6:40 PM. Damascus, Arkansas. 6:40 PM. Senior Airman David F. Powell and Airman Jeffrey L. Plumb enter Launch Complex 374-7. They’re scheduled to perform routine maintenance on a Titan II missile. Standing 110 feet tall and with an aluminum body, it’s an impressive sight inside the silo. It’s armed with a 9-ton W-53 thermonuclear warhead, the most powerful in the American arsenal: about three times the entire potential used in World War II, including the atomic bombs in Japan. During maintenance, Powell drops a tool. He tries to catch it, but it falls hundreds of feet and hits the aluminum fuselage of the missile far below, puncturing it. Fuel starts leaking out. It’s a problem. When Powell runs up to the control station to his colleague Kennedy, he says, “Jeff, I’m fucked up like you wouldn’t believe!”
