole area an ash rose Hue that together with an expanse of clear blue sky and snow top Colorado mountains in the hazy distance makes the Mesa look like a landscape painting by Frederick Remington the paper went on to explain what makes the Mesa perfect for Pershing firing is its geographical location it lies almost 400 miles north of the White Sands Missile Range and so it was in September 1967 U.S and West German troops came to the black Mesa test facility to fire Pershing missiles fortunately without nuclear warheads at New Mexico when according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch and out of control Army Pershing Bissell landed in an uninhibited region of Mexico Ryan Eddington a visiting assistant professor of history at McAllister College explained in his 2014 book range Wars a Pershing missile broke into pieces in the wooded Bosque Benito about 140 miles Southeast of Juarez not far from the Texas Mexico border according to the New York Times a West German unit had successfully fired a pushing missile early in the day but when the American unit fired a missile the ten thousand pound Pershing missile went off course and landed in Mexico Edgington says that an army civilian expert later suggested a short circuit most likely caused an electronic failure in the rocket the times reported that no property damage or injuries were reported and The Mexican government gave the United States government permission to send a helicopter across the border to look for the missile finding the parts of the missile was not easy hedgington mentions that Philippe Chavez Garcia laborer on the Puerto Alto Ranch recalled that in the early morning hours of September 12th a loud explosion followed by two other loud noises had startled him from his bed the impact crater measured 13 feet in diameter and nearly five feet deep it took 12 days of searching to find the missile's most significant parts despite the risk had the degree landed over a population Center Eddington explained in all the incident ended with little Fanfare the lack of significant evidence of impact on the Mexican landscape or harm to local communities may have hindered protests from government officials or the local populace UFO researcher Noah Torres concluded in his 2008 book Mexico's Roswell The Mexican government was none too happy to have U.S military hardware raining down upon its Northwestern territories but diplomats quickly resolved the dispute it was not lost on people at the time that the missile was named after General John J Pershing who in 1916 had famously LED an army across the American Mexico border chasing Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa the Albuquerque Journal noting the 1947 event equipped every 20 years the United States sends a missile over Mexico but it wouldn't take 20 years for it to happen again as the Cold War developed the U.S became more and more concerned with a perceived missile Gap and Planters obsessed over Soviet nuclear capabilities one solution to keep the American strategic Edge was to research re-entry systems and in 1963 the US established a military joint service program for re-entry vehicle research development and testing called the advanced ballistic re-entry System project or abras but testing re-entry systems was complex Not only was it incredibly expensive to Fire and test full-size Rockets like the atlas or Titan but such tests generally had to occur over the ocean making them easier for enemies to observe one solution was to do scaled tests with a smaller rocket that could be produced more cheaply and tested at White Sands but the air force needed a lawn site some distance from White Sands in order to make the test fights at re-entry velocities the Department of Defense finally chose a site near the Tiny Town of Green River Utah as the location where Tess launches towards New Mexico would cause the least inconvenience the test vehicle would be a four stage 50 foot eight ton solid-fueled missile called the Athena which could simulate the speeds and re-entry phenomena of the larger intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying a payload of 50 pounds at a re-entry velocity of approximately 23 000 feet per second the Las Cruces Sun News noted that the Athena was dubbed the flying trash pile because it was created cheaply by combining parts of existing missile systems a January 1964 issue of the Salt Lake Tribune noted that the rocket would make the approximately 470 mile trip between Green River and White Sands in just nine minutes while reaching altitudes of up to 200 miles however the missile was not without its problems as the Sun News noted the first two firings of the missile in 1964 went to stray pieces of the first launch were found near the New Mexico Colorado border after it misfired shortly after launch the second missile was destroyed in flight and parts of it landed on the Navajo reservation near Shiprock New Mexico the problem was of enough concern that a February 12 1964 issue of the New York Times noted that Utah Senator Wallace F Bennett asked for a halt in the program but by 1969 the program had recovered in the July 1969 edition of the Las Vegas Optic headlined White Sands proud of Athena missile quoted program Co Air Force Colonel l.r Sugarman I think the Athena program has over succeeded for an off-the-shelf type of program of putting Parts together for a missile bragging that Athena has pushed the state of the art we have been getting here on the Range the program had detained such a level of success that a larger version called Athena H was