1620 Wednesday, 23 September 1987
509th Bomb Wing Nuclear Alert Facility
Pease Air Force Base, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Confidence comes from discipline and training.
—ROBERT KIYOSAKI, AMERICAN BUSINESSMAN AND AUTHOR
It’s absolutely true that unless you can instill discipline upon yourself, you will never be able to lead others.
—ZIG ZIGLAR, AUTHOR AND MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER
Pease Air Force Base’s Durham Street ended with a large, fenced-in concrete apron. Signs stating “Use of deadly force is authorized” hung on the fence every thirty feet. In an underground concrete bunker, the crew lounge looked west through two large picture windows. Nine drive-through shelters covered six FB-111 bombers we called “FBs.” Like their F-111 fighter-bomber siblings, the wings could move forward and backward during flight. FBs were designed for one thing: flying low and fast with nukes. FBs carried AGM-69 short-range attack missiles, or SRAMs, giving them the ability to launch nuclear warheads one hundred miles away from Soviet targets. B61 nuclear bombs are easily recognizable by their silver finish and maroon nose cones. Aircrews call B61s “dial a yields,” as they can crank up the power of the nuclear blast from the cockpit. A handful of alert FBs carried only SRAMs. KC-135s and FBs sat side by side in a large area called the Alert Facility. These aircraft of Armageddon go from sitting asleep to airborne in minutes, cold-starting their engines with explosive cartridges that belched thick black smoke as they spun the turbine blades to life.
None of us ever forgets the whooshing sound of a cart start and the smell of gunpowder in the air. Starting the engines is the easy part. Getting airborne concerned us all. Tanker pilots wondered whether the aircraft could get off the ground carrying 173,000 pounds of fuel and 5,561 pounds of water. Taxiing tankers creak and groan at emergency war order (EWO) maximum takeoff weights of nearly 288,500 pounds. If the klaxon went off, twelve heavy aircraft made a left turn, passed through a wide hole in the chain-link security fence called “the Throat,” and moved onto the active runway. Two weeks in September 1987 were different, however: four additional bombers and five supporting KC-135s were generated one morning. Each Alert Facility parking space was full, so six aircraft parked in the runway 16 hammerhead, a large concrete parking area at the airfield’s north end.
On Friday 18 September, the 509th Bomb Wing command post received a coded message from SAC headquarters implementing runway alert. Six aircrews drove dark-blue Air Force six-pack trucks to their aircraft, started their engines, and taxied out through the Throat to the runway 16 hammerhead. Once positioned in the hammerhead, the aircrews shut down their engines, and the explosive start cartridges were reinstalled. The entire end of runway 16 became a temporary Nuclear Alert Facility, with the same use-of-deadly-force authorization. People behind the perimeter fence looked down at us from Arboretum Drive. What a spectacle: nuclear weapons out in the open.
Each morning maintenance crews made sure all the jets were ready to respond should execution messages for SAC’s Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) arrive. Planners briefed us before we went out to the jets on what characters each coded launch message should contain. On Saturday morning, another message from Offutt restricted all alert aircrews inside the facility and all six runway alert sorties to cockpit alert, one crewmember on a headset at all times. My crew took turns listening every three hours for additional messages. Spike, my aircraft commander, Nav Gorney, our navigator, and Tommy, our boom operator, lay on the troop seats in the cargo compartment trying to sleep. I was in the copilot seat, headset over one ear, listening to the command radio. I clipped my grease pencil to the open sliding window’s whiteboard. Looking down at TC, the pilot of FB-111 sortie 03 and its two and a half megatons of thermonuclear attitude adjustment, I could see that he was bored too. His raised left hand and extended middle digit signaled his silent protest: “Cockpit alert sucks!” Our terrible experience was caused by one thing: Soviet submarines armed with nuclear missiles on patrol in the Atlantic Ocean.
Soviet Yankee Notch class submarine K-423 left the Kola Peninsula in June armed with SS-N-21 Sampson cruise missiles capable of hitting any target east of the Mississippi River. Two other Soviet Delta III class subs carried sixteen intercontinental ballistic missiles, each armed with three to seven nuclear reentry warheads capable of hitting targets east of the Rockies. Seventy-two nuclear weapons in three subs were aimed at military and commercial targets across America—fifteen- to thirty-minute missile flight times were all that separated survival from frying in a nuclear blast.
