It was September of 1980, and the entire silo had been evacuated.
Like thick impenetrable fog, dangerous chemicals had rapidly taken possession
of the Damascus facility where a Titan I missile was stored.
The weapon was armed with a nuclear warhead,
and the imminent explosion had the Air Force personnel extremely worried.
With complete disregard for his own safety, Sergeant Jeffrey K. Kennedy
disobeyed orders and returned to the complex after the crew was evacuated.
He wanted to gather readings on the gauges that measured pressures on the silo.
The look on his face when he came back told the officials everything they needed to know…
The Titan I
The Martin Marietta SM-68A/HGM-25A Titan I was the first true multistage intercontinental ballistic
missile or ICBM developed by the United States. Although it was followed by more powerful and
effective rockets, the Titan I remained unique because it employed Refined Petroleum 1 or RP1,
and Liquid oxygen or LOX as its propellants while the others adopted storable fuels.
The Titan I program began in 1955 under The Martin Company as the primary contractor,
and the Air Force's Western Development Division was tasked with its development.
The missile entered operational service in 1962,
becoming a crucial nuclear deterrent alongside the Atlas missile.
Titan I had a length of 98 feet, a diameter of 10 feet, and a weight of around 110,000 pounds,
including fuel. It carried a single nuclear warhead within the megaton range, and its reentry
vehicle was an Avco Mark 4. Also, the engine used for its 1st stage was an Aerojet LR87-AJ-1 that
provided over 300,000 pounds of thrust, while the Aerojet LR91-AJ-1 was used for the 2nd stage and
provided over 80,000 pounds of thrust. Overall, the Titan had a range of over 6,300 miles.
Besides being the first ICBM, the Titan also became the first missile based in
underground silos, allowing the Air Force and its contractors to gather
valuable experience in building silos and working in vast underground bunkers.
First Incidents
The first successful Titan I launch occurred in February of 1959, with the launch of its A3 model.
Then, out of more than 40 missile launches,
two exploded due to internal failures. One of them happened on August 14, 1959,
and footage taken from the incident shows how the missile exploded before leaving its silo.
The Titan I was released almost four seconds earlier than planned and failed to build up
enough thrust, sending it back to its pad. Fortunately, it was carrying a dummy warhead.
A similar incident occurred in December of the same year,
when another Titan exploded after one pad umbilical did not detach at ignition,
leading to an explosion when the crew released the missile from its launcher mechanism.
Overall, the USAF deployed 54 Titans on operational alert from 1963 to 1965, but despite
its intercontinental range, the propellants used were difficult and dangerous to handle.
According to the National Museum of the Air Force: (QUOTE) “Super-chilled liquid oxygen
oxidizer had to be pumped aboard the missile just before launch, and complex equipment was
required to store and move this liquid. Kerosene fuel also was pumped aboard just before launch.”
Indeed, there would be numerous Titan incidents in the years to come.
Vandenberg Air Force Base
Following the successful Cape Canaveral tests of the Titan I missiles, the Strategic Air Command
and the Air Force began building new facilities to house more state-of-the-art missiles.
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was one of them.
During the early hours of December 3, 1960, the specialized crews from the Titan I manufacturer,
The Martin Company, were hard at work preparing the facilities for missile tests.
It all went accordingly, and the teams complied with all the safety check marks
before testing commenced. According to an article from ‘Atlas Obscura’ in April of 2018,
over eight tests had already failed due to minor equipment malfunctions as the day went by.
The Martin crew then initiated the procedure for liftoff a ninth time, and the objective was to
bring the missile to the point where it could be launched without initiating the actual launch.
The crew was simply required to determine if the missile could
be successfully launched in case of an emergency.
The next step was to load the rocket with an oxidizer and send
it to the surface of the nuclear-resistant silo.
The magnificent Titan I missile then slowly made its way to the top of the silo,
and the launch countdown began, but it was stopped before the signal to ignite the rocket was given.
The missile was now ready for launch, and it was time for the team to return the missile to the
silo and remove the oxidizer. However, an elevator malfunction suddenly turned the silo into hell.
