American Experience

S29E01 Command and Control

In 1980, a frightening event unfolded at a Titan II missile facility in Damascus, Arkansas, when a near-disaster nearly set off a ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead that was 600 times stronger than the Hiroshima bomb. The crisis began when an airman, working on maintenance in the missile silo, accidentally dropped a socket from his wrench, which struck the missile and punctured it, causing a dangerous leak of highly volatile rocket fuel.