Hi, I’m the History Guy. I love history, and if you love history too, this is the channel for you.
When you study history it's sometimes striking how major historical events can
turn on seemingly tiny things. A seemingly unimportant, inconsequential decision might
actually end up turning the course of a major battle, or changing the direction
of politics. It's almost scary to think that human history can turn on something as random,
as small as the direction the wind blows, but it can. On September 16th 1980 there
was a strong southwesterly wind blowing across the plains of North Dakota. That
might not seem important, but in fact, it is history that deserves to be remembered.
When it comes to iconic aircraft it's hard to beat the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. First entering
service in 1955, the massive long-range heavy bomber is still in service today, and the Air
Force plans to keep the bomber in service at least until 2045, giving it an operational life that
the airforce describes as “unprecedented.” The airframe is proven to be exceptionally versatile,
allowing it to perform multiple roles, carry an extensive array of ordnance,
and to be continually upgraded. As a sign of its durability and longevity,
B-52s dropped nearly 40% of the ordnance used during Operation Desert Storm in 1990,
some 45 years after the aircraft entered service. An astounding fact given that the
last B-52 manufactured came off the assembly line in 1962. At 159 foot 4 inches long,
with a wingspan of hundred 85 feet, the B-52 is powered by eight Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines
carried in four pods, with each engine capable of producing 17,000 pounds of thrust. That allows the
B-52 to carry approximately 70,000 pounds of ordnance at speeds up to 650 miles per hour,
and distances up to 8,800 miles without refueling. With a fuel capacity of over three hundred and
twelve thousand pounds. And of course the B-52s most central role in its career has been as a
strategic bomber, part of the US nuclear arsenal designed to deter nuclear war via the concept
of mutually assured destruction. And it was because of that role, that in the late 1950s,
the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command distributed the B-52 fleet across a large number
of bases. Thus making the fleet less vulnerable to a first strike, and guaranteeing the massive
retaliation that was the keystone of the mutually assured destruction strategy. Many of those bases
were near the US-Canadian border as that offered the fastest bomber route to the Soviet Union.
One such base was Grand Forks Air Base. Located 15 miles west of the city of Grand
Forks North Dakota, Grand Forks Air Force Base was originally established as an Air
Defense Command Fighter Interceptor Base, with the 18th fighter interceptor squadron operating
the McDonnell F-101b Voodoo jet fighter, ready to defend US airspace from attack by Soviet
strategic bombers. The third largest city in North Dakota, with a 1960 population of about 35,000,
Grand Forks is located in the heart of the Red River Valley, near the forks of the Red Lake
River and the Red River of the North. The valley is particularly windy, owing to its proximity to
the polar jet stream that produces numerous high low pressure systems, and the relatively
treeless terrain. On September 1st 1958, SAC established the 4133rd Strategic Wing
at Grand Forks Air Base. It was renamed the 319th Bombardment Wing in 1962, operating B-52h bombers.
During the Cold War, strategic bombers and air refueling tankers were kept in ready alert status.
SAC crews would typically be on rotational alert duty for seven days out of a 21 day
period. While on alert, crews would fly training missions to hone their skills, but the readiness
status was so that the crews could be prepared to launch their planes on a moment's notice. Bombers
were kept fueled, armed, and ready for takeoff on alert pads, in a pattern called a Christmas Tree,
because of the herringbone shape that allowed heavy bombers to pull onto the runway as quickly
as possible. Experts argue that in the case of a nuclear strike, crews would have less than 10
minutes to get airborne. Each crew would have a target, the crews would study their targets in a
room called The Vault, becoming familiar with the targets air defense, and how to get to the target,
and assuming that you weren't shot down, how to get back home even though that home might,
in a nuclear war, no longer exist. As one Grand Forks Air Force Base veteran was quoted in 2016,
“We don’t like that we are in the Cold War. But we're here to make sure that if it gets hot,
we're ready to respond.” On September 16th 1980, at approximately 9:00 p.m.,
the engine on one of those B-52h bombers on ready status, caught fire as the crew
is preparing for takeoff. No official report on the cause of the fire has been released,
but author Eric Schlosser suggested in 2014, that the cause was a failure to replace a nut
on a fuel strainer. The crew was able to exit the plane, as the fire was limited to the engine area,
but the fire proved difficult to fight, as it was fueled by the plane's supply of jet fuel
in its wing tank. Witnesses described the fire as being like, “a blowtorch.”
The Air Force evacuated an area with a 2,000 foot radius of the fire so that the firefighters would
have room to fight, but it turned out to be a difficult blaze to fight. The fire went on
for nearly three hours. As the fire raged, North Dakota officials were put in a difficult position.
North Dakota emergency services Director Ron Affeldt complained that, “Despite it being
his job to coordinate with the Air Force on outside assistance, communications with the
base officials was poor. And he had no way to talk directly to the people on the scene.” The
mayor of Grand Forks, Bud Wessman, was put in the difficult position of trying to decide what to do
for his community. Should he order an evacuation? Should he activate the Emergency Broadcast System?
