Courtesy of Greg Devlin Greg Devlin standing near the chunk of concrete that almost hit him. Awards & Events. For about 10 hours in 1980, the United States faced a nuclear threat of its own making after an airman performing maintenance on a Titan II missile dropped a 9-pound socket 70 feet, ripping a hole in a fuel tank and leading to an explosion that propelled a 9-megaton warhead out of the ground. Little Rock, Ark. The inspection of historical American tragedies continues with this nail-biter about the 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion in Arkansas. Washington. For about 10 hours in 1980, the United States faced a nuclear threat of its own making after an airman performing maintenance on a Titan II missile dropped a 9-pound socket 70 feet, ripping a hole in a fuel tank and leading to an explosion that propelled a 9-megaton warhead out of the ground. Film Description. The 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion is a drastic but poignant example of what can result from assuming everything is going to work perfectly every time, and In this case, it almost wiped an entire state off the map. On the evening of Sept. 18, 1980, maintenance workers at silo 374-7 near Damascus forgot to bring a 20-pound socket wrench into the silo and instead picked up an unauthorized model that was being. Photo by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette A map showing Titan II. Based the Pulitzer Prize-finalist book of the same name from journalist Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), the film takes viewers through a minute-by-minute account of the Damascus Titan missile explosion, an incident in Arkansas in 1980 that almost blew the Eastern Seaboard of the United States off the map. Podcasts. Ken Grunewald, who served on Titan II launch crews during his career in the Air Force, speaks about the 1980 disaster at Damascus. Photo by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette A map showing Titan II. September 18, 1980, 6:25 p.m., Titan II base in Damascus, Arkansas. The Damascus Titan missile explosion (also called the Damascus accident) was a 1980 U.S. nuclear weapons incident involving a Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). What to Watch Latest Trailers IMDb Originals IMDb Picks IMDb Podcasts. Of course there are no more Titan II sites active (the one near Davis-Monthan is a tourist attraction now, and the bird was never fueled). 40 Years Ago, We Almost Blew Up Arkansas. It was supposed to be taken out of service more than a decade earlier. He was a 19-year-old missile technician, a new trainee, riding with another guy, David Powell, who was showing Plumb the ropes. The Damascus Titan missile explosion (also known as the Damascus accident) was a 1980 U.S. There, a young worker at a silo for the Titan II ballistic missile, which held the most powerful nuclear warhead the U.S. had ever built, accidentally dropped a socket while doing regular maintenance. The Titan II missile that suffered a fuel leak in Damascus, it was an old missile that really should have been retired by 1980. The new documentary Command and Control relates the both fascinating and utterly chilling chain of events surrounding the near-catastrophic explosion of a Titan-II nuclear missile in Damascus . LITTLE ROCK, Ark. A new documentary based on Schlosser's book, also called "Command and Control" (opening Wednesday in New York City), explores in white-knuckle detail one such incident, at a Titan II missile silo. Cutting between a minute-by-minute breakdown of a notorious 1980 accident involving a Titan II nuclear missile in rural Arkansas and a deep, contextual history of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, The Titan II's power was immensethree times the force of all the bombs dropped in World War II. The incident occurred on September 18-19, 1980, at Missile Complex 374-7 in rural Arkansas when a U.S. Air Force LGM-25C Titan II ICBM loaded with a 9 megaton W-53 Nuclear Warhead had a liquid fuel explosion inside . Just a few words about this important book crafted around the little known 1980 Damascus, Ark., missile accident: The accident involved a Titan II missile (one of 54 in hardened launch silos over . Podcast November 14, 2018 cold war, US history 00:00 37:20 The Damascus Titan missile explosion (also known as the Damascus accident [1]) was a 1980 U.S. September 18, 2018. Dropped by an airman performing maintenance on a Titan II missile at a launch complex in Damascus, Arkansas, the socket fell 70 feet, ripping a hole in a fuel tank and leading to an explosion that forced a 9-megaton warhead out of the ground. 