up over 150 feet plus the height of the tanker truck. It’s a physical impossibility to suck water more than about thirty-two feet.”
Haase chuckled, “You mean you gotta blow, not suck. I always heard blow was a figure of speech.”
Dave laughed along with the others. At least, the colonel had a sense of humor. He went on to explain that three, fifteen horse power submersible positive displacement pumps would do the job. “As a matter of fact, you might want to pump up the water and then mix the HTC in the tanker. Then just let some of the water fall back down a hose to the bottom of the silo to insure good mixing and to get into the cracks and voids down there.”
Haase swung around and ordered Sergeant Mitchell to make it so.
They were mixing and pumping water by late that afternoon. Colonel Haase had some positive information to pass on to the generals in Omaha and the state EPA. Dave had come through with flying colors on his first engineering challenge and he impressed the boss.
CHAPTER 2
The Broadside of a Barn
Dave walked into the office Monday morning and was immediately whisked off to the conference room by Chief Master Sergeant Bowls. There was a commotion for sure. Colonel Haase and Bill Green were in a heated discussion over something. Normally you don’t see a full bird, especially the Wing King, and a GS-14, going toe to toe. But Bill was standing his ground and not backing down. Lieutenant Sheridan started to catch on to the gist of the conversation.
The colonel asked, “Bill, what do you mean when you say that we couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn? Do you mean that all fifty-four birds are pointing in the wrong direction? You’re crazy!”
“No, sir, but it is very simple,” Bill responded coolly. “Every silo that was aligned for targeting, and was calibrated when the standby generator was running, now has a built-in error. It is simple thermodynamics. Let me explain. The exhaust gas from the generators runs directly under the collimator room on level two of the silo. The huge chunk of concrete and steel that the collimator sits on collects the heat from the exhaust. Then all that concrete and steel expands. Even if it is by only a quarter inch or so, this makes for a huge targeting error.”
The colonel’s lip curled up a bit. “Okay, hold it right there. This conversation is over. This conference room is not cleared for discussions this sensitive.”
Haase picked up the phone and punched in the CCC, the Combat Control Center. “I’m bringing my engineering staff over in ten minutes, make the SCIF room available.” This was the Secure Communications & Intelligence Facility.
Haase, Bill, Sheridan, and both Chiefs walked out of the HQ Building and down the road to the CCC. The colonel coded in and signed in the rest under his escort. He pointed to the SCIF room. Everyone crammed themselves in around the conference table and sat down.
“Okay, Bill, how’d you figure this out?” Haase asked. “If you’re right, then thirty percent of our nuclear capability is sitting out there pointing at who knows what!”
Bill stated that he figured it out when they were doing work on a blast valve overhaul project at complex 374-5. The silo exhaust air shaft has a valve that protects it from an outside blast wave. Any explosion topside would simply push the blast valve shut and the overpressure would then be routed through and around the delay piping to dampen the shock. As might be expected, the tolerances on the actuators and seals associated with this critical valve are very tight. When putting things back together after chrome plating the components, nothing seemed to fit. The dimensions were triple checked. However, nothing lined up. It had to be a misalignment of the silo structure itself.
Bill explained that when surveying equipment was brought out to the Site, they needed to establish a baseline or reference to measure the blast valve housing alignment. The steel plate on the collimator shaft was a known benchmark. After all, it was used for targeting the ICBM. Its exact location on Earth was known down to a gnat’s ass.
During the process of using a theodolite to shoot their measurements from the collimator room, the Launch Control Center radioed Bill and notified him that they were about to fire up the standby generator. The generator is run for eight hours a week to ensure its operational capability. The standby generator is a critical piece of launch equipment. Bill acknowledged the transmission from the LCC. The generator kicked on and then the clicking sounds were heard a few minutes later as the motor control center relays and switching gear transferred site power from commercial over to standby.
Bill explained that when he went back to taking his measurements after about three hours it was getting a little warm in the collimator room. This was expected and understood. After all, they were sitting over the exhaust pipe and water jacket of the generator. However, what wasn’t expected was that when he took a theodolite reading from his surveying equipment it completely missed its mark. It was a full half inch off. The implications immediately sunk in. The bench mark was not a fixed stable platform! This could lead to alignment and targeting errors when performing targeting sets!
Haase absorbed all of this. He knew Bill was right. He calmly stated, “All right Bill, you’ve convinced me. Now we are going to punch up SAC HQ and you’re going to explain it all over to the battle staff.”
Haase punched up SAC HQ on the STU-II. The STU-II is a special telephone instrument that can be switched to a secure mode for discussion of classified information. The abbreviation STU-II stands for Secure Telephone Unit-2nd generation.
If a person needs to discuss classified information, you can use the STU-II in non-secure mode to place a call to another party who also has a STU-II. After the connection is made, you ask the party receiving the call to “go secure.” You and the other party then put your crypto-ignition keys (CIKs) into the phone terminal, turn them on and press the SECURE button. It may take about fifteen seconds for the secure connection to be established. He then punched up the speaker phone.
After Bill and Haase explained the situation to the battle staff, both sides of the conversation went quiet for a minute. Haase had to ask if there was anyone on the other end. After a few seconds the word came back.
The topic was closed for discussion and any mention of it would be a breach of national security. Besides, planned upgrades in the guidance package would fix the problem.
Lieutenant Sheridan spent the next couple of years modifying the launch complexes and upgrading the guidance package for the Titan II ICBMs.
As it turned out, one of the best kept secrets of the cold war was that the Russians and the US could not hit the broad side of a barn with their land based ICBMs. Several of the assumptions and constants taken into consideration in the targeting algorithm were in error.
The fact that most of our ICBM force would not have hit the broadside of a barn during the cold war might startle some. However, accuracy is a relevant term when it comes to nukes. When you’re talking about a ten megaton nuclear war head (the largest in the US inventory at the time) being close means taking out an entire city such as Moscow or only half the city.
The ol’ SAC adage of “Nuke them until they glow and then strafe them at night” had some ring of truth to it.
The funny thing about targeting errors is that the same thing happened as artillery became more powerful and ranges increased to over twenty miles. The simplistic parabolic trajectory calculations no longer applied. The projectiles were actually following a suborbital path. This path was elliptical and must take into account the curvature of the Earth.
By World War II, there was a demand for more accurate calculations to improve accuracy. Rooms full of humans were employed in computing artillery trajectories, and the result was unacceptable error. A variety of computing research projects were undertaken at Princeton University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania. These resulted in room-size computers such as the Mark-I through Mark-IV, and the ENIAC. All of which used vacuum tubes. The vacuum tube machines were erroneous. Tubes were always burning out or their response drifted frequently. This consumed a huge amount of power and generated a large amount of heat. And, they were slow.