Medina Modification Center Explosion, November 13, 1963

wow friday the 13th as if 2020 needed any help but if you think that friday the 13th 2020 is too big a risk then consider 57 years ago when at the height of the cold war one of the very few facilities that was tasked with storing the american nuclear arsenal had an explosion of not just one but several nuclear devices driving many people to think according to a 2020 edition of the magazine texas monthly that the united states and the soviet union had gone to war it is history that deserves to be remembered the growth of the united states nuclear arsenal might be surprising to some in 1947 the u.s had enough electronic components for some 60 bombs but only enough enriched fissile material to make six and even as much as we had the material what we really had was bomb components the us atom bomb designs at the time were copies of the mark iii the fat man bomb that had been dropped on nagasaki on august 9 1945. these bombs were large and complex physicist j robert oppenheimer the head of the los alamos laboratory described them as still largely the haywire contraptions that were slapped together in 1945. the bomb design did not allow bombs to be stored assembled the lead acid battery is used to power the bomb's electronic components had to be periodically recharged to the neutron initiators used to kick-start the nuclear chain reaction had a limited half-life and had to be tested and often replaced and the bomb cores had to be stored separately from the explosive blocks surrounding them because the course generated heat which could melt the plastic explosives that were necessary to cause implosion and trigger the nuclear reaction simply put the bombs had to be stored in pieces and required experts to assemble them but the us thought it still needed the capability to fight a nuclear war in the post-war period we thought of our nuclear monopoly as the world guarantor of peace you'll begin to more and more can be concerned about the soviet union while we still maintain a large military we start to focus more on high-tech weapons like high-tech bombers and atomic bombs to counter the soviet union's superior numbers as that strategy shifted from depending upon conventional forces to atomic forces the us military began a program to develop nuclear storage sites around the country where nuclear components could be stored next to military bases and could be quickly deployed in case of war after the war the manhattan project a project that had developed the atom bomb was succeeded by the atomic energy commission which had responsibility for nuclear development and testing but also maintaining storing and securing the nation's nuclear weapons this was done jointly with a new organization formed in 1947 called the armed forces special weapons project or afswp this organization represented the army the navy and after its creation the air force and was involved both in training military personnel with the expertise needed to assemble the weapons and to store and stockpile the weapons so that they could be quickly brought into action in case the u.s had to engage in atomic warfare to facilitate the maintenance of ready stockpile of nuclear weapons a number of nuclear weapons storage and assembly sites were prepared with the efforts of the aec in the afswp these sites were cryptically called q sites referring to the q level of security that was required by the aec for all personnel and contractors who had access to the sites the project to develop these storage sites was called project water supply the sites were intended to be geographically dispersed both to make the most vulnerable to attack and to facilitate rapid deployment the queue areas were associated with abutting military reservations but were heavily guarded with their own security forces the national storage sites were alpha coded site k or king was medina base located on 3700 acres of land southwest of lackland air force base texas constructed between 1953 and 1955 the aec and the armed forces special weapons projects started using medina base as a weapons storage area in 1955 the site was one of 13 stored sites for nuclear weapons but in a testament to how quickly the development of weapons was occurring in 1958 the basic mission of medina-based change where it was designated a modification center for atomic weapons changes in weapons technology made the initial stockpile plan unnecessary as newer designs did not need the large infrastructure to prepare them for deployment the mission of the modification centers was to perform nuclear weapons stockpile surveillance modifications retrofits and weapon retirements the medina modification center became operational in 1959 and the aec discontinued storage of nuclear weapons so the facility would concentrate solely on weapons disassembly and modification the operation of the facility was handled by kentucky-based contractor mason and hanger the department of defense had grouped the buildings into three main compounds each surrounded by three coincentric rings of chain-link fence topped with barbed wire canine units and armed guards patrolled the grounds demilitarization involved the dismantling of nuclear weapons including the disposition of both radioactive and non-radioactive components in the burning of the high explosive components several types of buildings were constructed each built with structural elements meant to control accidents among those were about a hundred concrete and steel structures used for storage called igloos on november 13 1963 the medina modification center was in the process of retiring mark 7 nuclear bombs the mark 7 was a variable yield tactical fission bomb more than 3 000 were made and hundreds were being taken out of service at the time the facility removed the weapons cores and then the explosive shells spheres of tnt covered in detonators about the size of a beach ball were transferred to storage in the igloos awaiting destruction by incineration without their nuclear cores the devices couldn't produce a nuclear yield but the cores which weighed hundreds of pounds contained quite a lot of conventional explosives and some radiological material in the form of normal uranium and depleted uranium the shells were carried to the igloo numbered 527 by a straddle carrier a tall and wide vehicle which carried its load underneath the spheres were then to be unloaded by two contractors 36 year old louis islander senior and 23 year old floyd lutz using a forklift while the third contractor 29 year old hillary huser was outside the building keeping track of the weapons on a