At 1609 Sunday afternoon, K-423 opened its cruise missile doors. Fifteen miles southwest of K-423, Trident 924, a Navy P-3 Orion sub hunter, picked up the sound of launch tubes flooding. The Navy’s Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) line stretching across the Atlantic Ocean confirmed Trident 924’s worst fears—a Soviet nuclear boomer boat was opening its doors. The USNS Invincible’s surveillance towed-array sensor system (SURTASS) also heard the Yankee Notch missile doors open and the tubes flood. Shortly after K-423 opened its doors, Navy surveillance heard the sound of both the Delta III subs’ missile hatches begin systematically unlocking and flooding, two at a time. The northeastern United States had just received its fifteen-minute warning: missiles would impact the US in a quarter of an hour.
“For Alert Force! For Alert Force! Klaxon! Klaxon! Klaxon!”
BRIMSTONE, Pease’s command post, was still decoding the message but wanted the force to be ready for takeoff. Spike jumped into his seat and called for the starting-engines and before-taxi checklists. Nav Gorney sat behind me, waiting for the entire emergency action message from BRIMSTONE. I wrote the message on my sliding window as Spike buckled his seat belts. My finger flicked a tab open to the start-engines checklist page.
“Battery-power switch emergency.”
Spike replied, “Battery power switch is emergency!”
I continued, “Parking brakes set!”
“Brakes are set, Pilot!”
“Reserve brake pressure check!”
“On . . . Set . . . pressure checked, Pilot!”
“Check with ground, ready to start engines!”
“Ground, Pilot—clear me fore and aft on all four engines.”
Hurry . . . we had to hurry. Nuclear weapons would impact in the next fifteen minutes. It takes a third of that time to start engines and take off. Sergeant Baldock, our airplane crew chief, stood in front of us, a long black cable attaching him to the jet. The six crew chiefs stood in front of their six aircraft, waiting to see smoke.
“Chocks are in; fireguard is posted. You are cleared fore and aft on all four engines!”
“Start engines, Copilot.”
“Starting engines, Pilot!”
Spike pushed all four starter switches down into ground start. He then pulled out the start selector switch and pushed it down to cart start, and all of us immediately heard the loud whooshing sound of four explosive cartridges igniting like matches to a big gas can.
“Ground, Pilot—good carts on all four!”
Leaning out my window, I saw black smoke pour out from underneath the two right engines as the cartridges cooked off. I glanced at TC, whose head was down as he watched his engines spool up. Black smoke near the FB’s main wheels drifted behind the aircraft in the wind. I momentarily fixated on the maroon nose cone of the B61 bomb under TC’s left wing. Nuclear war was not supposed to happen. We weren’t meant to do this. What had just happened, and how long did we have before Soviet nukes killed us all? A big cloud of black smoke rolled across the south end of the airfield as the aircraft in the Alert Facility fired their carts. Our starter cartridge smoke cloud passed over the people watching from the fence line on Arboretum Drive. Did they know what was happening?
Whatever was happening would be epic.
Within seconds, the RPM gauges climbed past 12 percent. Spike and I grabbed two throttles out of cutoff and put them in start. Exhaust gas temperature rose on all four engines, and as they passed 30 percent RPM, all four throttles went over the stops into idle. All engines stabilized between 58 and 60 percent RPM.
“Engines started, Copilot!”
“Engines started, Pilot!”
“Pilot, Ground—chocks are pulled. Aircraft is in taxi configuration except for the door. You’re cleared to taxi!”
“Come on up, chief . . .”
BRIMSTONE rebroadcast the message. The checklist said to go to the end of the runway and hold. Nav Gorney authenticated the message, flipping plastic pages back and forth in the red EWO binder. Sergeant Baldock ran toward the airplane, taking up the ground cord and disappearing under the nose. I heard him coming up the ladder a few seconds later. Sortie one stopped to the right of the high-speed taxi line. Sortie two stopped behind sortie one’s left side. TC stayed put; the hold line was full. Finishing the starting-engines checklist, I reached up, grabbed the alarm bell switch, and pulled it momentarily to the right. After a long buzzer sounded, I said over the interphone, “Taxi report.”
“Boom ready to taxi!”
“Nav ready to taxi!”
