With flashes of lightning from an early-summer thunderstorm illuminating the night sky to the west, the first aircrew bus rolled out onto the aircraft parking ramp. The ramp was brown and dusty with disuse, with tall weeds poking up through the cracks in the reinforced concrete. The bus rolled along in between two long lines of airplanes, finally turning in and parking between two of them. All of the planes were surrounded by maintenance men and vehicles; all except the ones toward the back of the line were encircled with red ropes supported by orange rubber cones, with the cones toward the nose of each aircraft marked “ECP,” or “Entry Control Point.” The aircrew stepped off the bus, unloaded their gear, and shuffled toward the armed security guard at the gap in the rope marked “ECP” as if they were in a dream — or perhaps caught in a nightmare. Although it was much easier and quicker to just step over the red rope surrounding the plane, the crew members knew what dire consequences awaited them if they dared to do so — security police terms like “kiss concrete” and “jacked up” came immediately to mind.
The guard checked each crewman’s line badge against his access list, then waved them inside the roped-off area. They met with the airplane’s crew chief and assistant crew chief, where they reviewed the aircraft Form 781 maintenance logbooks, accomplished a short crew briefing covering restricted area access and preflight actions, then ran through the first few steps of their “Before Boarding” and “Before Power-Off Preflight” checklists.
Two of the crewmen, each carrying one of the steel CMF containers and their helmet bag, began climbing up the long, steep ladder into the belly of the plane, followed by the other two crewmen carrying the canvas pubs bags. After a quick check to make sure both of the aft ejection seats were safetied, they piled their gear onto the upper deck, then used “monkey bars” to pull themselves up into their seats both left and right. Once they were in their seats, the second two crewmen could climb past them, crawl down a short tunnel, over the chemical toilet, and into the cockpit.
While the pilots were performing their “Power-Off Preflight” checklist, the two crewmen behind them slid one steel canister each into slots behind and beside their seats, then secured the canisters to the aircraft with steel cables and padlocks. Each CMF container had two compartments: the smaller top compartment was closed and sealed with a steel numbered trucker’s container seal, secure but easy to open and access; the bottom compartment was sealed with the same cable and padlock that secured the canister to the plane as well as a trucker’s seal — a little more difficult to open than the top compartment.
The top compartment of the CMF, or Classified Mission Folder, container held the launch authenticators, the decoding documents necessary to authenticate a launch order under the SIOP, or Single Integrated Operations Plan — the plan to fight an intercontinental nuclear war. The lower compartment, secured by a padlock as well as a steel seal to better protect the contents, held the decoding documents needed to authenticate a nuclear attack order and to prearm the nuclear weapons, the attack timing sheets, and the charts and computer data cassettes they needed to fly their attack route. The green canvas bags contained more decoding documents and the charts and computerized flight plan cassettes to fly the escape and refueling routes on the way to the Positive Control Turn-Around Point, known as the “fail-safe” point — the point where they could not pass without a valid attack execution order broadcast by the President of the United States himself.
They opened the green canvas bags and took out several red vinyl binders, paper-bound booklets, and a couple of grease pencils, stuffing each booklet into a slot or cranny around their workspace so they could have quick and easy access to it, even in the dark. They then completed their own checklists, making sure all of their equipment’s power switches were off, and plugged their oxygen masks and interphone cords into the aircraft outlets and placed the helmets over the headrests of their ejection seats, ready to go. When they were finished, they all climbed out of the crew compartment and met back outside on the ground.
They performed the walkaround inspection together, beginning at the nose gear strut and working clockwise past the nose, right side, right engine nacelles, right wing, and then into the forward bomb bay. Even though the crew had practiced this procedure regularly over the years, this was the first time all but one of them, the crew OSO, or offensive systems operator, had ever done it for reaclass="underline" preflight a B-1B Lancer bomber in preparation for nuclear war.
“Cripes,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Roma, the crew OSO muttered aloud. “We’re back in the big glowing smoking hole business again.” The other crew members just stood and stared. For Roma, this was like some kind of nasty dream, like the world’s worst case of deja vu. It was the middle of the Cold War all over again.
Joe Roma was an eighteen-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, not including three years in the Civil Air Patrol in high school in Corfu, New York, and four years as a full-scholarship ROTC cadet at Syracuse University — he had worn some version of an Air Force uniform for over half his life. Proudly, most of that time was not spent in a blue uniform, but in a green one — an Air Force flight suit. He had attended two years of undergraduate, advanced, and B-52 bomber combat crew training, then been assigned to a B-52 bomb wing in northern Maine. Because there was not much to do up in Loring Air Force Base, Maine, most of the time, Roma — tall, slim, dark, and athletic, but too boyish and gangly-looking to be taken seriously by the really good-looking ladies in Aroostook County, Maine — had busied himself with the intricacies of the venerable B-52 bomber.
His dedication had been rewarded with rapid advancement from R (Ready) crew status to E (Exceptional) status, then simulator operator, instructor nav, S (Select) crew status, Standardization-Evaluation Crew, then back to Castle Air Force Base for upgrade to radar navigator; then quickly through R-, E-, and S-crew status, instructor radar nav, then Stan-Eval again. In the meantime, he transferred to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, another remote assignment, and he immersed himself in career-building projects: a master’s degree in business administration, a half-dozen military schools by correspondence. He was selected for a variety of Wing and Air Division-level assignments, such as target study officer, weapons officer, command post controller, and Wing bomb-nav officer, in charge of training and outfitting the B-52 squadron navigators. Roma loved every new assignment, and the Air Force rewarded his enthusiasm and dedication with rapid promotion to major.
But nothing he’d ever done compared with his newest assignment: to be part of the initial cadre of instructors for the B-1B bomber at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas. The B-1B was everything he’d wished the B-52 could be: fast, sleek, stealthy, powerful, accurate, and reliable. The “Bone” became Roma’s new obsession. Roma, still unmarried, was promoted to lieutenant colonel in short order and eventually became chief of Stan-Eval for the B-l Combat Crew Training squadron, the first navigator ever selected to that position — before or since. Roma was then reassigned to Ellsworth Air Force Base as bomb-nav operations officer of the Strategic Warfare School, the “graduate school” for long-range bombing planners and commanders. While at the SWC, Roma studied and worked with the commander of the SWC, then-Brigadier General Terrill Samson, becoming one of Samson’s strategic bomber experts, developing strategies and tactics for employing bombers in any kind of conflict anywhere in the world. Roma was “getting great face time,” as his fellow crewdogs put it, and he was considered a shoo-in for a choice Pentagon assignment, for Air War College, perhaps even a bomber squadron of his own.