in the works but the missile's record took a hit when on July 11 1970 an American missile launch again went across the border a memorandum just released in 2015 from the National Security adviser Henry Kissinger to the president read at 5am Eastern Daylight time today an Athena rocket test fire from Green River Utah overshot its Target at White Sands New Mexico and impacted 180 to 200 miles south of the Mexican border the Philadelphia Inquirer noted the next day that an Air Force Athena missile programmed the impact of the New Mexico desert testing ground went to stray early Saturday and probably crashed in a remote section of Mexico as with the previous missile crashes the U.S had to seek Mexican permission to search for the missile as noted in the July 13 issue of the Baltimore Sun at the time the sun reported there were no explosives or classified material on the missile however it later came out that the missile is carrying a small amount of the radioisotope Cobalt 57 but the Air Force said that the risk was small the official line was that it was not dangerous to human or animal life so long as it was not ingested or handled however the inclusion of radioactive material created a new tension between the Nations not apparently felt in the previous incidents as endington explained in range Wars conflict and confusion surrounded reports moreover Air Force promises about its safety assumed the material had stayed within its protective tungsten sleeve the debris proved difficult to find and was in the end only identified using a special atomic energy commission plane called arms or aerial radiological measuring system which had sensitive materials for identifying radiological contamination while the system did locate the radioactive material it also determined that the material had dispersed it was no longer in its protective sleeve while the risks from the tiny amount of material were not clear concerns by the government of Mexico required that the U.S sent a team to remove the material the Orlando Sentinel reported on September 24th the Army said that contamination at the site represented no Hazard but the Army said The Mexican government has requested that the soil be returned to its natural condition a 40-man team was required to build a road in the remote area and remove the contaminated soil in steel drums the website redacted explains the cleanup effort was long costly and included the construction of a road through the mapami desert to excavate hundreds tons of soil from the impacted site one of the unintended impacts of these cross-border missile mishaps is that the entire remote area of Northwestern Mexico that was affected has developed a reputation for paranormal activity including both UFO sightings and a supposed Dead Zone where compasses and electronic instruments won't work much like the Bermuda Triangle while there are some anecdotal stories this Zone supposedly moves around and so the so-called mapamy Dead Zone has proven untestable by scientific means many experts believe that this reputation for Paranormal Activity is nothing more than speculation and confusion that came as a result of the missile accidents the Athena missile testing program was briefly stopped in 1970 following the July accident but it was restarted again in January of 1971. both the black Mesa and the Green River sites are now abandoned and there are several Reports online of people who have gone and visited these ransacked and rotting Cold War facilities in the end maybe because the area is simply so remote or maybe because of blind luck none of these missile mishaps killed anyone and they actually did very little damage although they did stress U.S Mexican relations and to be fair the vast majority of the missiles that were fired at White Sands into their career there but as the website redacted notes the fact that this testing continued despite multiple testing failures and a reduced budget and the looming possibility of an international incident shows just how Central nuclear arms parity was to U.S foreign policy by the beginning of the 1970s foreign [Music] Union tested its first nuclear device in August of 1949 some four years ahead of when Western intelligence Services thought that they might it created new challenges for Western defense planning the United States had developed its first jet Interceptor with the Northrop f-89 scorpion but against a nuclear-armed enemy a jet Interceptor just might not be enough because if even one bomber got through it would do enormous damage and so the United States decided to fight nuclear weapons with nuclear weapons mounting small nuclear warheads on missiles for air defense the explosive force of a nuclear explosion reduced the need for pinpoint accuracy and increase the chance that the target bombers would be completely destroyed but one of the first systems to mount these nuclear warheads had an accident within a year of being deployed reminding us once again that when you're dealing with nuclear weapons there's always a risk involved the 1960 bowmark missile fire at McGuire Air Force Base deserves to be remembered the bomark missile system was developed for the United States as a joint project of the Boeing Corporation in the University of Michigan's Michigan aeronautical Research Center the name is a combination of the acronym for the two at first the weapon was designated as an unmanned Interceptor a guys that was required because technically ground air missiles were the province of the US Army which was developing its own ground air missiles as the government became