“Door warning light is out; CO’s ready to taxi! Starting-engines-before-taxi check complete!”
All five of us sat strapped in our seats, not saying a word. We were stunned that the Soviets would even think of nuking the US. Russian satellites could see the nuclear-armed aircraft at the runway’s end, ready for takeoff in minutes. What were they thinking? The remaining alert force aircraft rolled down the main taxiway from the south side of the airfield: nine nuclear-armed FBs and eight KC-135s. BRIMSTONE called: “BRIMSTONE with a poll of the alert force. Sortie one?”
“Sortie one is checklist complete.”
“Sortie two?”
“Sortie two is complete.”
They continued through all twelve bombers. “Complete” meant that every aircraft and EWO checklist item for taking off to nuclear war was done. BRIMSTONE asked the same of the tanker sorties: “Polling the tanker sorties. Sortie one zero one?”
“Sortie one zero one is complete.”
“Sortie one zero two?”
“Sortie one zero two is complete.”
All tanker sorties were checklist complete, engines running at the end of runway 16, ready for takeoff.
I put my finger on the before-takeoff checklist while sitting in the hammerhead. Spike quickly briefed us on the takeoff procedures during the radio silence, making sure both of us understood what he and I would do if the Armageddon scenario continued. When Spike finished his brief, the cockpit was dead silent except for the sound of the running engines. None of us could talk. All of us were thinking the same thing: Did the Soviets launch an attack? What was going to happen to our families? Were they being told what was going on so they could survive? The next action message would confirm what was happening to all of us.
“For Alert Force, For Alert Force—Message follows . . .”
Nav Gorney had memorized the launch message preambles during our morning preflight and told us what the characters were. Spike turned around in his seat to see him writing with a black grease pencil on another plastic-covered page in the red mission binder. Nav Gorney thumbed through the pages and looked up at us, his eyes wide. He read the first line of the message. He still needed to validate it, but he said, “It’s a launch message. . . . It says take off, Spike!”
Sortie one pulled forward onto runway 16, sorties two and three moving up behind him in an accordion motion. Sortie one’s engine exhaust nozzles opened, going into full afterburner. Two long orange tongues of flame spewed twenty feet from the open nozzles. Sortie two rolled across the high-speed taxi line, with sortie three seconds behind. I remained fixated on TC’s B61 bomb. I called out the before-takeoff check, and Spike hacked the small clock on the instrument panel. The procedure was that tankers launched seconds behind the FBs in minimum interval takeoffs, or MITOs—twelve-second spacing between each jet for survival: launch the most aircraft with the least amount of spacing between them in the shortest amount of time. We were launching five tankers in the same time that two commercial airliners take off, three airplanes on the runway at once. Reaching down near my left knee, I moved the water injection switch up, and two water pumps whined under the jet’s belly. We crossed the hold line seconds behind sortie three. When we passed 70 percent RPM, the sound and vibration of the aircraft changed, signaling that all four engines were receiving water injection. A reading of 2.8 EPR on the RPM gauges confirmed what we all heard—water on all four. We wouldn’t be able to take off if it wasn’t. The jet would struggle to accelerate under this heavy weight on a runway sloping downhill.
At 181 knots, I called “Rotate!” over the interphone. Spike pulled the yoke back, the nose rose up, and the airplane left the ground. Lots of turbulence caused by the three FBs in front of us, still in burner, made for a bumpy ride. After two positive climbing indications the gear came up, and Spike leveled off at 520 feet above the ground, indicating 193 knots but accelerating. Nav Gorney called 110 seconds of water. Flap gauges showed all up just eleven seconds before water injection ran out.
People on Rye Beach heard the deafening sound of approaching airplanes. Fighter-bombers in afterburner passed overhead low, loud, and fast. Heads looked up as sortie one appeared from behind the trees lining the beach. The first FB was followed very closely by another . . . and another . . . and then a tanker, all very close together. People noticed the large external fuel tanks toed inward under each FB’s wing. One aircraft carried skinny silver shapes, another long white ones. Many New Hampshirites had seen FBs and tankers taking off and landing at Pease before, but few New Englanders had seen these shapes. Car alarms began screaming from the parking lot. Several people were running from the beach toward the parking lot, hollering at people up and down the seashore. A father heard one young man screaming, “GET OFF THE BEACH! GET OFF THE BEACH!” and saw him pointing toward the parking lot.