Red Spaghetti
In his book ‘Titan II: A History of the Cold War Missile Program,’ author David K. Stumpf writes
that Robert Rhodus, the test conductor for the company that built the missile:
(QUOTE): “Watched in fascination as the elevator, carrying a missile fully loaded
with propellants, plummeted to the bottom of the silo.”
The tanks where the fuel and oxidizers were stored broke open and exploded,
and the entire elevator structure and the launcher went down as the workers ran for cover.
Don Smith, a retired employee that was on a crew capsule about one thousand feet away
from the explosion, recalled: (QUOTE) “It came up looking like red spaghetti. We rocked like we
were on a ship. We thought the wall was going to come in. Something drastic had happened.”
Fortunately, no crewmen were injured thanks to a second protective door that had been
recently installed. In fact, the 200-ton door that covered the silo was completely disintegrated, and
debris from the missile was scattered all around Vandenberg, some of it landing on a golf course.
The explosion also blew valves off underground tanks and led to fires that burned for hours.
Chico Missile Base
On May 28, 1962, Peter Braestrup wrote a special report for the New York
Times about another Titan I incident that occurred in Chico, California.
An Air Force major standing next to a nearly completed underground complex
for Titan I missiles at Beale Air Force Base told Braestrup:
(QUOTE) “It is rotten luck this happened. Everything was going so well.”
A gigantic crater with smoke coming out of it could be seen in the distance,
and it was the result of a Titan I that unexpectedly malfunctioned.
According to the Air Force, the accident occurred at around 7:00am on May 26 when technicians from
the Martin Company were conducting a standard routine fueling test at Chico’s Launcher One.
The crew then noticed black smoke emerging from the liquid oxygen vents next to the silo. The
safety personnel were immediately notified, and they ordered the evacuation of all workers.
Following the rush to safety, the blast doors were closed and sealed off.
While the underground personnel wondered what was happening,
a huge explosion shook the entire facility. The liquid oxygen had blown through the surface
and sent: (QUOTE) “Twisted pieces of fuel pipe hurtling 1000 feet away. It wrecked the missile
standing like a great redwood tree among a maze of pipes and cables in its 170-foot-deep silo.”
No one was seriously injured during the incident, but the disaster prompted the
Air Force to conduct a two-day inspection of four Titan I bases across the United States.
Regarding the explosion, Chief of the Air Force Major General Thomas P. Gerrity told the New
York Times: (QUOTE) “We have run hundreds of these fueling tests of Titan before without any trouble.
It is like an airplane. You fly it for months without any trouble. Then something happens.”
1980 Damascus Explosion
The Titan I program came to an end in 1965 after the missiles were retired
from service with the introduction of the more powerful Titan II.
Despite numerous incidents, the military continued using more rockets as part of its intercontinental
ballistic missile program, and even more accidents occurred with the new version.
In 1965, dozens of personnel perished after a fire started on a Titan silo in Arkansas.
Then, in 1980, a more catastrophic accident occurred at Damascus,
where a Titan II armed with a nuclear warhead exploded.
Although nuclear havoc was prevented,
one member of the crew lost his life, and over 20 more were injured.
During the incident, Sergeant Jeffrey K. Kennedy disobeyed orders and returned
to the complex after the crew was evacuated to gather pressure readings.
Equipped with a single gas mask, Kennedy emerged unharmed after a few minutes and went back into
the danger zone with Senior Airman David L. Livingston to gather additional measurements
hours later. However, they were equipped with safety suits the second time around.
The explosion occurred when the two men returned from the main entrance. Kennedy’s leg was broken
after chunks of cement hit him, and Livingston perished the next day from inhaling vapors.
Ultimately, the Titan II served from 1962 to 1987 under the authority of the Strategic Air Command.
The missiles were put on 24-hour continuous alert, but none was ever launched against Soviet threats.
The last Titan IIs were used as medium-lift space launch vehicles for NASA,
and the last one was launched in 2003 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
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