more concerned with vulnerability to attack both the Army and Air Force projects were approved and the missile was designated im-99 for interceptor missile the im-99a had an operational radius of 200 miles was designed to fly at Muk 2.5 to 2.8 to the cruising altitude of 60 000 feet while the project initially envisioned some 40 bases and 5 000 missiles in the US and Canada a change in emphasis from bombers to intercontinental ballistic missiles meant that deployment only actually occurred at eight sites in the U.S and two in Canada with a total of 409 missiles produced the first of those would become operational in 1959 declared operational in September 1959 the first bomark site was Joint Base McGuire Dick's Lakehurst in Burlington County New Jersey approximately 16.1 miles Southeast of Trenton the Philadelphia Inquirer called the base location an area of scrubby Pine forests with few residents that was suitably described as being in the middle of nowhere the site operated by the 46 air defense missile Squadron was composed of missile support buildings and administration building and the launch area the 46 numbered over 300 officers and Airmen the launch area or Firing Line contained four rows of 14 concrete shelters the semi-hardened shelters nicknamed coffins contained im-99a missiles stored horizontally the missiles were kept in ready storage condition meaning that they could be launched in two minutes after the launch order the shelter's roof would slide open and the missile would be raised to vertical the launch area included 56 mode 2 launcher shelters each missile was 46.6 feet long weighed 15 500 pounds and can carry a thousand pound conventional Warhead or a w-40 nuclear warhead the w-40 was a fusion boosted fission nuclear warhead with a 7 to 10 kiloton yield between approximately half to two-thirds of the yield of the little boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima the Warhead was considered to be lethal to a medium bomb or aircraft up to about two-thirds of a mile the WarHeads were mounted to the missiles for 90-day intervals after which the other periodic inspection and maintenance the missiles themselves also require periodic maintenance checks to ensure their rapid firing capability the bowmark a employed a liquid-fueled booster and two Ram Jets in Flight the liquid fuel rocket engine boosted the bomark to Mach 2 when its Ramjet engine fueled by 80 octane gasoline would take over for the remainder of the flight every 90 days the missiles were defueled decontaminated and then refueled using pressurized helium to push the propellants out of the tanks the liquid-fueled booster Rockets used hypergolic fuel a hypergolic propellant combination used in a rocket engine is one whose components spontaneously ignite when they come into contact with each other the two propellant compounds usually consist of a fuel and an oxidizer the main advantages of hypergolic propellants are that they can be stored as liquids at room temperature and that engines which are powered by them are easy to ignite reliably and repeatedly this combination meant that the missiles would not have to have their fuel stored separately requiring time to fuel the missile however hypergolic propellants are difficult to handle due to their extreme toxicity and corrosiveness they are also highly explosive if the red fuming nitric acid oxidizer came in contact with the aniline fuel it would explode the fuel was stored in the missiles and there was a helium tank between the two that was pressurized during an alert for the 15 seconds it took to erect the missile into its vertical launch position less than a year after the base became operational on June 7th 1960 at approximately 3 pm sensors in shelter 204 at the bomark site detected a fire caused by an explosion the helium tank that was set between the missile's fuel tanks became over pressurized and burst the ensuing pressure shock ruptured the propellant tanks causing their contents to spontaneously ignite the fire then caused the remaining fuel to explode the explosion set trap null flying and blew off the shelter's corrugated steel roof and steel blast doors the fire burned fiercely spewing 20 foot long blowtouch like flames and black smoke drifted Southward local firefighters responded to the alarm within three to five minutes Albert Sweeney a nearby farmer from cooktown was quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer I looked out across my open field a massive smoke was coming from the woods across the field I thought it was a plane crash or that somehow the woods had caught fire a nearby gas station owner named John Cairns was quoted in the Trenton New Jersey newspaper The Trentonian saying it looked like smoke from a smokestack the paper went on to say that was good news to him at least it wasn't the dreaded mushroom cloud not yet anyway he told his wife to be ready to hop in the car and gun it out of there other locals were alerted by the response The Inquirer quoted local factory worker James Nash there was a flutter and a sputter and here were coming trucks and the like from dicks in McGuire a former soldier from Port dicks recalled the daily event in the year 2000 edition of the Philadelphia Enquirer Bertram Gratz was an Army reservist who was at Fort Dix for advanced infantry training his Squad was returning from the machine gun range when quote all hell broke loose Grant said we were tired and all sweaty and dirty and we saw this puff of black smoke come up there were Sirens going off all over the place afraid that where the missile to