The guard checked each crewman’s line badge against his access list, then waved them inside the roped-off area. They met with the airplane’s crew chief and assistant crew chief, where they reviewed the aircraft Form 781 maintenance logbooks, accomplished a short crew briefing covering restricted area access and preflight actions, then ran through the first few steps of their “Before Boarding” and “Before Power-Off Preflight” checklists.
Two of the crewmen, each carrying one of the steel CMF containers and their helmet bag, began climbing up the long, steep ladder into the belly of the plane, followed by the other two crewmen carrying the canvas pubs bags. After a quick check to make sure both of the aft ejection seats were safetied, they piled their gear onto the upper deck, then used “monkey bars” to pull themselves up into their seats both left and right. Once they were in their seats, the second two crewmen could climb past them, crawl down a short tunnel, over the chemical toilet, and into the cockpit.
While the pilots were performing their “Power-Off Preflight” checklist, the two crewmen behind them slid one steel canister each into slots behind and beside their seats, then secured the canisters to the aircraft with steel cables and padlocks. Each CMF container had two compartments: the smaller top compartment was closed and sealed with a steel numbered trucker’s container seal, secure but easy to open and access; the bottom compartment was sealed with the same cable and padlock that secured the canister to the plane as well as a trucker’s seal—a little more difficult to open than the top compartment.
The top compartment of the CMF, or Classified Mission Folder, container held the launch authenticators, the decoding documents necessary to authenticate a launch order under the SIOP, or Single Integrated Operations Plan—the plan to fight an intercontinental nuclear war. The lower compartment, secured by a padlock as well as a steel seal to better protect the contents, held the decoding documents needed to authenticate a nuclear attack order and to prearm the nuclear weapons, the attack timing sheets, and the charts and computer data cassettes they needed to fly their attack route. The green canvas bags contained more decoding documents and the charts and computerized flight plan cassettes to fly the escape and refueling routes on the way to the Positive Control Turn-Around Point, known as the “fail-safe” point—the point where they could not pass without a valid attack execution order broadcast by the President of the United States himself.
They opened the green canvas bags and took out several red vinyl binders, paper-bound booklets, and a couple of grease pencils, stuffing each booklet into a slot or cranny around their workspace so they could have quick and easy access to it, even in the dark. They then completed their own checklists, making sure all of their equipment’s power switches were off, and plugged their oxygen masks and interphone cords into the aircraft outlets and placed the helmets over the headrests of their ejection seats, ready to go. When they were finished, they all climbed out of the crew compartment and met back outside on the ground.
They performed the walkaround inspection together, beginning at the nose gear strut and working clockwise past the nose, right side, right engine nacelles, right wing, and then into the forward bomb bay. Even though the crew had practiced this procedure regularly over the years, this was the first time all but one of them, the crew OSO, or offensive systems operator, had ever done it for real: preflight a B-1B Lancer bomber in preparation for nuclear war.
“Cripes,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Roma, the crew OSO muttered aloud. “We’re back in the big glowing smoking hole business again.” The other crew members just stood and stared. For Roma, this was like some kind of nasty dream, like the world’s worst case of deja vu. It was the middle of the Cold War all over again.
Joe Roma was an eighteen-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, not including three years in the Civil Air Patrol in high school in Corfu, New York, and four years as a full-scholarship ROTC cadet at Syracuse University—he had worn some version of an Air Force uniform for over half his life. Proudly, most of that time was not spent in a blue uniform, but in a green one—an Air Force flight suit. He had attended two years of undergraduate, advanced, and B-52 bomber combat crew training, then been assigned to a B-52 bomb wing in northern Maine. Because there was not much to do up in Loring Air Force Base, Maine, most of the time, Roma—tall, slim, dark, and athletic, but too boyish and gangly-looking to be taken seriously by the really good-looking ladies in Aroostook County, Maine—had busied himself with the intricacies of the venerable B-52 bomber.
