Nukes

The Badlands National Park area contains more than the incredible views dating back millennia. 

 

I often visited the area while working at Wall Drug, the summer tourist trap. My job was to sell toys. It was a lot of fun as most of the sales were from the sale of toy cap pistols and rifles. As a kid in the 1950s, I constantly wanted these toys a I watched Hoppy, Roy and Gene as well as the Lone Ranger and the Cisco Kid. 

 

Part of the area includes a now-decommissioned control station for a number of Minuteman nuclear missiles.

 

Open to the public, I was able to view a bunker where the orders to launch the missiles was executed. The top floor was the living quarters for the men who manned the station when they were off duty. But downstairs was the control room. It was configured like a bank vault that was mounted on heavy duty springs, which were designed to handle the impact of a nearby enemy nuclear explosion. It would not survive a direct hit.

 

The officers who ran the vault, and actually controlled the launch of roughly 25 missiles, were all single men who were childless. While they had to pass strict psychological standards, the thinking was the single men would have less reluctance to launch. There was an interesting touch of dark humor painted on the door. Taken from a delivery company, there was a pizza box showing a missile heading to the Soviet Union. Painted on the box was “When it absolutely, positively has to be delivered in 20 minutes or the next one is free.”

 

About two miles away, there is a decommissioned missile silo containing an unarmed, unfueled missile which is completely covered and includes a glass viewing area. I visited this area several times as I remembered the Cuban missile crisis as a high school freshman. I had a deal with my girlfriend that if missiles were launched as we ducked and covered in the hallway that we would kiss each other’s ass goodbye.

 

Anyhow, I ran a cash register and one day I had a customer who handed me their credit card. Per our rules, I also asked for a photo ID. I was handed a military ID and was stunned to read the name Paul Tibbitt’s.

 

Never heard of him? Then you’re probably under 60 years of age. We Baby Boomers knew the name quite well. He was the bomber pilot who dropped the first atom bomb over Hiroshima during the second world war.  He was also the commander of the air wing and supervised the follow-up bombing of Nagasaki. 

 

Well I knew the man standing before me wasn’t the same person. That pilot had to be well over 120 years old. It turned out he was the grandson, an Air Force general.

 

In another life I majored in history and was a licensed high school social studies teacher. I had my students do an extra-credit essay, imagining they were the ones to drop the bomb. How would they feel about it? 

 

Well, I knew for sure who my next ghost would be and after work, I visited the missile silo around twilight.

 

He appeared to me dressed in an. Army Class B uniform. It had many, many medals on the shirt, but full bird coronel’s insignia.

 

“I met your grandson today. You must be very proud of him.” 

 

“I certainly am,” he replied. “His duties are far more complicated. We dealt with one bomb at a time. If there is a war, we would be launching hundreds of them.”

 

As an eighth grader, I read “Hiroshima,” the definitive account of the bombing written by John Hershey. Other books included “Fail Safe.” “Alas Babylon,” and “A canticle for Leibowitz,” three classic fictional accounts about nuclear destruction written in the 1950s. I asked him about the mission.

 

He told me that preparation for the mission was classified until the very end. Keeping the secret was difficult over several years of training. He said there were two very scary parts of the actual mission. First was the bomb was actually armed during the flight. Among other things, there was some air turbulence and inserting the nuclear matter and its trigger was very exacting. He also said that the moment the bomb was dropped, the plane had to execute a 180 degree turn to avoid the blast. Surviving the shock wave proved to be very exciting as the plane rocked and vibrated as it moved away from the blast at top speed. 

 

Prior to the bombing, he had gone to Nevada to observe the first test. “I was amazed,” he said. “I was looking for a huge conventional explosion and the flash, shockwave and the mushroom cloud were unexpected by me. The colors were incredible.”

 

I told him about the essays I had assigned in school and asked him how it felt. 

 

“I was glad to see the test so I had an idea about what to expect,” he said. “I knew thousands would instantly die and many thousands more would die from radiation poisoning.”

He said he had to realize that there was a choice to either drop the bombs or invade Japan with troops, which would result in tens of thousands of deaths and wounds by American soldiers. He pointed out that the Japanese military would fight to the last man as had happened during the fighting at various Pacific islands. He also noted the desperation of Kamikaze pilots who would crash their fighter-bombers into American naval ships while sacrificing their own lives.

 

I noted that the plot in “Fail Safe,” revolved around a single nuke bombing Moscow. In order to stop an all-out war, we had to bomb New York City. The pilot committed suicide after dropping the bomb. 

 

“I did not feel suicidal. We had to end the war. My biggest regret was learning that a hundred American prisoners of war also died in the blast.”

 

I thanked him for taking the time to talk to me. As he started to fade, I saluted him and he returned it.