log a report by the division of radiological health of the u.s public health service explained that at 10 24 am huser was startled by a large crack inside the igloo similar to that occurring when a shotgun is fired and saw lutz and ellenger running towards him ellenger reported that he heard a swoosh and felt wind rushing past and let's noted a flash heard an explosion was aware of feeling grittiness in his eyes a burning of the face and a sensation of pressure on the upper portion of his body they didn't have to tell me to run user told texas monthly magazine earlier this year user went one direction and islander and lutz ran the other direction user was trying to run to the next set of igloos in order to set off an alarm he said i got about halfway and the whole thing blew up it's not clear what caused the initial spark the center for defense information simply stated while three employees were dismantling the high explosive component of the nuclear bomb it began burning spontaneously a 1964 site assessment said a spark ignited the assemblies and they began to burn uncontrollably an air force report while saying that the exact cause is unknown speculated that the accident was the result of an accidental mechanical contact between two high explosive components floyd lotz quoted in the texas monthly simply said there's no direct answers to what caused it that we know of but the effect came quickly the 1964 site report says about 45 seconds later the burning assemblies detonated setting off additional high explosive assemblies the air force report says that the igloo doors were blown from the facility in the initial stages of the blast the final result of the blast was a complete vaporization of the igloo contents a sizable crater and the removal of some rock strata below the igloo a 1998 report from the national resource defense council explained that the explosives detonated with a force of over 60 tons of tnt the first explosion set off other sub-assemblies in the igloo and those still on the carrier the igloo disappeared in a cloud of smoke and dust leaving a crater some 20 feet deep the explosion was felt throughout san antonio the 1964 report noted that the shock wave broke windows in downtown san antonio some 12 miles away and was audible 50 miles away a contemporary newspaper report said that the smoke cloud that was thrown up from the explosion was visible six miles away texas monthly magazine quoted a former student at lackland elementary school who said we thought world war iii had started and noted that the plate glass window that fronted the continental bus station in san antonio 13 miles away was blown in perhaps most surprising islander lutz and heuser all managed to escape the blast in the raining debris a spokesman for the aec told newspapers at the time three men were loading the explosive into an igloo they saw a flash and realized that something was going to explode and so they ran the 1964 site report simply said the three technicians were not seriously injured the air force report said fortunately psych personnel received no serious injuries the public health service report said that user took refuge behind a clump of bushes where for several seconds he was aware of debris falling all about a fragment of some kind struck the hard toe of one of his safety boots eilinger managed to hide in a small culvert and was struck on the back and legs by several apparently relatively soft fragments probably mostly clay while he was hit on the back of the right arm above the elbow with a missile lutz quoted in texas monthly that we were lucky enough not to be blowed to pieces their injuries were surprisingly light huser had a rupture of his left eardrum which appeared to be healing the next day lutz had a small vertical laceration above his left eyebrow and islander had bruises on his arm in the back of his legs sampling for radiological contamination began immediately and was conducted in the air as well as with soil and vegetation samples by the air force the aec and the division of occupational health and radiation control of the texas state department of health conclusions at the time concluded in summary it appears that there was no significant contamination of the area in which these samples were taken as a result of the medina base incident this was largely because the radiological material involved was not particularly dangerous although recent analysis by the air forces recommended some site remediation in the vicinity of the explosion the disaster research center at the ohio state university did an analysis of the organizational response to the accident at the time and they found that despite all the heightened tensions and awareness of the cold war there was little organizational coordination and no apparent plan and eventuality that there was say an accident at the air base that might lead to fallout over san antonio they also noted that there was a distressing communication gap that came because of slow communication response by the aec but perhaps most disturbing they found out that despite the fact that it was common knowledge that there were nuclear weapons at the air base after the explosion there was a convergence of people on the site of the explosion which is where the risk of fallout would have been greatest and which could have been disastrous had there been more nuclear material involved or that is to say that the greatest lesson perhaps to learn from the accident is don't go lookie lou at the site of nuclear accidents now you might think that since this was actually explosions of components of nuclear bombs despite the fact that they'd had nuclear cores removed that the united states would remember this accident but appears to be fairly poorly remembered in the united states except perhaps in the san antonio era and that might be because of the news cycle this happened on november 13 1963 and just over a week later the president of the united states visited san antonio flew from there to houston and then on to fort worth where he spent the night and the next day on november 22nd shots rang out as the president's motorcade passed the texas school book depository in dallas and the explosion in san antonio a week earlier was pushed out of the news and the public consciousness and became nearly forgotten history i hope you enjoyed this 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Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 249,252

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, san antonio, cold war', nuclear weapons

Id: 4doGizimjZs

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020