I watched the documentary and it gave me the impression that they were
saying it was just dumb luck that the warhead didn't detonate. That seems
very misleading to me. As I understand it, the warhead is only armed as one
of the last steps before launch. So that warhead was not armed and the
chance of it detonating was negligible. But I imagine all the details are
still very classified so I don't know what the real risk of detonation was.
The documentary struck me as a hatchet job against the "military-industrial
complex" and very sympathetic to the maintenance crew who apparently didn't
follow proper procedure.
As for SAC Generals being mostly pilots and not missileers at that time,
that's true. They probably had a pretty poor understanding of the technical
aspects of the missiles themselves (especially liquid-fueled missiles).
On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 2:52 PM, Pierce Nichols <piercenichols@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
My interpretation was that the problem isn't explosive safety but
electrical safety in the arming/firing circuits, especially on earlier
bombs.
-p
On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 8:51 AM, James Padfield <james.padfield@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 17 January 2017 at 06:31, Pierce Nichols <piercenichols@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I've read the book, but haven't seen the film. My biggest takeaway fromthe
book is that nuclear weapons typically pose a much more seriouspractical
threat to the nations that build and possess them than they do to anyoneor
else. The fact that no nuclear weapons have ever detonated by accident
through misuse is an incredible run of luck, because it sure as hellwasn't
by design. Back to your questions...
Perhaps getting a little off-topic here....
I am not so sure I agree. I used to teach a (Masters-level) course on
nuclear weapons (in particular focusing on the explosives and the
explosive train). The assignment I used to set the students was to
research and present on a nuclear weapon accident. Naturally the
Titan II accident at Titusville, along with several others,
particularly the B52 crashes at Thule in Greenland and at Palomares in
Spain, came up regularly. One of the things that I took away from it
every year was that actually it was really difficult to get a nuclear
weapon to detonate unintentionally.
Certainly there were a number of incidents where the explosive
deflagrated violently (or possibly even detonated) and spread
radioactive material all over the place, but to get it to "properly"
go off needs simultaneous detonation of all of the detonators, no?
That's just my take on it. I'm not a supporter of nuclear weapons at
all BTW, if I was in charge we (the UK that is) would unilaterally
disarm. But my view is that an accidental, unintentional "high order"
nuclear event is extremely unlikely.
James
