John Lisbeth--A Truly Terrible Idea!

A Truly Terrible Idea!

John Lisbeth

Photo by Alexander Paramonov at Pexels.

Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, early 1980s. I was Flight Commander in charge of Oscar Launch Control Center north-east of Sturgis in the Minuteman ICBM system. Mike, my former Deputy Combat Crew Commander, was now Officer in Charge at the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) facility. “Mike” wasn’t his real first name, but he was tall and blond and looked a bit like Lloyd Bridges who played Mike Nelson on the old “Sea Hunt” TV show. Every now and then, Mike would give me a call when something interesting had arrived at the EOD facility that needed blowing up.

My office was located on base and I was having a slow afternoon when Mike called. “Hey,” he said. “You need to get out here. I’ve got some nuclear simulators to set off. It’s gonna be so cool!”

When I got to the disposal area, I parked next to the blockhouse and found Mike and his sergeant standing beside a pallet holding 6 round steel drums, each about 30 inches wide and 24 inches deep. Mike was so excited that he was practically jumping up and down. “These things are shaped charges,” he told me. “They’re supposed to simulate the ground shock of a nuke going off a quarter of a mile away. And I’ve got six of them!”

Using a forklift, we trucked the first one out to the blast pit, where Mike and his sergeant wired the thing to the detonator control box. Back in the blockhouse, Mike connected the detonator switch. “Here we go,” he said with a grin and twisted the handle. There was a tremendous BOOM! and a pretty good shock wave. I was impressed. Mike, not so much.

“Crap,” he said. “That wasn’t so great.” He thought for a minute. “Let’s set off the other five all together.”

Now this was, by any standard, a terrible idea. The sergeant and I did our best to talk Mike out of it, but he was in charge and a half-hour later all five cans were in the blast pit with one in the middle and the other four touching. Mike had carefully cut all the connecting wires to exactly the same length to insure that all five charges would detonate at the same instant.

When we got back to the blockhouse, I moved my car around behind the blockhouse into what I hoped would be the “blast shadow”, opposite the blast pit. Mike connected the switch and happily twisted the handle.

I don’t remember the blast. The next thing I knew, I was looking straight ahead at the ceiling through a thick cloud of dust. All three of us had been knocked off our feet by the explosion. I scrambled upright and grabbed Mike by the arm. “I was never here,” I told him. “Do not mention my name to anyone, ever again!”

The blast had several unfortunate consequences. It was heard over a large part of Western South Dakota and was reported in Eastern Wyoming. Anyone who was napping on base, in Rapid City or other towns or ranches near the base, wasn’t napping for long. The blast broke hundreds of windows on base, including a great many in the Base Housing area. It produced an impressive mushroom cloud and, since the EOD facility was located between the main base and the Nuclear Weapons Storage area, a great many people thought that a real nuclear bomb had gone off. TV and newspaper coverage was extensive. And highly critical.

Mike took full responsibility for everything. My name never came up. As punishment, Mike was docked a few months’ pay, Letters of Reprimand from the Base and Wing commanders went into his personnel folder and he was reassigned to Alaska. Mike loved hunting and fishing, so that last bit wasn’t much of a punishment. But since Mike was still a 1^st Lieutenant, he lost all chance of being promoted to Captain. His Air Force career was over.

I resisted telling this story until well after I had retired.

I was born in Tennessee and raised in New Jersey. I went to college in South Dakota. I was drafted upon graduation and made a career of the military, retiring in 1995. I wrote product review and how-to articles for sporting magazines from 1976 to 1984 and began writing fiction in 2016. I’m married with one daughter and one grandson and I play bass trombone in several groups in and near Rapid City, South Dakota. I'm 80 years old.