explode his Squad would be in the blast radius he said drop that stuff meaning the machine guns ammunition and tripods and let's get the hell out of here the fire was exceptionally hot as The Trentonian noted it twisted the shelter's steel support beams like pieces of licorice and sent a massive black smoke plume swirling hundreds of feet into the air the fire was confined to the single bunker and wasn't threatening other bunkers but at that point the air force made a mistake a sergeant contacted the state police asking them to shut off some roads in the area the request wasn't unusual it was done under orders but apparently the sergeant worded the request well poorly as Brigadier General Gilbert L Pritchard who was commander of the New York air defense sector later told the Bridgewater New Jersey Courier News I am now sure that the sergeant either implied or stated that there had been a nuclear explosion that news sent the state into action as The Trentonian noted at 3 15 PM the news had clattered in over the teletype at the State Police Troop C headquarters in Princeton Atomic Warhead explosion the state police alerted civil defense officials in Trenton and Burlington County to start assembling Emergency Equipment and to round up vehicles for Mass evacuations while the area civil defense organization was put on alert military police New Jersey State Police and local emergency Personnel isolated the area to prevent any spread of the fire and potential radiation base personnel and a handful of nearby residents were evacuated as a precaution firefighters from McGuire Air Force Base and Fort Dix fought the fire along with local volunteer departments while the fire was contained within the shelter it was nonetheless according to The Enquirer a difficult fire to fight the fire burned for around 45 minutes in firefighters despite their own potential radiation exposure continued to pump water on the shelter throughout the night to cool down the remains and allow inspection by Air Force and atomic energy commission experts no one had been to the bunker at the time of the fire and there were no reported deaths or injuries the damage was contained to the bunker itself but the missile which newspapers at the time said cost between 1 and 1.2 million dollars was a total loss at the time following policy the Air Force didn't even admit that a nuclear weapon was involved but it was the fire had been so hot that the Warhead had fallen into the molten metal as the missile collapsed the weapon had not detonated and in fact that was almost impossible because of its safeguards General Pritchard said the bow marks are more foolproof than soap and therefore spokesman describe them as as safe as the neighborhood gas station in fact the conventional high explosive intended to trigger weapon had not even exploded in the fire but that nation was not the only problem much of the device was made of thoriated magnesium the New York Times explained the metal already radioactive becomes highly radioactive when it is burned as firefighters sprayed water on the wreckage for 15 hours materials from the shelter flowed under the front shelter Doors Down the asphalt apron and Street between the row of shelters and into the drainage ditch over the course of the next few days General Pritchard apologized for the mistaken message that it caused an unnecessary civil defense drill and the Air Force and local officials tried to reassure the public that few people were ever put in Peril and that there was no radiation danger to the public but inside the shelter Alpha radiation from the missiles plutonium registered over 2 million counts per minute inspectors needed special suits with respirators to protect them after examining the remains of the Warhead the inspection determined that between 2 and 11 ounces of oxidized plutonium were unaccounted for still the Air Force reported that contamination was restricted to an area immediately beneath the weapon and adjacent elongated area approximately 100 feet long that spot checks had shown no trace of dispersed radiation outside the facility's boundaries Philadelphia area authorities monitored air and water in the area but reported no concerns the area was fenced off the remaining shelter structure and floor were sprayed with a special thick paint that effectively formed a barrier to the alpha radiation and four inches of concrete were poured on the apron surrounding the entrance to shelter 204. eventually some 10 acres were covered in concrete but by 1980 the governor of New Jersey was questioning the extent of the contamination in April 1996 report indicated that in addition to plutonium contamination there may have been more dangerous uranium among the concerns at the time the Air Force reported that the missile launcher from shelter 204 had been removed from the shelter shortly after the accident and that no records about the manner of disposal the missile launcher existed the report recommended that potentially contaminated material be removed and shipped to a department of energy or private permitted disposal facility between 2002 and 2004 the shelter was demolished and over twenty thousand cubic yards of plutonium-contaminated soil was excavated and removed but later analysis determined that the remediation had not addressed all impacted areas of the site in a 2009 report a remediation firm hired to do an analysis of the site Cabrera Services of Hartford Connecticut indicated that the explosion of fire in shelter 204 resulted in the release of not only weapons great plutonium but also small