![]() "You have just put voltage potential on your entire car." "It would be just like you taking your car battery and you touch a screwdriver to the positive terminal on the battery and you touch the frame of the car," Hicks explained in a recent interview. Hicks said the metal of the screwdriver contacted the positive side of the fuse and also the fuse's grounded metal holder, causing a short circuit that sent electricity flowing to unintended places. According to that story, it was merely the removal of the fuse with a screwdriver - not the pushing-in of the fuse - that caused the problem. Hicks arrived at the silo later and heard a simpler story from his team chief. Mountain Standard Time, "simultaneously with the making of this contact, a loud explosion occurred in the launch tube." 'Broken arrow' "At 1500 hours MST," the report says, referencing 3 p.m. Still not certain he heard a click, he pulled the fuse out a third time and pushed it back into the holder again. But there was no click, so the airman repeated the procedure. The sound of a click indicated good contact with the holder. When the fuse was re-inserted, the report says, it was supposed to click. The report says the airman was "lacking a fuse puller," so he used a screwdriver to pry the fuse from its clip. Toward the south end were several low-slung tops of underground concrete structures.Īccording to the Air Force report on the accident, one of the airmen removed a fuse as part of a check on a security alarm control box. The unremarkable-looking place consisted mostly of a flat expanse of gravel. The rectangular, north-south aligned, 1-acre silo site was surrounded by a chain-link fence that was topped with strands of barbed wire. They made the long drive and arrived at 2 p.m. Read more: 6 weapons that allow the US to strike anywhere in the worldĪt noon that Saturday, the airmen received orders to troubleshoot and repair the Lima-02 security system. The two airmen's names are redacted - as are many other names - from an Air Force report that was filed after the accident. 5, 1964, were part of a young Air Force missile corps that was responsible for launching and maintaining the missiles. The two airmen who visited the Lima-02 silo on Dec. One government agency reportedly estimated that the detonation of an early 1960s-era Minuteman warhead over Detroit would have caused 70 square miles of property destruction, 250,000 deaths, and 500,000 injuries. "That was enough," Hicks recalled, "to cause me to get dressed pretty quickly."Įach missile was tipped with a thermonuclear warhead that was many times more powerful than either of the two atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Japan during World War II. 5, 1964, he was only 20 years old, and the cryptic statement from his team chief was the only information he was given. When Hicks was sent to the accident on Dec. ![]() The report listed the accident as the nation's first involving a Minuteman missile.įurther details are reported publicly for the first time here, drawn from documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the Journal and others, and from Hicks himself, who is now 73 years old and living in Cibolo, Texas. The accident was not disclosed to the public until years later, when a government report on accidents with nuclear weapons included seven sentences about it. ![]() The courageous actions Hicks took that night and over the next several days were not publicized. The blast popped off the missile's cone - the part containing the thermonuclear warhead - and sent it on a 75-foot fall to the bottom of the 80-foot-deep silo. ![]() Hicks eventually learned that a screwdriver used by another airman caused a short circuit that resulted in an explosion. ![]() "The warhead," the team chief said, "is no longer on top of the missile." ![]()
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