The Day We Lost the H-Bomb

It’s impossible to tell if LeMay believed his own rhetoric. Some considered him a cynical opportunist, using spotty intelligence and scare tactics to build SAC into an empire at the expense of the other services. One anonymous administration spokesman told Time magazine that “Curt LeMay thinks only of SAC.” But many believed him a patriot defending his country against an ominous enemy. Most Americans assumed that the Communists were hell-bent on world domination and would like nothing better than to bomb America into a nuclear wasteland. If the United States gave them an inch or fell behind at all, they would try it.

At the conclusion of the airpower hearings, the Senate sided with LeMay. Over Eisenhower’s objections, Congress gave the Air Force an additional $928.5 million to bulk up against the Soviet threat. SAC could move its mission forward.

To counter the threat of a surprise attack, SAC started experimenting with a program called “ground alert” in November 1956. In this system, maintenance crews kept a handful of SAC bombers poised on the airstrip, filled with fuel and bombs. Flight crews lived and slept in nearby barracks. They could leave the barracks while on alert duty but never wander more than fifteen minutes away from their planes. Frequent drills kept the airmen in line. When the alarm — a blaring klaxon that could wake the dead — sounded, the crews ran to their planes at full speed, as if Curtis LeMay himself were chasing them. The first plane took off within fifteen minutes; the others followed at one-minute intervals. On October 1, 1957, ground alert became official SAC policy.

The new system came just in the nick of time. Three days later, on October 4, the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit the earth. Sputnik by itself was no threat to the United States. Barely bigger than a basketball, it contained scientific instruments to measure the density of the atmosphere. But Sputnik hadn’t climbed into orbit by itself; the Soviets had shot it up there with a rocket. And if Soviet rockets could shoot satellites into space, they could certainly shoot nuclear missiles at the United States. “Soon they will be dropping bombs on us from space like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses,” said Senator Lyndon Johnson. SAC’s new ground alert seemed like a brilliant, prescient move. By the following year, SAC had reorganized its structure to keep one third of the bomber force on alert at all times.

That same year, SAC began testing another program, called “airborne alert.” Instead of holding bombers ready on the ground, this program kept loaded SAC bombers in the air at all times, flying in prearranged orbits that approached Soviet airspace. Proponents argued that airborne alert gave SAC added security. “Any Soviet surprise attack,” wrote one reporter, “would find the ‘birds’ gone from their nests.” Airborne bombers, closer than planes on the ground to Soviet targets, also posed a more powerful deterrent. With those bombers in the sky, the Soviets would think twice before trying any funny business.

Tommy Power told Congress about the new program in 1959, after he had finished initial testing.

Airborne alert was ready to go, but SAC needed more money. “I feel strongly that we must get on with this airborne alert,” Power told Congress in February. “We must impress Mr. Khrushchev that we have it, and that he cannot strike this country with impunity.” Power’s arguments did not convince Eisenhower. It would be “futile and disastrous,” said the president, to strive for constant readiness against any Soviet attack. It was madness to sit around thinking, every minute of the day, that bombs were about to fall on Washington. Airborne alert, he implied, promoted just that type of thinking.

Eventually the two sides reached a compromise. Eisenhower gave SAC permission to start an airborne alert training program, just in case America ever needed such a system in place. On January 18, 1961, Power publicly announced that airborne alert had begun. Reports said that SAC now kept at least twelve bombers in the air at all times; the exact number remained classified. SAC named the program “Chrome Dome,” probably because most of the bombers’ flight paths arched over the Arctic Circle, drawing a cap over the top of the world. Power refused to confirm or deny if the flights carried nuclear bombs (they did), but an Air Force spokesman said that “the training is conducted under the most realistic conditions possible.” The flights were still called “indoctrination” or “training” flights because they wouldn’t actually be dropping bombs on the USSR — unless, of course, an order came through from the president, and then, in an instant, a training flight would become a bombing mission.