quantities of weapons-grade uranium and depleted uranium within the confines of the site further remediation was completed in 2008 and 2009 the cleanup was not declared complete until 2010 nearly 50 years after the accident the total cost of the cleanup was between 22 and 24 million dollars despite the initial claims a 2013 study found the release of material to be comparable to that of the 1962 B-52 crash near palomares Spain despite the accident the McGuire bomark base remained active clear until October 1972 when all bullmark missiles were finally retired the site has never been sold or changed to another purpose by the Air Force it's still on McGuire Air Force Base grounds it's been nominated to the National register of historic places although the actual site of the fire is still off limits due to low-level plutonium contamination the event occurred during a tense period of the Cold War just a month after the 1960 U-2 incident the Soviets made some propaganda reports on the incident claiming that parts of New York City had been evacuated in a panic and speculating that such an event could spark nuclear war a statement released from Moscow when June 11 said people are beginning to understand where the psychosis of American leaders could lead the country and the whole world in the end the safeguards on the bomark missile succeeded the Warhead didn't explode even under extreme conditions it's a testament to the exacting standards used in the design of both the missile and the Warhead but still 50 years and 23 million dollars of remediation reminds us that nothing to do with nuclear weapons is without risk thank you National Geographic described the decade of the 1980s as a decadent disastrous and Innovative time in American history and it is somewhat difficult to explain to younger Generations why we so enjoyed listening to Madonna on our sunny walkmans perhaps emblematic of the decade was the year 1983 when Star Wars Return of the Jedi was the number one film and many of we original Star Wars fans wish that they had stopped there in 1983 no one could not sing along with Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart and pretty much we still can't in January the Washington Redskins defeated the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl 17 mercifully putting an end to the notorious strike season and in October the Baltimore Orioles defeated the Philadelphia Phillies four games to one in the World Series and then in November the world was nearly destroyed in nuclear Armageddon because while many of us did not realize it at the time 1983 has been described by some historians as the single most dangerous year in human history it's history that deserves to be remembered during the 1970s the cold Warsaw period of relative thaw called the era of De taunt detonte was largely driven by the foreign policy of the Nixon Administration and promoted by his secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Soviet Premier leaned Brezhnev the taunt was characterized by a number of summits agreements and treaties and an overall attempt to reduce the risk of Confrontation between the two superpowers they certainly never eliminated the conflict and the two still engaged in proxy wars and Espionage there's some disagreement of when the era of detaunt ended some say when Nixon left office in 1974 but others see the 1974 Vladivostok Summit between President Ford and Brezhnev as a continuation of De taunt and the framework of that meeting resulted in the salt or strategic arms limitation talks to agreement signed between Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter in June of 1979. in any case the period of detaunt was certainly over win six months after the salt II agreement the Soviet Union intervened to support the communist government in Afghanistan precipitating the Soviet Afghan war in protest over what he described as an invasion President Jimmy Carter called for a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics to be held in Moscow and the taunt became just a distant memory the same month the solidarity Union was formed at the linen Shipyard in gadance Poland a movement that would challenge communist rule in public the Soviets in the west perceived these two events very differently the U.S and NATO allies in Europe saw the two movements as Freedom movements in a rebellion against what they saw as serial violations of human rights in the Soviet Union the Soviets on the other hand is described by then head of the KGB yurian drop-off to KGB members in March 1981 saw the defense of communist regimes in Poland and Afghanistan as the Justified struggle of Nations for their National and social Liberation against attempts at exporting counter-revolution what indropov described as Soviet military support for a Justified struggle against Western counter-revolution Carter called an invasion by a powerful atheistic government to subjugate an independent Islamic people arguing that one lesson learned by the world at Great cost is that aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease the U.S and the West funneled money to both the mujideen opposition in Afghanistan and the solidarity Union in Poland Cold War tensions grew more strained By changes in leadership in May 1979 Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of the United Kingdom she had come to power in part on a platform of opposition to the Soviet Union arguing in a speech in January of that year that the Russians are bent on world dominance and they put guns before butter she concluded they are a failure in human