The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes, and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History

by Barbara Moran

  The earliest attempts at midair refueling were just stunts—a daredevil “wing walker” crawling onto the top wing of a biplane with a can of gasoline strapped to his back, leaping onto the wing of a passing plane, and pouring the sloshing gas into the fuel tank. After World War I, the idea stumbled forward for a few decades but never really caught on. Designers found other ways to make planes fly farther, such as larger fuel tanks, more efficient engines, and lighter materials. But with the rise of the Strategic Air Command, midair refueling suddenly became crucial. When Curtis LeMay took over SAC in 1948, he had hundreds of bombers under his command, but none that could take off from America with nuclear bombs, drop them in the heart of the USSR, and get back to safety. All his war plans required planes to attack the Soviet Union from forward bases, mostly in Europe and the Pacific. Analysts pointed out that any forward base within striking distance of the Soviet Union was also vulnerable to Soviet attack. What SAC really needed was a way to fly from the United States to the USSR and back without having to land for gas. By the early 1950s, midair refueling was a SAC priority.

  SAC tried a number of refueling methods and tanker-bomber combinations, but each had its shortcomings. One of the biggest problems was speed matching. In 1951, SAC started flying a piston-engine tanker called the KC-97. SAC paired this slow tanker, which had a maximum speed of only 375 mph, with the B-47 jet bomber, which could fly up to 600 mph. Both planes, when linked for refueling, had to fly at exactly the same speed, slowing the bomber dangerously close to a stall. To avoid this sticky situation, pilots invented a daring maneuver: the two planes linked at a high altitude and then dove in tandem so the less powerful tanker could match the jet bomber's speed. This technique was imperfect, to say the least, and SAC pilots eagerly awaited jet-to-jet refueling. In 1957, they finally got it. On the receiving end was the B-52. On the tanker side was the KC-135 Stratotanker, equipped with a Boeing innovation called the flying boom. In 1966, the KC-135 and its flying boom were the state of the art in midair refueling, and they remain so today.

  The boom is an aluminum tube 33 feet, 8 inches long and about 2 feet in diameter. The far end is bulbous, giving the contraption the look of a giant metal Q-tip. Near the tip, two four-foot wings stick off either side of the boom. These wings were Boeing's big innovation—“ruddervators” that allow the boom operator to fly the pipe into position, a bit like sticking your hand out the window of a moving car and swimming your fingers up and down. Tucked inside the boom is a 12-foot, 3-inch telescoping nozzle that shoots in and out at the boom operator's command. The fuel travels through the nozzle to the receiving plane.

  To prepare for refueling, a boom operator, or “boomer,” walks to the back of the KC-135 and hops down into a small, coffin-shaped room called the boom pod. The pod is about three feet across, three feet high, and ten feet long. At the end of the pod, giving a view out the back, is a window about three feet wide and two feet high. On both sides of this main window are small side windows, and directly below it is an instrument panel. A long, padded cushion, shaped a bit like a fully reclined dentist's chair, fills the rest of the pod. The boomer lies on this cushion stomach down, hands on the controls, looking out the back window.

  The job of boom operator is widely regarded as the best enlisted job in the Air Force, because it's challenging and well paid and earns a lot of respect. “In what other job,” runs a popular joke among boomers, “do you get two officers to drive you to work?” (Pilots usually reply that the boomer has it easy, because “he gets to lie down on the job and pass gas.”)

  To hook up, the tanker holds its position as the receiving plane slowly approaches from behind and below. The boomer extends the telescoping nozzle about ten feet out the end of the boom and watches the other plane approach. (Human depth perception falls off after about twenty feet—to the untrained eye, the ten-foot nozzle looks as if it extends a foot or less.) The boomer guides the receiving plane toward the boom by lights on the tanker's belly, shining a steady “F” for “forward” until it hovers about ten feet away. The receiving plane crawls closer at about one foot per second, making sure its large bow wave doesn't knock the tanker out of position.