His dedication had been rewarded with rapid advancement from R (Ready) crew status to E (Exceptional) status, then simulator operator, instructor nav, S (Select) crew status, Standardization-Evaluation Crew, then back to Castle Air Force Base for upgrade to radar navigator; then quickly through R-, E-, and S-crew status, instructor radar nav, then Stan-Eval again. In the meantime, he transferred to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, another remote assignment, and he immersed himself in career-building projects: a master’s degree in business administration, a half-dozen military schools by correspondence. He was selected for a variety of Wing and Air Division-level assignments, such as target study officer, weapons officer, command post controller, and Wing bomb-nav officer, in charge of training and outfitting the B-52 squadron navigators. Roma loved every new assignment, and the Air Force rewarded his enthusiasm and dedication with rapid promotion to major.
But nothing he’d ever done compared with his newest assignment: to be part of the initial cadre of instructors for the B-1B bomber at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas. The B-1B was everything he’d wished the B-52 could be: fast, sleek, stealthy, powerful, accurate, and reliable. The “Bone” became Roma’s new obsession. Roma, still unmarried, was promoted to lieutenant colonel in short order and eventually became chief of Stan-Eval for the B-l Combat Crew Training squadron, the first navigator ever selected to that position—before or since. Roma was then reassigned to Ellsworth Air Force Base as bomb-nav operations officer of the Strategic Warfare School, the “graduate school” for long-range bombing planners and commanders. While at the SWC, Roma studied and worked with the commander of the SWC, then-Brigadier General Terrill Samson, becoming one of Samson’s strategic bomber experts, developing strategies and tactics for employing bombers in any kind of conflict anywhere in the world. Roma was “getting great face time,” as his fellow crewdogs put it, and he was considered a shoo-in for a choice Pentagon assignment, for Air War College, perhaps even a bomber squadron of his own.
That never happened, but not because of Joe Roma. The heavy bomber in general and the B-1B bomber in particular was the new albatross around the military budget’s neck. Although the “Bone” was a far more deadly bombing platform than any other attack plane in the world, many of the bomber’s specialized systems, especially the electronic warfare system, had never been perfected; and because of high gross weight due to refitting the plane to carry cruise missiles, there were lots of restrictions on B-l flight parameters. Congress was ready to cancel the B-l, and only passing an intensive six-month operational readiness assessment saved it.
Disappointed but not dejected, Joe Roma went back to the Seventh Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base as the Wings chief of Standardization- Evaluation, spending as much time doing flight and simulator check rides as he did at his desk. Flying meant more to him than promotion or command, and he had a huge warehouse of information to pass on to the young crewpuppies. By the end of the year, all of the B-lBs were going to be in the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserves, and probably so would Joe Roma. With all of the B-52s going into retirement, the B-lBs accepted more of the long-range bombing responsibilities, including the nuclear mission, without exceeding treaty nuclear delivery vehicle restrictions.
Now, when the Wing was called to war, evaluators and instructors were no longer required—but aerial warriors were in great demand. Joe Roma asked to go back to the only place he ever really wanted to be— in the cockpit of the B-1B Lancer bomber. As a tribute to his expert
ise and knowledge, he was assigned the greenest E-status crew—top-notch flyers, but totally inexperienced in pulling alert—to be the first Ellsworth crew to begin generating a plane to get ready to go to war.
“Ted, we need a lifter, flashlight, and dental mirror,” Roma asked his crew chief. The lifter was a maintenance platform that was wheeled inside the bomb bay that lifted the crew up twelve feet in the air so they could reach the weapons. Roma opened his “plastic brains”—crewdog slang for his checklist—and reviewed the weapon settings written on the proper page in grease pencil. “Heres what we’re looking for, guys,” Roma said. “We were briefed these settings during target study. They’re easy to remember—the weapon designers were smart and made all the normal settings with green S’s, so that’s what we look for. All S’s mean the weapons are safe and they’re set correctly—retarded laydown burst, low yield, two-minute delay, no contact backup. I want each of you to use the mirrors to check the settings.”
