Very well done documentary on the explosion at Launch Complex 374-7 in Damascus, Arkansas in 1980.  As an ex SAC missile cop, man what a cluster.  

PBS link  

Wiki entry:

The Damascus Titan missile explosion refers to an incident where the fuel in a nuclear armed missile exploded at missile launch facility Launch Complex 374-7 in Damascus, Arkansas, on September 18–19, 1980. The facility was part of the 374th Strategic Missile Squadron at the time of the explosion.

Incident

On the evening of the 18th, at about 6:30 p.m., an airman conducting maintenance on a USAF Titan-II missile at Little Rock Air Force Base's Launch Complex 374-7 in Southside (Van Buren County) just north of town, dropped a socket from a socket wrench, which fell about 80 feet (24 m) before hitting and piercing the skin on the rocket's first-stage fuel tank, causing it to leak. The area was evacuated. This socket wrench was approximately 3 feet (90 cm) long and around 25 pounds (11 kg). The socket was about 8 pounds (3.6 kg).

At about 3:00 a.m. on September 19, 1980, the hypergolic fuel exploded. The W53 warhead landed about 100 feet (30 m) from the launch complex's entry gate; its safety features operated correctly and prevented any loss of radioactive material. One Air Force airman, SrA David Livingston (posthumously promoted to Sergeant) was killed, others were seriously injured, and the launch complex was destroyed.[1] The former launch complex was decommissioned and disassembled, and now stands on private land.[2] The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.

Popular culture

A 1988 television movie, Disaster at Silo 7, is based on this event.[3]

In September 2013, Eric Schlosser published Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.[4] It focused on the explosion, as well as other Broken Arrow incidents during the Cold War.[5][6] The New Yorker''s Louis Menand called it "excellent" and "hair-raising" and said that "Command and Control is how nonfiction should be written."[7] The book was also praised by science historian Steven Shapin in London Review of Books. It was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History.[9]

A documentary film titled Command and Control from director Robert Kenner, based on the book by Eric Schlosser, was released January 10, 2017.

Watched it last night. Kinda drew the story out too long but interesting nonetheless.

I was stationed there at the time.

What was the ignition source?

The guys that dropped the socket waited about a half hour before they told anyone. The crew was scrambling around trying to figure out why so many alarms were going off. 

Command and Control is an excellent book.

The Seattle Times Pravda had a super scary piece on this today

The fuel was hypergolic.  It ignites when the two parts combine.

Recorded it last night.  Looking forward to watching it this weekend.

If I remember right the airmen violated several safety protocols which helped cause the accident. The tool that the guy dropped was not even supposed to be inside the silo. Then for hours nobody knew what in hell was going on in the silo cause it was evacuated.

The weapon on a Titan II was 9 MTs I believe. It was an old liquid fueled system that was inherently dangerous due to the types of fuel used. If there was a good side its widely believed the accident cost Bill Clinton the next Governor's election.

I wasnt at the scene but I knew guys who were. It was a clust F###

Hydrazine leak for 9 hours?   Sounds ... interesting.

What are your personal recollections of the event?

Minuteman was a Cadillac compared to Titan.  Thank god they were finishing decommissioning them when I went in 1986.

Very little. I wish I could tell a great war story but I wasnt assigned to SAC at the time and it happened at an off base Titan II silo. There was a lot of movement off the base and we knew a major incident had happened but most of what I found out was from SAC guys who had been there. USAF kinda threw a blanket over the entire thing. It was an ongoing affair I remember that and it didnt just blow up. I do remember at the time being told we were in no danger of either a nuclear explosion or a radioactive release. Even tho LRAFB wasnt that far and we would have been vaporized.

Just watched it.

Author/producer is obviously biased against nuclear weapons.

That said, awesome cinematography and use of archival footage.

I read the book when it came out, and enjoyed it.  The author kind of went overboard on preaching about the need for more and more positive controls on nuclear weapons.  The parts about the actual incidents were very interesting.

Wow... just like the old German rockets?

For some reason this technique seemed extremely hazardous and obsolete too me... I assumed it was a relic from the very dawn of the space age...

I watched it last night.

What an amazing story.  It was very well done.  Well worth the 2 hours. 

Excellent show, saw it the other night. Very well produced documentary.

As somebody stationed here at Minot AFB, a Minuteman III and BUFF base, I'm interested in knowing more.

I know the Titan II had a much larger warhead where as the Minuteman had smaller MIRVs. Also the Minuteman used solid fuel as its propellant.

Great cover art, at least.

Liquids and a 9 MT city buster. What could go wrong?

I know Lima X-Ray could chime in this thread with far more insight on the operational side of the system, but what the documentary showed was a glimpse of what I could relate to, even though I worked Minuteman (1986-1988), not Titan.  Some observations all these year later:

Checklist, checklist, checklist.  On the security side, everything went by checklist.   Any time we set foot on a Launch Facility, we not only went by the checklist, we called out the step(s) we were doing to our Flight Security Controller via radio.   This was 30 years ago, and I can still recite the beginning of a Sit-7 from memory.  SAC missile duty did not encourage independent thought, it wanted strict adherence to performance or task protocols.  The Damascus incident appears to be the result of systems being prime for an accident, but none the less it happened due to a maintenance team that chose to use the wrong tool out of convenience.  It appears that by the time the incident was actually made known to the Missile Crew (disclosed by the maintenance team) and ran up the chain, they were in a situation that there was no checklist for. I can only imagine the reams of checklists that Missile Crews had.  For example we (Security Response Teams) were occasionally sent to sites for a site support system problem that was causing alarms in a Launch Support Building.  Once inside, I would get on the PTT phone and the crew would walk us through the checklist they were provided with to relay to us to re-start or test a generator for example.  We were only one spoke in the wheel so to speak, but the MCC owned that flight area.  It was their overall responsibility, their baby.

In the program, the squadron commander had been there for a few months and had no prior hands on experience with the system he commanded.  I believe he commented about the incident being beyond their checklists at the command level.  Some squadrons were prime for getting officers command experience.  My last squadron commander was a tanker navigator.  Not sure how often it happened, but promotions should not just reflect leadership, but prior relevant operational experience as well.

When I look back, it's amazing how much the daily operations of these weapons systems were carried out on the security, maintenance and crew side by A1C's through SSgt's and Lieutenants and Captains that were 19 to probably 25 or 26 years old.

Missile was 8 stories tall. Inspection crew went in after being docked around for hours waiting on parts. They were working right below the warhead at the top. They had a new procedure on taking a fitting loose with a torque wrench. They forgot the torque wrench in the service truck and didn't want to walk out. They used a ratchet like they use to before the new procedure came out. The snap on ratchet was messed up and it didn't hold the 8 pound socket. It fell off and fell 8 stories to the bottom. Bounced into the side of the rocket and poked a hole in the side causing the leak.

tis just a wee little warhead.  





The silo door that was blown off weighs 740 tons,  and the warhead was tossed out of the silo and into a ditch.  Both guys in the control room survived the blast,  one died at the hospital.

I have pictures somewhere of the missile,  It is a large missile.