An essay in evolutionary
process development.
Unlike all my other Stories of the Cold War, I have no first person source for this. This is a collection of things "I heard" and then connected the dots. Feel free to call bullshit if you want.
Contrary to Hollywood’s stereotyping, the military actually does a lot of thinking about how it does things. And most of the time, it has good reasons for what it does. But also being an organization of over 2 million people, mistakes are made, through neglect, stupidity, or ignorance. But a process can be set up to be nearly perfect. In business terms, the term "Six Sigma", had concepts rooted in ammunition handling long before it was popularized by a few gurus.
Contrary to Hollywood’s stereotyping, the military actually does a lot of thinking about how it does things. And most of the time, it has good reasons for what it does. But also being an organization of over 2 million people, mistakes are made, through neglect, stupidity, or ignorance. But a process can be set up to be nearly perfect. In business terms, the term "Six Sigma", had concepts rooted in ammunition handling long before it was popularized by a few gurus.
The following is actually a
series of stories I have heard, each individually, and then one night, in a minor
epiphany, I realized that they were all related.
The first starts with an
explanation. For reasons of safety,
missile warheads, and the missile boosters, were kept in separate areas. Like high caliber guns of old, where the
gunpowder was kept separate from the shells.
In addition, every missile had a code on it to identify its particular
characteristics, like beam riding, anti-radiation, nuclear, and test. For the last two, to make sure there were no
mistakes, were also color coded purple and blue. Test boosters, since they had no actual engines, were also painted blue.
The first story was a short
and anecdotal. A missile cruiser was
doing morning missile exercises, known as DSOT (Daily Systems Operability Test),
which
involved putting the test missiles on the rails and slewing them about. This was, in turn, observed by personnel on
nearby ships. Reportedly, a junior
seaman mentioned to a buddy that the cruiser had nuclear missiles on
launcher.
His buddy said, “How do you
know this?”
The seaman replied, “Everyone
knows that the Nuc’s are painted a different color.”
The fact that he only had
half the facts didn’t matter. He was
overheard by an Admiral, who was appalled by the fact that it was general
knowledge that Nuc’s had a different painting scheme. A short time later, the order went down to
paint all the Nuc’s white.
 |
| Talos T-SAM onboard USS Oklahoma City Copyright 2008 Phillip R. Hays. |
Somewhere along the tour, the
very sensitive subject of nuclear missiles came up. The official statement was always, "I can
neither confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard USS Oklahoma
City". But, during this tour, the tour
guide mentioned as an aside, that you can tell if you were looking at nuclear
missiles, because regular missiles are all painted white. It seems that the word on the new paint jobs had
not filtered to general knowledge.
Out rolled the blue test
missiles, known as T-SAM's. The touring Japanese reportedly freaked
out in a number of ways, including fainting.
 |
| Tartar launch from USS Chicago |
The order came down fleet
wide, to paint the T-SAM’s white as well.
Some time later, on-board USS Chicago, berthed in San Diego. While performing its morning DSOT (see above),
the missile house personnel accidentally loaded a live Tartar missile onto the
rails instead of the T-SAM. When the
computer generated target reached the correct range, the firing officer pushed
the pickle, and instead of an light going on to indicate the completion of a
circuit in a T-SAM, the rest of the ship was awakened to the whoosh and roar of departing Tartar missile that was just fired over Coronado Island. At this time I cannot verify the ship and launch, but several years ago I was able to. If someone has more information, please let me know.
By the time I was in the Navy, sanity had prevailed, and the color code schemes were re-instituted.
All warhead shots were painted white, only TSAMs were blue.
ReplyDeleteFCCM(SW) Ret.
From the desk of William H Van Vlack, former GMM onboard USS King:
ReplyDelete2016, you posted "Safety, Secrecy, etc." with a disclaimer, since it was mostly hearsay. Here are the facts as I remember them from 1963. Missiles are never painted on board; they come from the factory anodized with a heat shield. Terrier missiles were all white, except the warheads and the missiles and boosters were connected and tested at Seal Beach before loading. They were all loaded with white warheads with strips to indicate various payloads and capabilities. The picture I attached is a standard Terrier in the magazine attached to the booster. Nuclear warheads were yellow with strips to indicate yield and were stored in a magazine attached to the missile house. We had a dolly system to move warheads. The only thing we did with nuclear warheads was attach them to the missile on the rails, test the system, remove the nuclear warhead and put it back in the magazine. They never went out on the launcher without orders from the President. Telemetry heads were loaded to test the fire control systems, radar, etc. We attached a telemetry head to a live missile, fired it on the range and retrieved the telemetry head. They cost a half million dollars; in 1962, they developed the technology to float the telemetry heads and pick them up. We started each cruise with forty loaded missiles. I never saw a "test missile" or anything colored blue. Also, we were not allowed in any American port with missiles on board. We anchored out until we could offload at Seal Beach. Both cruises I did, we went straight to Seal Beach from Pearl Harbor.
Many things changed in the next twenty years, but this is what I remember.
Telemetry heads were $500,000 in 1962? Wow. I recall that Talos missiles were expensive at $250,000 per warshot. I don't remember the cost of terriers in 1980.
ReplyDelete