A second tanker passed over Rye Beach low and loud. The third tanker appeared above the trees very close behind. What did this young man know that everyone else didn’t? Why were these three young men running toward the parking lot, screaming for people to get off the beach? Drivers on I-95 were startled by the sight of low-flying planes and the sounds of jets flying so close together. Phone lines to the base operator lit up. People wanted to complain that their Sunday naps were being rudely interrupted by jet noise, not realizing it was the sound of their imminent deaths.
Spike rolled into a left turn, following the bombers on our assigned fan heading. I could see Star Island passing beneath us through Spike’s window. Spike leaned back, his right hand pushing against the instrument panel glareshield for some leverage, to see who was following us. Sortie one zero two was 1,500 feet behind us in a turn. Sortie one zero three was 1,300 feet behind one zero two, just beginning its turn. The rest of the bombers were flying or rolling down the runway. Spike and I donned helmets and attached PLZT goggles to protect our eyes from any nuclear blast. PLZT goggles turn black within nanoseconds of a nuclear flash. I grabbed formfitting aluminized cockpit window curtains for additional protection. The world was now officially shut out of our cockpit.
The Pease Air Force Base nuclear attack stream continued climbing to the east. Radar returns on the scope next to my left knee displayed aircraft strung out in front of us abeam Kennebunkport, Maine. Vice President Bush and his family hopefully were moving away from Walker’s Point. The Russians had to know that the Northeast Alert Force had launched and was heading toward them. The launch message directed all aircraft to fly to a holding point. Our instructions were to stay at least twenty miles away from SAC bases and large populated areas—in other words, targets. At the ten-minute mark after the klaxon, none of us had seen a bright flash or felt turbulence from any nuclear blasts.
Nav Gorney began running the grid checklist as we passed St. John’s, Newfoundland. Grid navigation was used to fly across the higher latitudes in the era before global positioning satellites. Due to the unreliability of magnetic compasses above 60 degrees north latitude and the quick convergence of longitude lines, a false north is determined in order to fly in a straight line. Grid navigation reorients the aircraft’s heading to this false North Pole by creating a more square latitude and longitude layout, similar to that near the equator. Once in grid, the gyrocompass was put in a free-running mode to maintain the new heading reference. Message traffic continued to broadcast from several agencies with names like Abalone, Gentry, and Sky King. None of the decoded messages applied to us.
My crew’s mated FB-111, now called CUTLASS 01, contacted us on the air refueling primary frequency two hours out of the control point. The two navigators talked through mission specifics—mainly updating the time of the crossing of the rendezvous initial point, or RZIP. At the RZIP, each aircraft would descend to twenty-one thousand feet, the FB refueling altitude. Twenty-one thousand feet is smack-dab in the heart of any Russian surface ship’s missile or gun envelope. The stream was too far away from the European coast to worry about Russian fighters. Things stayed busy in the cockpit as we flew northeast. It helped keep our minds off the pending war and our families.
CUTLASS 01 required sixty-five thousand pounds of fuel, with seventy-two thousand pounds available in our tanks on contact. If more fuel was needed, the bombers would say a code word and a number. That code word meant to transfer all the tanker fuel down to empty fuel system pipes. That one code word was a death sentence for tankers. FBs did not hold enough in their tanks to need to use the code word, so I did not expect to hear it. That wasn’t true for KC-135s mated to B-52s, however; Stratofortresses held over three hundred thousand pounds of gas and could drain two tankers easily, burning fuel at twenty-two thousand pounds per hour. Remember, I flew the TOAD aircraft: Take Off and Die!
All of us were talking over the interphone about the rapid launch out of Pease and what Russia must have been thinking when Nav Gorney keyed his mic and told us all to shut up. After scribbling another coded message on the plastic front page, he flipped backward through the red binder. Navigators flipping deeper into the pages is a good thing; it meant the situation was changing.
“This is RAILCAR . . . I say again . . .”
Who was RAILCAR? Running his right hand down the checklist page, Nav Gorney marked off each item. His facial expressions were intense but showed some relief.
“Oh, dudes!”
Nav Gorney continued running through the pages, occasionally flipping back to the message characters on the front leaf. Spike pressed him about what was going on.
“They’re talking. . . . Russia did not like seeing the Northeast Force launch. . . . Hang on.”