44 Continue this thread level 2 [deleted] Aerial view of the 740 ton silo door found 700 feet off the missile complex. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead . A riveting minute by minute account of the accident started by the failure to follow written maintenence procedures. Strange because Command and Control is really two books in one: the first, a detailed and moving account of a serious accident that occurred with a Titan II nuclear-armed missile in 1980 near Damascus, Arkansas; the second, a comprehensive political history of U.S. nuclear strategy, Cold War crises, and the technical efforts in weapons . The 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion is a drastic example of what can result from operating like everything is going to work perfectly every time. Thirty-three years ago to the day, the United States narrowly missed a nuclear holocaust on its soil. A tool rolled off a platform and punctured the missile's fuel tank. Anyway, the Damascus incident was not Arkansas's only deadly missile accident. Electrostatic ion thrusters are almost an order of magnitude better, on the order of 2,000-3,000 seconds, with some reaching closer to 10,000 seconds in experiments, while the experimental VASIMR . When detonated, it was estimated the nuclear blast would . If The Witness and Tower depict scenarios that could be ripped from today's headlines, Command and Control is hopefully one that feels somewhat unusual a dangerous mistake that potentially could . Weaving together archival news footage with present-day, first-hand-account interviews, the doc details the nail-biting events that occurred one September eve in 1980 at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Arkansas after a maintenance worker innocently dropped a socket - which subsequently punched a hole in the fuel tank of an . Command and Control is the long-hidden story of a deadly 1980 accident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Arkansas. Learn the long-hidden story of a deadly 1980 accident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Arkansas.The long-hidden story, Command and Control, airing Saturday, August 10 at 4 p.m. on WXXI-TV, Houston, we have a very expensive problem Anyone who was alive and living in Arkansas in September 1980 almost wasn't -- living, that is -- as it nearly turned out. the blast killed one airman and injured 21 others. On Sept. 19, 1980, the lethal warhead in question was attached to a musty old Titan II missile buried in an underground silo in Damascus, Ark. You won't find much about the 1980 Damascus Titan Missile Explosion on Wikipedia. . For about 10 hours in 1980, the United States faced a nuclear threat of its own making after an airman performing maintenance on a Titan II missile dropped a 9-pound socket wrench 70 feet, ripping . For about 10 hours in 1980, the United States faced a nuclear threat of its own making after an airman performing maintenance on a Titan II missile dropped a 9-pound socket 70 feet, ripping a hole in a fuel tank and leading to an explosion that propelled a 9-megaton warhead out of the ground. The incident occurred on September 18-19, 1980, at Missile Complex 374-7 in rural Arkansas when a U.S. Air Force LGM-25C of safety, some of which in The Damascus Titan missile explosion (also called the Damascus accident) was a 1980 U.S. nuclear weapons incident involving a Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). LITTLE ROCK, Ark. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. Joe Richman, founder of Radio Diaries tells the story. - For about 10 hours in 1980, the United States faced a nuclear threat of its own making after an airman performing maintenance on a Titan II missile dropped a 9-pound socket 70 . Odyssey10 failure nuclear missile arkansas nuclear warhead Thankfully, safety features prevented radioactive spillage or detonation, but the explosion killed one and injured 21 others. Sept. 19, 1980: A Titan 2 missile exploded in its silo near Damascus, Ark., after a workman dropped a wrench and punctured its fuel tank. It was one of those minor Cold War mishaps that barely made it beyond the local news. The Air Force failure comes less than a year after Eric Schlosser's explosive book Command and Control, which found that the U.S. Air Force has come incredibly close to accidentally setting off nuclear weapons several times.At the "Damascus Incident" in 1980, for example, a worker at an Air Force base dropped a socket during regular missile maintenance and pierced a Titan II ballistic missile . Their movie focuses on a little-remembered Sept. 19, 1980 explosion of one of the Air Force's Titan II missiles in Damascus, Ark.an aging and nearly obsolete two-decade-old