This supersonic B-1B Lancer was rather lightly loaded. The aft end of the forward bomb bay contained a Common Strategic Rotary Launcher with eight AGM-89 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each with a 1,000-mile range and 100-kiloton nuclear warheads, five times more powerful than the weapon that exploded over Hiroshima, Japan; with terrain-comparison and satellite navigation, the cruise missiles had twenty-foot accuracy even after a three-hour low-level attack flight. The aft bomb bay contained a 3,000-gallon auxiliary fuel tank.
Once the weapons were inspected, the crew continued their walka- round inspection of the aircraft, then climbed up the boarding ladder and assumed their stations on the flight deck. A few moments later the interphone came alive as the pilots turned on battery power, followed by the interior lights when external power was applied, and the crew began their “Power-on Before Engine Start” checklists. Roma powered up his equipment, started a full cardinal heading gyro alignment on his Offensive Avionics System, loaded the mission cartridges into his navigation computers, then checked in with the Ellsworth command post: “Rush- more Control, Rushmore Zero-One, radio check.”
“Loud and clear, Zero-One,” the command post senior controller responded. “Authenticate Oscar-Mike.”
Roma knew the senior controller and smiled at the “Oscar-Mike” challenge code—OM, or Old Man, was usually reserved as a radio tribute to him. “Zero-One authenticates Charlie.”
“Loud and clear, Zero-One.” They repeated the procedure with the other UHF radio, with the secure UHF, and finally with the satellite teletype terminal.
The next step: checking the weapons. With the weapons monitoring system off, Roma checked each weapon station to be sure each weapon and each weapon release circuit was indeed off. He then turned the system on and flipped through each weapon station again, watching for green safe lights indicating each weapon was safed and had passed its continuity and connectivity self-tests with the B-lBs weapon computers. Checklist complete, he shut down the weapons-monitoring system.
Next he checked the PAL, or Permissive Action Link, the computer that would allow him to prearm the weapons. He entered a test code and received a good safe and ready indication. Once programmed with the correct prearming code transmitted to the crew by the National Command Authority—the President of the United States, along with the Secretary of Defense—the PAL would allow the crew to prearm the nuclear weapons. The PAL would allow only five incorrect prearming attempts, then automatically safe the weapons permanently. The PAL was mounted on the forward instrument panel between the OSO and DSO, and Roma got his DSO’s attention so he could visually double-check that the PAL was good. “Paul, PAL check.”
The DSO, Paul Wiegand, leaned over and checked the light indications on the PAL. “safe and ready checks.”
“Push to test,” Roma said, hitting the TEST button. All of the lights on the panel illuminated, with the safe light flashing.
“Checks.”
“PAL off,” Roma said, shutting off the system. “Arming switch lock lever safety wire.”
Wiegand looked over and saw that the safety wire to the mode switch lock lever was installed and secure. “Secure,” he responded. Because the PAL was a nuclear weapon component, protected just like a nuclear weapon itself, access to the PAL was strictly two-person control—no fewer than two persons had to be present whenever handling the PAL or any nuclear weapon or component. Additional safety was added by providing a single, physical, positive action to any attempt to prearm any nuclear weapon, such as breaking the thin steel safety wire off the lock lever before moving the lock lever over so the arming switch could be moved from safe to arm.
By this time, the navigation gyros had fully aligned, and he set the mode switch to nav. “Chris, I’m in nav, ready for engine start.”
“Defense is ready for engine start.”
“Rog,” the copilot replied. A few minutes later, the pilots started all four engines, then began their electrical, hydraulic, fuel, environmental, flight control, terrain-following computer, and autopilot checks, swept the wings back and forward, and cycled the bomb doors and rotary launcher. One of the flight-control computers flunked a mode check, so the crew chiefs were scrambling to find a spare computer to swap. It took an hour and a half before a spare was found, and another half hour to finish the checks and shut down the engines. The crew then performed the “cocking” checklist, which configured all switches and systems so the aircraft could be ready for taxi and takeoff just minutes after hitting one button.