  The receiving plane finally stops closing the gap about two feet from the end of the nozzle and “parks” it in the air, exactly matching the tanker's speed and heading. The boomer lines up the boom with the tiny, four-inch hole in the roof of the receiving plane. Then, when the boom and the hole are aligned, the boomer presses a button and the last two feet of the nozzle shoot out the end of the boom and slap into the hole. It looks and sounds like a giant iguana shooting its tongue out to snag a fly. The nozzle locks into place, and the gas begins to pump.

  After the “thwock” of the connection, the tanker's belly lights glow a steady green if the receiving plane is correctly situated. The boom can swing in a circle about 20 degrees up, 40 degrees down, and 10 degrees left and right. The receiving plane must fly within this cone-shaped “envelope” to stay connected to the boom.

  Pumping the gas is a complicated job, and it falls to the tanker's copilot. Offloading 7,500 gallons of fuel can drastically alter the tanker's center of gravity, unless the copilot continually monitors and regulates the fuel levels in each tank. Pumps connect the KC-135's ten fuel tanks, allowing the copilot to shuttle fuel among them and keep the plane on an even keel.

  It's a balancing act, and there's plenty that can go wrong. If the tanker's pumps go haywire and pump with too much pressure, they can blow the receiving plane backward off the boom. If the two planes disconnect too quickly, the tanker can spray jet fuel all over the receiver's windshield, creating a smeary mess. Or the two planes could collide, causing everything from a crunched boom to a fiery crash. Refueling gets more dangerous when bad weather hits, or when a tired or inexperienced pilot is flying the receiving plane. Even under ideal conditions, things can quickly go awry.

  On January 17, 1966, Wendorf's bomber would refuel over the scrubby hills between the villages of Cuevas and Palomares, in what was known as the Saddle Rock Refueling Area. Saddle Rock was one of the best places in the world for midair refueling, as the dry desert air kept the sky bright and clear and there were no busy cities or airports below. Wendorf liked refuelings—they were an interesting break from the long and tedious flights where he spent most of his time “boring holes” through empty space. But Wendorf had already handled one refueling on this trip, and as a courtesy common on such flights, he asked Messinger to take the second. For Messinger, refueling was one of his least favorite parts of the job. Unlike Wendorf, Messinger hated flying the B-52. “It was a dog,” he said. “No fun to fly and hard to work. It was like driving a Mack truck.” B-52 pilots say that flying the plane is challenging because it is relatively unresponsive. “First you tell the plane to turn, then it thinks about it for a minute, then it makes the turn,” said one veteran B-52 pilot. “And once it goes, it doesn't want to stop.”

  Refueling any plane requires the pilot to make continuous, minute adjustments. Accordingly, refueling can be one of the toughest things B-52 pilots have to do. They rely on little tricks to align themselves correctly with the tanker. For instance, when a small black UHF antenna on the tanker's belly appears to line up with a certain white stripe, the bomber is at the proper 30-degree angle for receiving fuel. Once connected, if the bomber's copilot can see the boomer's face through a certain high corner window, the B-52 is flying safely inside the envelope.

  Throughout the approach and refueling, Messinger would have to keep his right hand on the eight throttles and his left hand on the yoke, both moving constantly. He couldn't take his eyes off the tanker plane for a second. Because of the danger, both crews wore full safety gear—helmet, gloves, and parachute—for the entire rendezvous and fuel exchange. The whole process normally took thirty minutes to an hour. Even with two decades of flying under his belt, Messinger still found refueling a sticky business. By the end, he was usually drenched with sweat.

  Pilots usually refer
to the B-52 by the nickname “BUFF.” Depending on whom you ask, this stands for either “Big Ugly Flying Fellow” or, less politely, “Big Ugly Fat Fucker.” The B-52 entered the fleet in 1955, underwent multiple modifications, and by 1966 was the workhorse of SAC's bomber force. The “ugly” bit notwithstanding, most pilots regard the BUFF with fond nostalgia—a dependable old bird that always got you home.

