SESSION V 235 west of Cartagena, ina very remote area right on the Mediterranean shore. to —~ The incident involved the refueling operation of one of the Strategic Air Comrnand B-52s as part of Operation Chrome Dome. I imagine most of you know about Operation Chrome Dome. FREMONT-SMITH: LANGHAM: No. It's given in great detail in Miss Lewis' book, as wellas in Mr. Szulc's. Since about 1962 a certain percentage of the SAC B-52s have been airtorne at all times carrying weapons, this being part of the deterring philosophy. This means that if SAC were entirely wiped out, still a certain percentage of the SAC ferce would be able to zero in on its prescribed targets. These flights were being made constantly, and there were elaborate pains, of course, taken to see that Dr. Strangelove's philosophy could not predominate, that some person could not take the war into his own hands by proceeding to target on his own volition. The final act of fusing the bomb requires the word of the President of the United States, so there was no chance of a mishap of that kind. Flying nuclear weapons of the megaton class over people's heacs is scrious business, of course, and so these bombs have built into them safeguards which make the probability of one of them giving a critical yield in an accidental situation like a plane crash about 10-7, In other words, there is not one chance in 10 million that a criticality could actually occur, and this is because of combinations of interlocks, and so forth, which would have to be thrown inthe right sequence before you would have an armed weapon. The United States has no agreement which aliows it to land a nuclearcarrying aircraft in any country, These aircraft must take off from the United States, fly their route and return to the United States without landing. This means refueling operations in the air at various points along the route. We had a refueling operation agreement with the Spanish Government. The 16th Air Force was in charge of the refueling planes which would take off from Spanish territory, meet the bomber supposedly out over the Mediterranean and refuel it; the bomber would then continue on its way. These, of course, were always called practice flights. They could, of course, be changed froma practice flight into the real thing by the right combination of messages, including one from the President, This is Operation Chrome Dome.