“Control, Sortie Zero-One, code one, cocked on alert,” the copilot reported after the crew finished their checklists.
“Zero-One, control copies, cocked on alert. Assume normal alert, time two-one-zero-eight-zero-seven, authentication Oscar. Control out.”
Roma looked up the date-time group and checked the authentication code; it was correct. “Authentication checks, crew,” Roma announced. The only response was the interior lights switching off as the pilots turned off the battery switch, and they were left in the dark. As the crew climbed out of the big bomber, motored the entry hatch closed, and walked toward the squadron headquarters building, Joe Roma thought that he was being left in the dark in more ways than one.
It was after one-thirty in the morning, but Romas day was just beginning. The Wings goal was to generate four of its twenty B-1B Lancer bombers and six of its eighteen KC-135R Stratotanker aerial refueling tankers for nuclear alert within the first twelve hours, ten bombers within thirty-six hours, and sixteen planes within forty-eight hours. Crews that had just finished placing one plane on alert were immediately cycled back to begin preflighting another plane while its crews were being briefed. Roma was assigned the task of giving refresher briefings to oncoming crews on nuclear weapon preflight and handling procedures, and he also filled in giving route and target study and inventorying the CMF, or Classified Mission Folder, boxes for the crews placing aircraft on alert.
At the twelve-hour point, nine a.m. local time, Roma was in the Wing Battle Staff Room, attending the hourly battle staff meeting and the first major progress briefing of the alert force generation. The news was not good: Sortie Zero-Four was still at least thirty minutes to an hour from being ready, and it might even require an engine swap or a completely new airplane. It was no secret that the morale of the B-1B community was at an all-time low after flying hours were cut and after learning that all of the B-ls would be going to the Air National Guard or Air Force Reserves starting in October—crew members, officers, and enlisted troops alike were spending more time looking for new assignments or applying for Guard or Reserve slots.
“Aircrew response has been marginal to good overall,” Roma said when asked about how the aircrews were reacting to the recall and late- night generation. “About thirty percent response in the first hour, seventy percent in three hours—not bad when you consider the average commute time is forty minutes for the crew members that live off-base, which is about two-thirds of the force.”
“Its unacceptable,” the group commander interjected
angrily. “The crews were dogging it. ”
“I don’t think anyone was dogging it, sir,” Roma said. “It’s Friday night. We just finished a wing deployment exercise and an Air Battle Force exercise. People were out of town for the weekend, going to graduation parties, getting ready for summer vacation—this was a bolt-from- the-blue nuclear generation.”
“All right, all right,” the wing commander interrupted. “The bottom line is we have more crews than planes right now. What’s the problem?”
“The training on the SlOP-required gear and availability of spare parts for the number of planes required for alert, sir,” the chief of logistics interjected, referring to the specialized equipment needed to generate a plane for war under the Single Integrated Operations Plan. “We’re having to break into prepositioned deployment packs for spare parts and equipment. Going from zero planes available for nuclear generation to fifteen ready in just thirty-six more hours is eating up our supplies and overloading the avionics shops.”
“Besides, it’s been almost a year since we’ve moved nukes for real, sir,” the munitions maintenance chief added. “We’ve got a whole generation of troops that only have basic education and virtually no experience in special weapons.”
The strain was showing on the wing commander’s face. “No excuses, dammit,” he said, rubbing a hand over his weary face. “Our job around here is to generate planes and get ready for combat operations, and I’ll shit-can anyone who doesn’t understand that. How well we do on our generation schedule depends on the leadership abilities of the men and women in this room. I want us back on schedule before the next battle staff meeting—I hold the senior staff officers and group commanders responsible. Cancel the intelligence briefing—we’ve got a job to do out on the ramp. Dismissed.”
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