and economic terms the following year Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States daitant had deteriorated under Carter but Reagan was more forceful in his opposition to the Soviets in a famous speech in 1983 he referred to the Soviet Union as the evil empire and the focus of evil in the modern world both Thatcher and Reagan significantly increased defense spending something that urian drop off called imperialists waging an arms race on an unprecedented scale in both East and West participated in that unprecedented arms race with weapons both conventional and nuclear in the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev died in November 1982 and was succeeded by andropov andropov was particularly distrustful the West part of this was likely derived from his rise to the Soviet intelligence services but historian Christopher Andrew notes the significance of andropov's experience during the 1956 Hungarian uprising and drop off was Soviet ambassador to Hungary at the time he was said to be shocked at how quickly what seemed to be an all-powerful single-party State could collapse and drop off was Central to the Soviet decision to intervene militarily playing a role that earned him the nickname The Butcher of Budapest The Experience according to Andrew left andropov with what was called a Hungarian complex that it convinced them that military force was necessary to ensure the survival of the Socialist Revolution this combination of leadership was dangerous as oligodovesky a KGB officer who defected the West noted was a potentially lethal combination of reaganite rhetoric and Soviet paranoia one consequence was that Brezhnev and then andropov became convinced that the United States Was preparing for a nuclear war and was planning a first strike with the intent of decapitating Soviet leadership the perception was enhanced by the fact that both brajnev and andropov were old-fashioned Soviets and they believed in Soviet Dogma including the belief that Western capitalism was on the brink of failure that Western nations would become more desperate and dangerous as it did Beyond Hungarian complex in 1979 NATO decided to deploy us-made Pershing to intermediate-range nuclear missiles into West Germany while neither saw the Pershing as a response to the Soviet rsd-10 NATO designation ss-20 intermediate-range missiles the Soviets saw the Pershing 2 as a first strike weapon the Pershing 2 was deployed from a mobile launcher making it quick to deploy difficult to Target and was designed to destroy hard targets like Soviet missile sites the Soviets were afraid that the Pershing 2 could be deployed so quickly that the attack would not be detected until the Soviet return strike capability was destroyed the deployment of the Pershing 2 was characteristic of the nature of the conflict and mistrust of the era both sides offered arms limitation solutions to deal with the tension of the missile's deployment NATO offered a so-called zero option where they would not deploy the Pershing 2 if the Soviets would dismantle their ss-20s the Soviets hoping to influence peace movements in the west counter by offering to cap missile launchers at 300 including the existing 250 British and French nuclear weapons the NATO offer was not acceptable to Moscow because it essentially required the Soviet Union to dismantle weapons that were already deployed in exchange for NATO weapons that didn't yet exist the Soviet offer was not acceptable to Nato because it left them no counter to the Soviet ss-20s neither side buds but both blame the other this was characteristic in their rhetoric both sides claimed they were still committed to detaunt but blame the other for threatening peace the Soviets were also concerned with Reagan's support for the Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI in a speech to the nation in March 1983 Reagan said I call upon the scientific Community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete SDI was intended to develop a ballistic missile defense weapon using Advanced weapons Concepts such as lasers or particle beams Reagan saw the proposal the means to free the world from the dangers of nuclear weapons but the Soviet sought as a method to protect the U.S from retaliation allowing the first strike in 1981 andropov then still headed the KGB announced to KGB agents the creation of operation Ryan which was a acronym for the Soviet words for nuclear missile strike operation Ryan was a directive for the KGB to covertly collect information regarding contingency plans for a U.S nuclear first strike this perception created a dangerous situation under the Reagan Administration the US military was regularly testing Soviet defenses U.S bomber aircraft would fly to the edge of Soviet airspace and turn around to the last minute to test Soviet radar and response times in April the Navy participated in an exercise called Fleet x83 the exercise included three U.S carrier groups operating off the coast of the Aleutian Islands in the largest Fleet exercise in the Pacific since the Second World War in addition to the normal goals of practicing actions with integrated forces fleetx83 had the mission to intentionally provoke the Soviet Union into responding so the U.S forces could study their response and tactics the Navy saw Fleet x83 is a great success they did not realize that the Soviets were on a hair trigger anticipating a U.S first strike what the U.S was seeing is a normal Cold War operation and even deterrence the Soviets in operation Ryan were perceiving as a Prelude to war in 1983 more tensions