Command and Control

SELECTED CAST OF CHARACTERS

Captain Michael T. Mazzaro, the commander, a young officer from Massachusetts with a pregnant wife

Lieutenant Allan D. Childers, the deputy commander, raised in Okinawa, a former DJ in his late twenties

Staff Sergeant Rodney L. Holder, the ballistic missile systems analyst technician, son of a Navy officer, responsible for keeping the Titan II ready to launch

Staff Sergeant Ronald O. Fuller, the missile facilities technician, responsible for the equipment at the launch complex

Lieutenant Miguel Serrano, a trainee studying to become a deputy commander

Senior Airman Charles T. Heineman, the team chief

Senior Airman David Powell, an experienced Titan II repairman, twenty-one and raised in Kentucky

Airman Jeffrey L. Plumb, nineteen and from Detroit, a novice receiving on-the-job training

Sergeant Jeff Kennedy, a quality control evaluator for the 308th Strategic Missile Wing, perhaps the best missile mechanic at Little Rock Air Force Base, a former deckhand from Maine in his midtwenties

Colonel James L. Morris, the head of maintenance at the 308th Strategic Missile Wing

Senior Airman James R. Sandaker, a young missile technician from Evansville, Minnesota

Technical Sergeant Michael A. Hanson, the team chief

Senior Airman Greg Devlin, a junior middleweight Golden Gloves boxer

Senior Airman David L. Livingston, a twenty-two-year-old missile repairman from Ohio with a fondness for motorcycles

Sid King, the twenty-seven-year-old manager of a local radio station

Gus Anglin, the sheriff of Van Buren County

Sam Hutto, a dairy farmer with land across the road from the missile site

Colonel William A. Jones, the head of the force as well as the base commander

Captain Donald P. Mueller, a flight surgeon manning the force’s ambulance

Richard L. English, head of the Disaster Preparedness Unit, a civilian in his late fifties, still fit and athletic, nicknamed “Colonel,” who’d served in the Air Force for many years

Technical Sergeant David G. Rossborough, an experienced first responder

Technical Sergeant Thomas A. Brocksmith, the on-scene police supervisor at the accident site

Technical Sergeant Donald V. Green, a noncommissioned officer in his early thirties who volunteered to escort a flatbed truck to Launch Complex 374-7

Technical Sergeant Jimmy E. Roberts, a friend of Green’s who accompanied him on the drive to Damascus

Colonel John T. Moser, commander of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing

General Lloyd R. Leavitt, Jr., the vice commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command

Colonel Ben G. Scallorn, a Titan II expert at the Eighth Air Force who’d worked with the missiles since the first silos were built

General Leslie R. Groves, director of the project, who led the effort to build an atomic bomb

J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist, later known as “the father of the atomic bomb,” who served as the first director of the Los Alamos Laboratory

Edward Teller, a physicist later known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb,” often at odds with the other Los Alamos scientists

George B. Kistiakowsky, a chemist and perhaps the nation’s leading explosives expert, later the science adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Bob Peurifoy, an engineer from Texas who joined Sandia in 1952 and subsequently became its leading advocate for nuclear weapon safety

Harold Agnew, a physicist from Colorado who helped create the first manmade nuclear chain reaction, filmed the destruction of Hiroshima from an observer plane, and played an important role in nuclear weapon safety efforts at the Los Alamos Laboratory

Carl Carlson, a young physicist at Sandia who in the late 1950s recognized the vulnerability of a nuclear weapon’s electrical system during an accident

Bill Stevens, an engineer who became the first head of Sandia’s nuclear safety department and worked closely with Bob Peurifoy

Stan Spray, a Sandia engineer who burned, crushed, and routinely tortured nuclear weapon components to discover their flaws

General Curtis E. LeMay, an engineer who revolutionized American bombing techniques during the Second World War and turned the Strategic Air Command into the most powerful military organization in history

General Thomas S. Power, an Air Force officer who led the firebombing of Tokyo during the Second World War, followed LeMay to the Strategic Air Command, and gained the reputation of being a mean son of a bitch

General Maxwell D. Taylor, an Army officer who championed the nuclear strategy of limited war and served as influential adviser to President John F. Kennedy

David E. Lilienthal, the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and a strong believer in civilian control of nuclear weapons

Fred Charles Iklé, a RAND analyst who studied the potential consequences of an accidental nuclear detonation and later served as an undersecretary of defense in the Reagan administration

Donald A. Quarles, an engineer whose work at Sandia, the Department of the Air Force, and the Department of Defense helped to promote nuclear weapon safety

Robert S. McNamara, a former automobile executive who, as secretary of defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, struggled to formulate a rational nuclear strategy