technology that . Explore Audible Audible Plus Gifts Help center About Audible No results The scary thing is that the Titan II explosion "was a normal accident, set in motion by a trivial event," in this case a dropped . The movie, developed by director Robert Kenner from Eric Schlosser's book of the same name, reveals how a warhead atop a Titan II missile risked explosion in 1980 at a Strategic Air Command (SAC). In this case, it almost wiped an entire state off the map. New documentary 'Command and Control' details how an ordinary maintenance accident at Titan II missile silo in 1980 almost caused nuclear Armageddon. Some four months after a Titan II missile blew up at Damascus, Ark., the United States Air Force has concluded that the weapon is both "basically safe" and "potentially hazardous." A . When the socket fell, it plunged 70 feet to pierce the side of the . - For about 10 hours in 1980, the United States faced a nuclear threat of its own making after an airman performing maintenance on a Titan II missile dropped a 9-pound . Ken Grunewald, who served on Titan II launch crews during his career in the Air Force, speaks about the 1980 disaster at Damascus. Documentary of 1980s near-nuclear ground explosion of a Titan II missile in Damascus, Arkansas in Silo 374-7, based on Eric Shlosser's award-winning book of the same title. On the night of September 18, 1980, a Titan II missile carrying a thermonuclear warhead exploded in rural Arkansas. 1980, accident at a Titan II missile silo in Damascus, Ark., that came terrifyingly close to causing a nuclear explosion that would have devastated the entire East Coast. By. Little Rock, Ark. It wasn't just bad luck that happened on September 18, 1980, when airman David Powell put a three-foot-long wrench to the top of a Titan II missile and accidentally let the socket drop; recent . . For about 10 hours in 1980, the United States faced a nuclear threat of its own making after an airman performing maintenance on a Titan II missile dropped a socket wrench 20 metres, ripping a . Honing in on a single case of so-called "human error", Command and Control juxtaposes precision on a minute scale against the gargantuan risks inherent in the United States' aggressive nuclear proliferation . With this more collage-like approach to history, "the bomb" serves as an effective companion piece to "Command and Control," last year's documentary about the 1980 Titan II missile . Video _____ . The other is a blow-by-blow account of one particular "mishap", at the Titan II silo near Damascus, Arkansas, in September 1980, when a dropped tool pierced a missile shell and caused a fuel leak . Perhaps most famously, as the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser recounts in his book Command and Control, in 1980, a Titan II missile exploded in its silo in Damascus, Arkansas, while . Image courtesy of Greg Devlin. An explosion a few hours later . A third Titan II missile accident happened on Sept. 19, 1980, in Damascus in Van Buren County. He uses one case to illustrate the military command's unpreparedness for nuclear accidents and disasters: the Sept. 19, 1980 explosion of a Titan II missile inside a silo near Damascus, Ark. On Sept. 18, 1980, at 6:35 p.m., two airmen conducting maintenance on a Titan-II missile siloed in Damascus, Ark., dropped a ratchet socket that pierced the skin of one of the eight-story missiles . The so-called "Damascus Accident" involved a Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile . Portions of the film were shot in an abandoned Titan II missile silo in . The film, based on the best selling book by Eric Schlosser, tells the story of a September 18, 1980, explosion at a Titan II nuclear-missile site in Damascus, Arkansas. "The one warhead on a Titan II had three times the explosive force . He mentioned the nuclear missiles around the country on the podcast. Broken Arrow incident involving a Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Courtesy of American . The new documentary Command and Control relates the both fascinating and utterly chilling chain of events surrounding the near-catastrophic explosion of a Titan-II nuclear missile in Damascus . Eric Molinsky helped report this story. Eric Schlosser's Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety is an excellent book no matter what, that people on this sub would enjoy. There was an incident near Damascus, the one in north central Arkansas,. Back in September 1980, September 18, Jeff Plumb climbed into his pickup and headed toward the nuclear missile silo near a tiny town in Arkansas called Damascus. So far, there have been 32 incidents (known as "broken arrows") involving these