This article explains the DOD's decision to shut down the Titan II missile silos due to its age and accidents. I had the VA ask for the actual report that was prepared for the Senate Arms Service Committee. You guessed it, denied for national security reasons.
Update: 1/11/2014. I ordered and read Command and Control by Eric Schlosser just the other day. He says took him many years to research and publish. He also states he was able to get the "Assessment Report: Titan II LGM 25C, Weapon condition and Safety," prepared for the senate Armed Services Committee and House Armed Services Committee, May 1980: and "Titan II Weapon System: Review Group report," December 1980. Below is the page from his book.
The VA claimed the document was still classified. The VA obviously did not try to hard to find it. Quoting from the book:
"14—19, 1980, Eighth Air Force Missile Investigation Board, December 1980. When I contacted the Air Force for a copy of this report, I was told that the Air Force no longer possessed one. I later found a copy among the congressional papers of Dan Glickman at Wichita State University. I am very grateful to Mary Nelson, a program consultant in the department of special collections there, who arranged for the report to be photocopied for me. Other copies, I subsequently learned, are held at the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, Arizona, and at the Jacksonville Museum of Military History in Jacksonville, Arkansas.
The accident report contains more than a thousand pages of maps, charts, photographs, analysis, and testimony from ninety-two witnesses. The material was invaluable for reconstructing what happened that night in Damascus. Two other official reports on the Titan II were much less reliable but still worth reading, if only for what they failed to say about the missile: “Assessment Report: Titan II LGM 25 C, Weapon Condition and Safety,” prepared for the Senate Armed Services Committee and House Armed Services Committee, May 1980; and “Titan II Weapon System: Review Group Report,” December 1980.
David H. Pryor, who was a U.S. senator from Arkansas in 1980, helped me to understand the state’s political culture at the time and shared his long-standing concerns about the Titan II. One of his former aides, James L. “Skip” Rutherford III, described his own investigation of the missile’s safety and his secret meetings with airmen from Little Rock Air Force Base. I tracked down one of those airmen, who spoke to me, off the record, and confirmed Rutherford’s account. At the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, I found many useful memos and documents about the Titan II in the David H. Pryor Papers, especially in Group II, Boxes 244—84.
Most important, perhaps, I spoke to people who played leading roles in the Damascus accident and its aftermath. I am grateful to all those who shared their recollection of the events at Launch Complex 374-7, at Little Rock Air Force Base, at the underground command post of the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, the headquarters of the Eighth Air Force in Louisiana, and elsewhere. Some of the most useful details were provided by Jeffrey L. Plumb and David F. Powell, who were in the missile silo when the socket fell; Allan D. Childers and Rodney Holder, who were in the launch control center; Colonel John T. Moser, the head of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing, who was at the Little Rock command post; Major Vincent 0. Maes, the maintenance supervisor at the 308th, who advised Moser that night; Colonel Jimmie D. Gray, the commander of the 308th Missile Inspection and Maintenance Squadron, who was at both the Little Rock command post and the accident site; Colonel Ben Scallorn, the deputy chief of staff for Missiles and Space Systems Support at headquarters, Eighth Air Force, a Titan II expert who spent hours on the Missile Potential Hazard Net; General Lloyd R. Leavitt, the vice commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command, who made many of the crucial decisions about what should be done; Colonel Ronald Bishop, who took over the 308th Strategic."
You can buy "Command and Control" on Amazon.com
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