N-warhead blown clear

Press, 22 September 1980, Page 1

N-warhead blown clear

NZPA-AP Damascus, Arkansas Air Force rescue workers had to search through debris-strewn pastures before finding a nuclear warhead after a Titan II missile silo exploded m Arkansas, according to a local sheriff and others who monitored military radio transmissions. The Conway County Sheriff, Mr Carl Stobaugh, said he had learned from military radio ans : missions that the warhead atop the intercontinental ballistic missile had been hurled several hundred feet in the pre-dawn blast on Friday that killed one Air Force sergeant and injured 21 other maintenance workers. He had learned that the warhead had not been moved by Saturday night and that the Air Force was working on it at the site. The silo exploded after a spanner was dropped* puncturing the fuel tank of the missile. It was the third fatal accident involving a missile since 1965. , „ t Neither the Pentagon nor the Strategic Air Command in Omaha,

Nebraska, would comment on the location of the warhead or even that the missile had been armed with a nuclear weapon. Titan missiles are usually fitted with up to 10megaton nuclear warheads but Air . Force officials said it was standing policy neither to confirm nor deny the existence of warheads.

The Air Force Secretary (Mr Hans Mark) said there was no danger of a warhead being ignited because warheads were designed so that only a carefully orchestrated series of events could cause them to explode. Even a more serious fire than the orie in the silo was more likely to interrupt that series of events than to cause a warhead to explode.

Workers at Damascus said they had seen a heavy object land a few hundred metres from the silo soon after the blast.

The three main commercial television networks and several metropolitan newspapers quoted unidentified sources as saying the warhead had been catapulted 30 metres.