15 MINUTES TO BEAT THE BOMB

To SAC, the Klaxon Is a Call to Arms

If the 1960 defense debate has raised new uncertainties about the growth of Soviet missile power, it has underscored one certainty about present-day U.S. deterrent power: the U.S. deterrent is only as good as its reaction time. Today, the free world's one great deterrent is the Strategic Air Command's 24-hour-a-day, year-round ground alert system, a wonder of organizational achievement that keeps a rotating one-third of SAC bomber forces so sensitized that they can get off within 15 minutes' notice from any one of at least 65 SAC bases on the globe. Last week TIME Correspondent Ed Rees reported from SAC's Westover A.F.B. in Massachusetts on one B-52 alert crew in action:

IN the act of reporting for alert duty, Lieut. Colonel Dante Bulli and his crew in effect braced themselves at the end of a taut, outstretched spring. The trigger was the rasping sound of a klaxon horn. At any moment, that horn might blow. It could mean that a Soviet nose cone was on its way carrying destruction, and that there were 15 minutes in which to get off the ground and head for preassigned Soviet targets. There would be no time for second thoughts, no room for second-guessing as to whether some button-pusher was running a test. To the SAC alert crews, the klaxon is a cry to arms.

Command Pilot Bulli's first business was to get his eight-jet B-52 combat-ready. Aircraft No. 264 was towed to a spot near Runway 05 called "the Christmas Tree," a hardtop strip that is branched with parking stubs, one for each alert plane. The six-man air crew then spent three hours "cocking" the plane so that it would be ready for instant takeoff. They ran through pages of checklist items, threw on selected switches that would bring scores of units to life as soon as the main power was turned on. Pilot Bulli finished his part of the check list, made sure that his 40 lbs. of printed manuals were in place, stowed his .357-cal. Smith & Wesson Magnum near his seat. Finally, he put a sign in the windshield. It read "COCKED."

Military Retreat. His plane at the ready, Bulli met with the commander of the alert crew that he relieved, and received the Positive Control envelope (containing Fail Safe procedures, codes, frequencies) and the black combat data box (target information, maps, radar photos). Signing for it in the presence of a supervising officer, Bulli, 37, now legally assumed responsibility for the thermonuclear bomb in the bay. The spring was drawn: Plane 264 was ready to roll, had a full load of fuel and a multimegaton bomb aboard that is equal in force to ten Atlas ICBMs, or to the sum of all the bombs dropped on Europe by all the Allied planes in World War II.

For the seven days of their alert duty, Bulli and the other five of his crew go into a military retreat. They sleep in the same quarters, stay always within reach of one another. They travel in a blue station wagon that is striped with a yellow band and topped with a revolving red Grimes light, is always kept warmed up and ready to go.

News from Home. Their temporary home is a "molehole" adjacent to the Christmas Tree. It is a square, white (for thermal reflection) concrete structure entered through green corrugated steel tubes. It is partially blastproof (most of the 72 duty flight and ground crewmen live in the underground section) and completely soundproof. The area is guarded at the barbed-wire fences by police dogs and armed sentries. The guards even have a secret code--by voice or glance--to cover the possibility that an airman might enter in the company of a saboteur who has an unseen gun in the man's ribs. Any suspicious occurrence--the sudden toss of a stone, a drunken soldier--is flashed to Eighth Air Force headquarters immediately as a "seven high" report.

In their molehole quarters, Bulli and his men sleep, lounge, eat in a special mess hall (no highly seasoned or gas-forming foods). They keep in touch with their families by phone (most frequent request: bring laundry to the base), often find, as one officer says, that alert duty is usually the time that "your furnace at home goes out or the dog gets lost, or your wife gets moody on the phone." There is no time for boredom. Some sit in seclusion in locked-door study rooms, poring over target data (they never discuss targets with other crews; no crew knows the target of another). And all the time they wait for the horn. There is no itchy tension: their sharp reflexes have been honed by intense training, their character hardened by one of SAC's most successful ingredients--motivation.

Aa-oo-uuggghha! The Bulli crew was lounging amiably at 11 a.m. one day last week when came the blood-curdling aa-oo-uuggghha! of the klaxon that pierces ears and reverberates in stomachs. Bulli and his men exploded from the molehole and raced for their plane. Copilot Richard Franz, 40, scampered up the forward ladder, and started to snap switches. Pilot Bulli clambered after him, swung his leg over the throttle quadrant, taking care not to upset switches or move dials.

From the radios came the command post voice: "Brakes, brakes. This is Alert Bravo. Authentication Delta. Brakes, brakes. This is Alert Bravo . . ." (The radio reminds Bulli to secure his brakes so that his plane will not roll when he starts his engines.) Bulli flicked on his engine switches. No. 3 fired up, then No. 4; he gangbarred the other six simultaneously. In 45 seconds, all eight fires were roaring. Outside, crewmen hustled around disconnecting external power units. At exactly 11:04--four minutes after the klaxon--Bulli was ready for taxiing. If command post should signal a Coco alert, Bulli would start rolling for the runway. A call of Juliet or Romeo would send him into the air by 11:07 (well ahead of the 15-minute maximum requirement) to 40,000 feet-plus by 11:37.

Sentries & Showers. But SAC rarely runs an alert beyond Alpha (crew in the cockpit) or Bravo (engine run-up), never beyond Coco (takeoff position on the runway). SAC does not fly cocked aircraft. Reason: any change in a plane's ground alert status is regarded as "uncocking" and lessens the alert capability. Alert planes returning from a practice mission would be in no shape for a real-life turn-around to actual war missions: if they were in the landing pattern when the klaxon sounded the real thing, they would have to be refueled and their crews would need rest. These planes are front-line sentries; to take them into the air would be like ordering front-line combat troops to empty their pieces in target practice.

Nevertheless, SAC crews play their deadly game of Beat the Clock as if each alert were the real thing. And when they get the sign-off, they return to their moleholes to await again the sound of that eerie klaxon; it could come again in five minutes or five hours. Usually, though, the alert crews can count on enough time to clean up. "The only time you dare take a shower," says one pilot, "is right after an alert. Some day they'll fool us and blow the horn again just after we get back." --

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