  A B-52 is the size of a Boeing 707, with elegant wings, tapered and graceful as a hawk's, stretching ninety feet from top to tip. When the plane is sitting on the ground, the wings, laden with fuel tanks and four engines each, droop almost to the tarmac. They would drag on the ground if not for the small wheels on each wingtip. Once the plane gets moving, the wings rise. With a seventeen-foot deflection in either direction, they can move seventeen feet upward and seventeen feet downward. As a result, the wings can “flap” up to thirty-four feet during turbulence.

  Saving weight was a major issue for the B-52. When they built the plane, pilots say, they crammed it full of gas and bombs and threw some people in as an afterthought. The G model that Wendorf and Messinger flew had a takeoff weight of 488,000 pounds, almost 40,000 pounds heavier than previous models, even though the designers had lopped nearly eight feet off the horizontal stabilizer. Yet the engines offered barely more thrust. During the Cold War, SAC stuffed the G models so full of bombs and fuel that they usually topped the takeoff weight sitting in the chocks. To help the plane take off, engineers devised a technique called “water augmenting” the engines, pushing the limits of technology in pursuit of SAC's Cold War mission.

  During takeoff, B-52 pilots injected 10,000 pounds of water into the back sections of each engine. The water cooled the engine blades, allowing them to spin faster without melting or disintegrating. The water also added mass to the exhaust, creating more lift. Often the B-52 remained well above its takeoff weight as it zoomed down the runway. But during the trip, the plane consumed 4,000 to 5,000 pounds of fuel and 10,000 pounds of water. That weight loss, along with the extra 2,550 pounds of thrust, allowed the bomber to crawl into the sky.

  The water-augmented thrust lasted exactly ten seconds. When the airborne plane reached about a thousand feet, it lost power and took a sudden dip. The dip usually caused utter panic in first-time pilots, much to the amusement of old-timers.

  At 10:20 a.m. on January 17, 1966, the sky in Saddle Rock shone a bright, clear blue. The bomber and tanker cut their speed and began their approach. In the B-52, Messinger sat on the left, in the pilot's seat; Wendorf sat in the copilot's seat to the right. Rooney was downstairs reading. The B-52 was 31,000 feet in the air and about 150 feet below the tanker when Messinger sensed that something was wrong.

  “We came in behind the tanker. We were a little bit fast, and we started to overrun him a little bit,” Messinger said. “There is a procedure they have in refueling where if the boom operator feels that you're getting too close and it's a dangerous situation, he will call, ‘Breakaway, breakaway, breakaway.’” Messinger remembers overrunning the tanker a “wee bit” but nothing serious. “There was no call for breakaway, so we didn't see anything dangerous about the situation,” he said. “But all of a sudden, all hell seemed to break loose.”

  What happened next is disputed. Wendorf says he still had his eye on the tanker when he heard an explosion coming from the back of the B-52. The plane pitched down and to the left. Fire and debris shot into the cockpit, and the plane began to come apart.

  The other pilots agree that the accident began with an explosion in the back of the B-52. But the official accident report tells a different story. Investigators concluded that the B-52 overran the KC-135 and then pitched upward and rammed the tanker. The collision ripped the tanker's belly open, spilling jet fuel through the plane, onto the bomber, and into the air. A fireball quickly engulfed both planes.

  Rooney and Wendorf suspect that fatigue failure—a problem in the B-52—caused a portion of the tail section to break off. Flying debris sparked an explosion in one of the gas tanks, and the plane came apart. After the initial explosion, the bomber may have rammed the tanker—everything happened so quickly that the pilots can't be sure. But they insist that the explosion came first and that it came from the back of the bomber.

  We may never know conclusively whether a collision or an explosion triggered the accident. After a crash, it is Air Force custom to bury the wreckage. Because this accident occurred on foreign soil, SAC dumped the debris into the ocean. The one surviving member of the investigation board has refused to speak publicly about the accident.

  Regardless of how it started, the first explosion grew into a massive fireball that enveloped the KC-135 tanker. The tanker had no ejection seats; the four men aboard were incinerated. More explosions began to rip both planes into large chunks and flaming fragments, flinging four hydrogen bombs into the sky.

