Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

by Eric Schlosser

In 1949 full-scale production of a new implosion bomb had begun at Sandia: the Mark 4. It had a composite core. It could be assembled in a couple of hours, then stored for a couple of weeks. And it was much safer than previous designs. According to the final evaluation report, the Mark 4 had a variety of features to “prevent premature detonation under all predictable circumstances.” The X-unit didn’t charge until the bomb fell from the plane, greatly reducing the risk to the aircrew. More important, the nuclear core was stored in the plane’s cockpit during takeoff and inserted through a trap door into the nose of the bomb, midflight. As long as the core was kept physically separate from the rest of the bomb, it was impossible for a plane crash to cause a nuclear explosion. The days of handmade nuclear weapons were over. At Sandia the Mark 4 was now being manufactured with standardized, interchangeable parts—and so was its replacement, the Mark 6, a lighter, sleeker weapon with a yield as much as ten times larger than that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.