The problem was complicated by Air Force policy as the Air Force was denying to the mayor the most
important information that he would need in order to make his decision. Were there nuclear weapons
on board this aircraft? Were they at risk in the fire? As the Air Force spokesperson said at the
time, “Air Force policy is to neither confirm, nor deny, the presence of nuclear weapons.”
But Affeldt thought he already knew the answer to that question. His regional
office had been monitoring radio channels during the fire and overheard a codeword
that indicated a major accident with a nuclear weapon on board.
In fact there were nuclear weapons on the plane, although that wasn't even officially
confirmed until eight years after the fire. On board that B-52 were a dozen AGM-69 short-range
attack missiles. The idea of the short-range attack missile was to have a supersonic missile
that would launch from the bombers, and destroy air defense sites, as well as to give a standoff
capability that allowed bombers to attack targets from a distance. Built by Boeing,
the AGM-69 was fifteen foot ten inches long, and weighed two thousand two hundred and
thirty pounds, had a range of some hundred and ten nautical miles, and was supersonic,
traveling at Mach three. It carried a W-69 thermonuclear warhead, with a blast yield
of between 170 and 200 kilotons. Meaning that each of the twelve missiles inside the burning
aircraft was more than ten times as powerful as the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.
But were such missiles really at risk in a fire? That question was answered by Robert Batzel of
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in congressional testimony in 1988. “The fire could
not cause the bombs to detonate. That is it would not cause a thermonuclear explosion. Rather, a
fire could cause the conventional high explosives in the warheads to explode, which would then blow
the warheads plutonium cores into microscopic bits that would then be thrown into the atmosphere to
drift downwind.” A scenario that would have contaminated an estimated 60 square miles
of North Dakota and Minnesota, and potentially affected some 75,000 people. something that Batzel
described as, “Probably worse than Chernobyl. Breathing or ingesting the plutonium could lead
to death, tissue damage, or an increased risk of cancer. And the soils that were contaminated would
remain radioactive for 24,000 years.” In fact, the risk was particularly high for the AGM-69,
as scientists had been raising warnings for years that the high explosives in the warhead were
particularly at risk of detonation due to a fire.” That's what was quoted in the hearing transcript,
as noting that the fire in 1980, “Absolutely, would have caused the high explosives in the
warheads to detonate, had the fire reached the fuselage. High explosives, which are in those
particular warheads, would have detonated. It would have happened in that environment.” he said.
But why didn't it? Simply put, the wind was blowing in the right direction. The
approximately 26 mile-per-hour wind was blowing away from the fuselage,
meaning that the blowtorch-like fire was blown away from the missiles.
But how lucky was the wind? Author Eric Schlosser noted a discussion with a crew
member who said that, “Had the aircraft been assigned a different parking spot,
it would have been facing into the wind, blowing the fire directly towards
the fuselage and the bombs inside.” The difference that prevented a nuclear event,
probably worse than Chernobyl, was in the parking space that the aircraft was assigned.
Eventually one of the firefighters volunteered to go inside the burning plane,
and shut off the fuel supply, and the fire officially burned out when the fuel ran out
after burning for nearly three hours. Mayor Wessman decided not to evacuate Grand Forks,
reasoning that the Air Force hadn't evacuated the 10,000 personnel that were on the Air Force
Base. The fire got a little press attention at the time, largely because the Air Force
argued that there was no risk of a thermonuclear explosion. They apparently left out the risk of
nuclear contamination. For their part the Air Force insists that the fire was no big deal,
if the wind had been blowing towards the fuselage they would have fought the fire
much more aggressively. The Air Force still refuses to release details on the incident.
Another fire aboard a B-52 that was undergoing maintenance at Grand Forks
Air Force Base in 1983, caused an explosion that killed five Airmen,
although the Air Force says that no nuclear weapons were aboard.
As a result of Batzel’s testimony in 1990, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had the AGM-69
missile removed from US aircraft because of the risk of what could happen in the case of an
accidental fire. The weapon was retired in 1993. Newer nuclear warheads are safer, in that they
use high explosives that are less vulnerable to fire, and most of them include a safety mechanism
called a Fire Resistant Pit, that's designed to reduce the risk of radiation contamination in
case the missile does accidentally “cook off.” So how close were we really in September of 1980 to
radiating 60 square miles of North Dakota and Minnesota? Well, a former vice president of
the Sandia nuclear test lab said, “It was one of the riskier incidents that we faced.” Our
nuclear weapons do have lots of safeguards, and no one has ever died as a result of an
accidental explosion of an american nuclear weapon. But as author Eric Schlosser notes,
“Nuclear weapons are just machines, and no one has yet invented a perfect machine. But
when all else fails, we can continue to hope that the wind will always be in our favor.”
I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed my series of short snippets of forgotten history,
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