  In the cockpit of the B-52, the force of the explosion pitched Wendorf forward. He hit his face on the steering column and blacked out for a few seconds. When he came to, the cockpit was hot. The ejection hatch next to him had been blown, and Messinger and his seat were gone. The plane was tumbling downward, and the excruciating g-forces crushed Wendorf into his seat. He was bent over and unable to move, his left hand stuck, immobile, on the throttle.

  “To eject from a plane,” Wendorf said, “you have to be upright in your seat, with your back straight, elbows in, and your feet together. If you are not within the confines of your seat, you are going to lose whatever is hanging out there.” Wendorf remembers taking a long look at his left arm, stuck on the throttle. He felt as if he had all the time in the world to make a decision, and finally he did. “I knew I was going to lose my arm,” he said. “But I thought it was better to lose that than lose everything.” With intense effort, he forced his right hand to pull the ejection trigger on the arm of his seat and shot into the sky.

  Rooney, sitting in the lower compartment with his nose buried in his book, had removed his gloves to better turn the pages. He heard the explosion and looked up. Through the hatch he saw fire and debris shooting forward from the back of the plane. The gunner and the electronic warfare officer, sitting just to the rear of the hatch, were probably killed instantly. Buchanan, in the lower compartment with Rooney, turned around to see what was going on. Rooney gave him a thumbs-down, signaling that he should eject. Buchanan pulled the ejection handle and shot down out of the plane. His ejection seat, designed to automatically separate from him and activate the parachute, didn't work. He raced toward the ground stuck in his seat, his parachute stubbornly shut. He reached back and started to haul his chute out of the pack, foot by foot. It finally snapped open just before he hit. He crashed into the ground, still trapped in his seat, and survived with major burns and a broken back.

  As Rooney unbuckled himself, the plane pitched violently to the left, flinging him into the radar with such force that his helmet split. He crumpled, badly stunned, as the plummeting plane careened into a left-handed spin. Montanus ejected. His ejection seat, like Buchanan's, malfunctioned. Montanus didn't make it.

  Rooney was now the only living person left in the plane. A few feet away gaped the hole in the floor where Buchanan and Montanus had been sitting. The g-forces crushed Rooney to the floor, just as they had pinned Wendorf to his seat. Barely able to move, he looked out the hole at the brown earth and blue sky. The hole was only a few feet away, but it seemed an impossible distance. “I'm saying to myself, either I get out of here or I'm going to die,” Rooney recalled. He dragged himself across the wall toward the hole. He reached the hatch and grabbed its sharp edge, giving his gloveless hands a vicious slice. Pulling himself halfway out, he stuck there, pinned in place by the fierce wind. Then the plane shifted and suddenly he was free, hurling through the hole and into the sky.

  Rooney tumbled through the air as hot chunks of debris hissed by. A flaming engine pod passed so close that it singed the hair off his arms and neck. When he was clear of the disintegrating plane, he pulled his rip c
ord. As his chute caught the wind and floated him gently over the water, he pulled his gloves over his cold, bleeding hands and inflated his life vest. He splashed down about three miles out to sea. He unstrapped a Buck knife from his boot and cut himself free from his parachute. Then, bobbing in the waves, he prayed for help.

  Charles Wendorf was knocked unconscious when he ejected from the plane and woke with a jerk when his parachute opened automatically at 14,000 feet. With a sudden burst of cheer, he realized that he was still alive, with his left arm intact. He took stock of the situation: though happily still attached, his left arm seemed badly broken, with a bone sticking out of the wrist. His helmet was gone, and there was a bloody tear on his left leg where a pocket used to be. With a shock of dismay, Wendorf realized that the pocket had held his wallet. “Shoot,” he remembers thinking, “now I'm going to have to get a new driver's license.” Then he had another realization—his parachute didn't seem to be working so well. And he smelled smoke.

  Looking up, Wendorf put it all together. Part of his chute was on fire, and the rest was tangled and flapping wildly. He saw his boxy survival kit caught in the lines, preventing the chute from opening fully. “I tried to reach up with my left arm, but it wasn't working,” he said. “So I reached up with my right arm and shook out the lines.” A few shakes put out the fire and untangled the lines. The parachute opened and slowed his fall. Wendorf breathed a bit easier.