were thrown into the atmosphere of distrust on September 1st Korean Airlines flight 007 was flying from Anchorage Alaska to Seoul South Korea an error in the autopilot system caused the plane to fly over restricted Soviet airspace Soviet fighter interceptors apparently mistaking the plane for a U.S spy plane shot down the commercial aircraft with air-to-air missiles 269 passengers and crew were killed realizing the significance of their mistake the Soviet Union at first denied all knowledge of what happened to the plane the U.S sensing a propaganda Advantage released classified intelligence and communication intercepts to implicate the Soviets once they finally admitted the action the Soviets argued the plane was on a spying Mission but the US was able to leverage the incident to shore up wavering Allied support for the deployment of the Pershing 2. on October 25th an internal conflict in the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada an island of just 135 square miles it became the next flash point the island government had been overthrown by Marxist revolutionaries in 1979 and the United States saw an invitation to intervene by the organization of eastern Caribbean States as an opportunity to claim the island from Marxist rule the resulting U.S Invasion involved more than 7 000 U.S troops and the U.S is able to defeat local and Cuban forces in just four days returning the island to democratic elections the following year public approval for the invasion in the U.S was high but the Act was decried by the United Nations General Assembly U.S ambulance concluded that the island was of little consequence to the Soviet Union but that analysis was optimistic as later evidence suggests that the Soviets feared the Grenada invasion was practiced for a larger exercise of even more concern operation Ryan analyst noticed that there was a large spike in ciphered Communications between London and Washington DC following the invasion of Granada a sign that they took as evidence of an impending nuclear attack in fact Andrew Garland of the University of Nevada Las Vegas notes that what these communications were were complaints from Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II who were Furious that the United States had invaded a commonwealth Nation without either informing or involving the United Kingdom with the Soviets increasingly convinced that the US and the UK were preparing a nuclear first strike and with the U.S unaware of the extent of the Soviet concern NATO was planning in November to simulate NATO procedures during a nuclear war Abel Archer was the name for an annual NATO exercise replicating the outbreak of hostilities in Europe was a command post exercise is under test procedures more than actually moving troops Able Archer 83 had been intended to be more robust than in recent years and keeping with Reagan's goal making exercises as real as possible as a means of preparation but National Security adviser Robert McFarland realized that the action could be provocative and had limited the scope of the exercise still the exercise simulated things like ciphered communication and command procedures as a conflict escalated from conventional to nuclear these are exactly the sorts of things that project Ryan was intended to detect the Soviets began to suspect that Abel Archer was a cover to facilitate an actual first strike assuming that the spike in ciphered communication after the Invasion of Grenada represented planning for the attack the U.S and NATO remained oblivious despite several deviations from previous Able Archer exercises they did not perceive that the exercise could be perceived as a threat by the Soviets unaware of project Ryan the NATO exercise was mirroring exactly the scenario that the Soviets had assumed would lead to a preemptive nuclear strike convinced their only chance for survival was to strike before NATO could the Soviet Union readied its nuclear Arsenal for attack while CIA intelligence noticed activity at Soviet air bases the U.S did not realize the extent of the Soviet response that turns out to have been lucky as U.S commanders decided not to increase U.S alert levels Able Archer 83 ended on November 11th with NATO apparently unaware that the exercise had brought the Soviets to the brink of nuclear attack we still don't know exactly how serious the Russians took the threat or how close they came to launch while intelligence assets at the time and documents that are brilliant release since show us that the Soviets certainly took the activity far more seriously than we once realized the general consensus is still that they didn't think an attack was imminent that their finger was not really on the trigger but some historians disagree including Cold War historian and former CIA agent Dr Peter pry who argues that had Abel Archer continued even for as little as another 24 hours that the West might have unwittingly stumbled into nuclear Holocaust to this day we do not know how close the call was in the world's most dangerous year but there are other historians that argue that this was the event that changed everything Ronald Reagan was said to be very unnerved when he found out that the Soviets had taken the exercise seriously it seems to be the first time that he realized that the Soviets so mistrusted us that they thought that we would do the unthinkable and start a nuclear war he wrote in his Memoirs I became more anxious than ever to get a top Soviet leader alone in a room and tried to convince him that we had no designs on the Soviet Union and Russians had