weapons of mass destruction, but one is particularly interesting: The Damascus Titan missile explosion in 1980. From 1963-1987, The Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile served as the United States primary weapon of deterrence in the on-going Nuclear Arms Race. By Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984, March 25 . The Titan II intercontinental-range missile, pictured in 1965, sits ready for launch on its 150-feet-deep underground launchpad. (1980) On September 18, 1980, two Air Force mechanics entered the Titan II missile silo in Damascus, Arkansas, to conduct routine maintenance. The incident occurred on September 18-19, 1980, at Missile Complex 374-7 in rural Arkansas when a U.S. Air Force LGM-25C Titan II ICBM loaded with a 9 megaton W-53 . The Titan carried a substantial 9 megaton W-53 nuclear warhead. September 19, 1980: Damascus, Arkansas When an Air Force repairman in Damascus, Arkansas, dropped his wrench into a Titan II ICBM missile silo during a routine maintenance operation in September . From Robert Kenner, the director of the groundbreaking film Food, Inc., comes Command and Control, the long-hidden story of a deadly accident at a Titan II missile complex in . The trouble started when a 21-year-old airman . The thing that I believe set off the explosion was the maintenance team turning on a ventilation fan (on the orders of . The most serious nuclear threat in the history of the U.S. came not from the Soviets, but from a single nine-pound wrench socket. An aerial shot of the silo after the explosion. Here's what the terrifying incident . On this fateful night an explosion kills an Air Force member and transforms the lives of everyone on the base. For about 10 hours in 1980, the United States faced a nuclear threat of its own making after an airman performing maintenance on a Titan II missile dropped a 9-pound socket 70 feet, ripping a hole in a fuel tank and leading to an explosion that propelled a 9-megaton warhead out of the ground. 1980 Titan II missile explosion, Damascus Arkansas 1980 Titan II missile explosion, Damascus Arkansas. Broken Arrow incident involving a Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). LITTLE ROCK, Ark. The Titan Ii missile exploded in a fireball at its Damascus, Ark., silo Sept. 19, after leaking fuel caught fire. On September 18, 1980, at about 6:30 in the evening, Senior Airman David Powell and Airman Jeffrey Plumb walked into the silo at Launch Complex 374-7, a few miles north of Damascus, Arkansas. Most locals remember hearing about the 1980 Titan II missile explosion in Damascus, Arkansas that killed one man and caused a 9 megaton nuclear warhead to pop out and land on the side of highway 65. By Isaac Romsdahl. HONS. I'm betting the 1980 Damascus Titan Missile explosion. September 18-19 - 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion: Liquid fuel in an LGM-25C Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile explodes at a missile launch facility north of Damascus, Arkansas. On Thursday, September 28 from 6-9 p.m., the Old State House Museum Associates' premier museum fundraiser features Air Force Crewman Greg Devlin, a survivor of the 1980 Damascus Titan II missile explosion, who was featured on the PBS American Experience program "Command and Control." . Powell was working on a Titan II missile fitted with a thermonuclear warhead, tucked away underground in Damascus, Arkansas. Launch Complex 374-7 was a Titan missile launch silo. The silo hole, after the 1980 Damascus, AR explosion Courtesy of Greg Devlin. TIL In 1980, a Titan 2 missile equipped with a nuclear warhead exploded in Damascus, Arkansas when a maintenance worker accidentally dropped a wrench socket into a shaft and pierced the missile, releasing explosive fuel. Around that story he weaves an enormous amount of information about the US Air Force Missile Command, its missiles and its command and control structures. On Sept. 18, 1980, a mechanic at the U.S. Air Force missile base in Damascus, Ark., dropped a socket wrench while he was doing maintenance on a nuclear-tipped Titan II rocket. One man was killed and at least 21 were injured. an outdated weapon that, according to then . Courtesy of Greg Devlin After the explosion, Greg Devlin had a shattered ankle, a severed September 19 - The Robert Redford-directed film Ordinary People, based on the novel by Judith Guest, premieres. The Damascus Accident. Act One By Joe Richman In 1980, deep in a nuclear missile silo in Arkansas, a simple human error nearly caused the destruction of a giant portion of the Midwest. The author takes the story of the 1980 accident in the Missile Launch Complex 374-7 in Arkansas.