CUTLASS 01 radioed us on refueling primary frequency. They had relevant information. “Pilot, Nav—go to the hold point and wait with your mated bomber. Do not go beyond the hold point. It is now a wait-and-see game. The talking heads in DC and Moscow are discussing the situation.”
“Trend one zero one, CUTLASS 01. Do you have the latest message traffic?”
Nav Gorney answered, “CUTLASS 01, roger. Trend no changes to timing.”
Both aircraft arrived at the hold point and waited for one of two outcomes. The first was that we would all go home; Moscow had observed this large nuclear attack force coming, and everyone backed down. Option two—the very scary version—was that discussions would break down. All Trend tankers would off-load fuel, and CUTLASS 01 and friends would continue east to their targets.
Spike wanted to take a look outside, so we removed the thermal radiation curtains. The North Atlantic below us had high whitecaps and low, broken clouds at about five thousand feet. Orbiting at the hold point, I pumped 46,700 pounds of fuel into CUTLASS 01. And we waited for instructions.
Twenty-five minutes passed before RAILCAR sent another message recalling the force back to Pease. CUTLASS 01 needed fifteen thousand pounds to make it back to home plate, leaving us with extra gas for the three-hour return trip. During the flight home, we all discussed how launching had felt. All of us were sick—sick that the Russians would even think of attacking. But none of us could describe our emotions on seeing Pease Air Force Base laid in out front of us. Everything looked as though we were coming back from a typical training mission. Nav Gorney called BRIMSTONE to pass on our maintenance code: code one, with no discrepancies. Spike landed with an instrument landing system (ILS) approach and moved uphill on the parallel taxiway back toward the runway 16 hammerhead. Several staff cars followed us in the dark. I felt it was odd that they were waving at us while we taxied. The Northeast was still in runway alert. The Security Police tech sergeant flashed two fingers at us as we rolled up to the hammerhead entry point. Spike held up two fingers, and the Security Police cleared us to enter the hammerhead alert area. Everyone in our cockpit was pissed that the Russians would do such a thing, but we were all glad to be home.
THE EVENTS DESCRIBED above became a scenario used during Wednesday Alert Changeover training in late autumn of 1987. It did not happen quite like that on that Sunday afternoon. The alert force did not launch, but planes parked at the end of the runway. A Russian Yankee Notch submarine had, in fact, crossed the fifteen-minute warning line, meaning nuclear warheads could impact Pease within fifteen minutes. The Soviet captain was smart enough not to open his doors, however. All four bases in the Northeast United States—Pease, Plattsburgh, Loring, and Griffiss—received runway alert implementation, and six Pease jets, three FBs and three KC-135s, left Alert Facility parking for runway 16’s big concrete parking area in the hammerhead. All six jets stayed in runway alert for two weeks. On the last day of September, the Yankee Notch turned south and went back across the fifteen-minute line toward Bermuda. Shortly after crossing the line, SAC sent another message removing the Northeast Alert Force from cockpit alert. All aircraft taxied back into their alert cages and resumed a normal alert posture—if being in a cage with nuclear-armed aircraft is normal.
Strategic Air Command accomplished everything by a checklist, either flying the airplanes or performing nuclear missions. We trained relentlessly on checklist procedures and discipline. SAC leadership wanted to make sure that when it came time to launch and execute a nuclear mission, all of us would follow the checklist procedures cold, with few variations. During operational readiness inspections, we were tested on all EWO procedures, particularly command and control of decoded messages.
The lesson I learned from flying in Strategic Air Command was checklist discipline, habitually following every step. When nuclear weapons were inbound, we acted—not reacted—because of the discipline to the procedures in our checklists. Any small break in the checklist discipline chain could have catastrophic results. Many aircraft accidents are a result of poor checklist discipline or a break in flying habits, like forgetting to put the gear down—an obvious checklist item. Having the discipline to create patterns in our lives has been a theme used by many motivational speakers. Disciplining ourselves through creating habits leads to healthier and happier lives, increased productivity, and greater effectiveness in our work. I recently read a terrific article on the fifty things wealthy people do habitually. They had disciplined themselves by creating habit patterns and doing certain things in their lives that made them successful. Discipline your life by building habit patterns just like those we exercised in the airplane to create a more prosperous environment for you and your family.