nothing to fear from us Reagan started 1984 with a softer Town saying in an address on January 16th neither we nor the Soviet Union can wish away the differences between our two societies and our philosophies but we should always remember that we do have common interests and foremost among them is to avoid war and reduce the level of arms andropov died the following February and Constantine chernyanko spent a year as general secretary he was Ill throughout turned out to be only a brief caretaker in 1985 michiel Gorbachev became General Secretary in Gorbachev Reagan and Thatcher found a man with whom Thatcher said we can do business together in 1988 Reagan and Gorbachev signed the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty which among other things resulted in the decommissioning of both the Pershing two and the ss-20 by the end of the 1980s the cassette playing Walkman had largely been replaced by the CD playing Discman and Mr Reagan against Mr Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall when you study history it sometimes is striking how major historical events can turn on seemingly tiny things a seemingly unimportant and consequential 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 16 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 strata Fortress 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 Air Force describes as unprecedented the airframe has proven to be exceptionally versatile allowing it to perform multiple roles carry an extensive array of Ordnance and to be continually upgraded it's a sign of its durability and longevity B-52s dropped nearly 40 percent 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 185 feet the B-52 is powered by eight Pratt and 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 ordinance at speeds up to 650 miles per hour and distances up to 8 800 miles without refueling with a fuel capacity of over 312 000 pounds and of course the B-52's most Central role in its career has been as a strategic bomber part of the U.S 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 a keystone of the mutually assured destruction strategy many of those bases were near the U.S Canadian borders 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 McDonald f-101b Voodoo jet fighter ready to defend U.S airspace from Attack by Soviet strategic bombers the third largest city in North Dakota with the 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 and low pressure systems and the relatively treeless Terrain on September 1st 1958 Sac established the 41 33rd 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 Cruise would fly trading 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 and the crews would study their targets in a room called The Vault becoming familiar with the target's 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 well Grand Forks Air Force Base veteran was quoted in 2016. we don't like that we're in the Cold War but we're here to make sure that if it gets hot we're ready to respond on September 16 1980 at approximately 9 pm the engine on one of those b-52h bombers on ready status caught fire as the crew Was 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 supply of jet fuel in its wing tank Witnesses described the fire as being like a blow torch 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 Rage 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 Westman 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 I felt that he already knew the answer to that question his regional office had been monitoring radio channels during the fire and overheard a code word 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 for 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 15 foot 10 inches long and weighed 2 230 pounds had a range of 710 nautical miles and was supersonic traveling at Mach 3. it carried a w-69 thermonuclear Warhead with a blast yield of between 170 and 200 kilotons meaning that each of the 12 missiles inside the burning aircraft was more than 10 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 Battle 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 Brazil 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 always quoted in the hearing transcript is 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 the right direction the approximately 26 mile per hour wind was blowing away from the fuselage meaning that the blow torch like fire was blown away from the missiles but how lucky was the Wind author Eric Schlosser noted the discussion with a crew member whose head bat 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 Westman 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 guarded 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 that if the wind had been boiling 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 battle's testimony in 1990 defense secretary Dick Cheney had the agm-69 missile removed from U.S 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 a 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 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 and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series of short Snippets of Forgotten history about 10 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that Thumbs Up Button which is there on your 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 for cotton history all you need to do is subscribe

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

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Length: 56min 47sec (3407 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023