By the time the first Chrome Dome mission went up, LeMay had moved on. In 1957, he had been promoted to Air Force vice chief of staff. Tommy Power was now in charge of the thriving Strategic Air Command. LeMay left Power a force of 1,655 bombers, 68 bases, and 224,014 men. In his nine years at SAC, LeMay had transformed the force from a national joke into a nuclear powerhouse.

Over the next seven years, Power carried the torch through changing times. As engineers made nuclear weapons smaller and lighter and missiles more reliable, other services — especially the Navy, with its nuclear submarines — began to get a larger share of the nuclear pie. By the 1960s, the United States had a nuclear “triad” of long-range land-based missiles, manned bombers, and submarine-launched missiles. SAC controlled everything but the subs and wanted to keep it that way. But as missiles grew more sophisticated and accurate, some asked whether bombers were becoming obsolete. Robert McNamara, who became secretary of defense in 1961, was seen as a missile man, hostile to the continued reliance on manned bombers. But Power, who had circled the burning Tokyo and seen the devastating power of bombers firsthand, argued that the manned bombers, which he called the “backbone of SAC’s deterrent strength,” would always have a role in nuclear strategy.

SAC, he insisted, must continue to demonstrate its power through programs like airborne alert. In order to deter nuclear war, said Power, the Soviets had to see America’s strength and know that America stood ready to use it.

2. The Accident

At midmorning on January 17, 1966, Captain Wendorf and his crew approached their midair refueling point over southeastern Spain. In the cockpit, Wendorf and Larry Messinger piloted the plane. Twenty feet behind them, facing backward, sat two men side by side: First Lieutenant George Glesner, an electronic warfare officer in charge of defending the B-52 (and arming the nuclear bombs), and the gunner, Technical Sergeant Ronald Snyder. Between the pilots and the defensive team a short ladder led down to a cramped, windowless compartment where Major Ivens Buchanan, the radar officer, and First Lieutenant Stephen Montanus, the navigator, sat facing forward. Mike Rooney, taking a break from his copilot duties, sat in the jump seat a few feet behind Buchanan and Montanus, reading a novel called Thy Tears Might Cease, by the Irish writer Michael Farrell.

The lower compartment, where Rooney sat, was about the size of a big closet — twelve feet long, three feet wide, and barely high enough to stand up in. Crew members called it “the box”—once they were strapped in, they couldn’t tell whether it was day or night. At the back of the box crouched a chemical toilet. With the lid down and a cushion on top, it doubled as Mike Rooney’s jump seat.

Retired Chrome Dome airmen love to talk about the toilet. More precisely, they love to explain, in great detail, the proper eating strategy for long flights. Steak, bread, and hamburgers were okay; chili or anything “foreign” was off limits. The goal was to avoid having a bowel movement for the duration of the flight. This was partly out of deference to the unfortunate airmen stuck a few grim feet away from the toilet. But crews also had a custom that the first man to do his business in the “honeypot” earned the unsavory job of cleaning it once they got home.

So far, the trip had been uneventful in all respects. Wendorf, during his break, had time to nap, eat some fruitcake, and smoke a cigarette. The crew expected an easy journey back to North Carolina and needed just one final refueling to get home. The KC-135 tanker that would fill the bomber’s fuel tanks had already left the SAC airfield near Moron, Spain, and was circling in the air waiting for the bomber. When the two planes were about twenty-one miles apart, the tanker began its “rollout,” a long, curving maneuver that placed it directly in front of the bomber. Soon the bomber pilots could see the tanker about two miles in front of them and a thousand feet above. Messinger, at the B-52’s helm, began to close the distance.

Messinger was about to attempt one of the marvels of modern flight — a midair refueling. In the early days of aviation, flying long distances meant packing your plane with fuel. During its historic flight across the Atlantic, The Spirit of St. Louis carried extra fuel under the wings and a main tank so big it partially blocked Charles Lindbergh’s view. Army pilots of the early twentieth century, dreaming of long-range bombing, knew that Lindbergh’s strategy would never work for them.

Where would they put the bombs? In military lingo, planes with limited range are said to have “short legs.”