South Dakota's secret nuclear missile accident revealed

TSgt Joe C. I Knew of Several Broken Arrows/Bent Spears but not this Particular One.

Yes TSgt Joe C. I was aware of this event on Dec. 5, 1964.
Accidents can cause small problems or major problems as in this case when "a screwdriver airman caused a short circuit that resulted in an explosion. The blast popped off the Minuteman missile’s cone — the part containing the thermonuclear warhead — and sent it on a 75-foot fall to the bottom of the 80-foot-deep silo."
Image: In this Sept. 27, 2017 photo, Bob Hicks looks at the unarmed Minuteman missile in the Delta-09 silo recently at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site near Wall, S.D

Update 2019-04-25
http://www.nhc-ul.org/Mil%20Hist%20-%20Nuclear%20Missile%20Accident%201964.pdf
"Bob Hicks was spending a cold December night in his barracks 53 years ago at Ellsworth Air
Force Base near Rapid City when the phone rang. It was the chief of his missile maintenance
team, who dispatched Hicks to an incident at an underground silo. “The warhead,” the team chief
said, “is no longer on top of the missile.” Hicks eventually learned that a screwdriver used by
another airman caused a short circuit that resulted in an explosion. The blast popped off the
missile’s cone —the part containing the thermonuclear warhead —and sent it on a 75-foot fall to
the bottom of the 80-foot-deep silo.
The courageous actions Hicks took that night and over the next several days were not
publicized. The accident was not disclosed to the public until years later, when a government
report on accidents with nuclear weapons included seven sentences about it. The report listed the
accident as the nation’s first involving a Minuteman missile. Fifty-three years after he responded
to a nuclear-missile accident near Vale, Bob Hicks returned to the site of the former accident and
also visited the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site near Wall.
Further details were reported publicly for the first time, drawn from documents obtained through
Freedom of Information Act requests by the Rapid City Journal and others, and from Hicks
himself, who is now 73 years old and living in Cibolo, Texas.
When Hicks was sent to the accident on Dec. 5, 1964, he was only 20 years old, and the cryptic
statement from his team chief was the only information he was given.
“That was enough to cause me to get dressed pretty quickly,” Hicks recalled.
The trouble began earlier that day when two other airmen were sent to a silo named Lima-02. It
was 60 miles northwest of Ellsworth Air Force Base and 3 miles southeast of the tiny community
of Vale, on the plains outside the Black Hills.
Lima-02 was one of 150 steel-and-concrete silos that had been planted underground and filled
with Minuteman missiles during the previous several years in western South Dakota, where the
missiles were scattered across 13,500 square miles. There were hundreds more silos in place or
soon to be constructed in North Dakota, Missouri, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska,
eventually bringing the nation’s Minuteman fleet to a peak of 1,000.
The original Minuteman missiles, called Minuteman I, were 56 feet tall and weighed 65,000
pounds when loaded with fuel. The missiles were capable of traveling at a top speed of 15,000
miles per hour and could reach the Cold War enemy of the United States, the Soviet Union,
within 30 minutes.
Each missile was tipped with a thermonuclear warhead that was many times more powerful than
either of the two atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Japan during World War II.
One government agency reportedly estimated that the detonation of an early 1960s-era
Minuteman warhead over Detroit would have caused 70 square miles of property destruction,
250,000 deaths and 500,000 injuries.
The two airmen who visited the Lima-02 silo on Dec. 5, 1964, were part of a young Air Force
missile corps that was responsible for launching and maintaining the missiles. The two airmen’s
names are redacted — as are many other names — from an Air Force report that was filed after
the accident.
At noon that Saturday, the airmen received orders to troubleshoot and repair the Lima-02
security system. They made the long drive and arrived at 2 p.m.

FYI Lt Col Kurtis Sutley MSgt Ronald StacyTSgt Ronald White
CMSgt David Wedington Maj Rev. Fr. Samuel WATERS - Traditional RC PriestSSgt John Wagner TSgt Steve WaideCapt Seid WaddellSrA Edward Vong Col Lawrence Torres SSgt (Join to see) Sgt (Join to see) PO3 Hicks Jeff

Very interesting story, and a remarkable man Airman Hicks. It led me to some research and I came across the Damascus AR accident on 9/18/1980. I never knew about it either, but it was a close call. The video is lengthy, but informative. Thanks for sharing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiecixAsm8w