The missile facilities technician, Senior Airman Glen H. Wessel, placed a vapor detector near the blast door. He could smell oxidizer. The detector quickly registered one to three parts per million; somehow the stuff was getting into the control center. Wessel told his commander that the room was being contaminated with oxidizer. They both tried to open the blast door, but it wouldn’t budge. The crew was locked inside the control center.
The two PTS technicians waiting in the blast lock, serving as backup, had no idea what was happening in the silo. They could hear screams on the radio, but nobody would answer them. And then the door from the long cableway suddenly swung open, and Hepstall appeared. Oxidizer had turned the faceplate of his helmet white. It was so opaque you couldn’t see his face.
Hepstall pulled off the helmet. He was sobbing. He said Malinger’s still down there, we have to go and get him out. If anything happens to Malinger, he said, I’ll never forgive myself.
Hepstall had left his trainee in the silo, amid a thick cloud of oxidizer, found his way to the elevator, and ridden it five levels to the long cableway.
The door to the blast lock opened, and Sergeant Thomas walked inside. He saw Hepstall sobbing, heard that Malinger was missing, and put on one of the backup team’s RFHCO suits. Without a moment’s hesitation, Thomas had decided to search for Malinger.
Hepstall offered to go with him and grabbed a fresh helmet. Wearing the RFHCOs, they opened the door and headed down the long cableway toward the silo. The air was becoming thick with oxidizer.
The PTS backup team waited anxiously in the blast lock. Moments later, the door swung open. Hepstall stumbled inside and fell to the ground coughing. He hadn’t made it very far. The new helmet leaked, and oxidizer was getting into his RFHCO. Hepstall took off the suit, got into another one, and left for the silo again.
On the bottom floor of the control center, Wessel was amazed by how hard it was to open the escape hatch. The ratchet that you needed to use felt really heavy. He and the ballistic missile analyst technician, Danford M. Wong, took turns with it, wearing their gas masks. They were highly motivated. The blast door still wouldn’t open, and this looked like their only way out.
Lieutenant Frost was still attempting, without success, to reach the PTS team in the silo, Sergeant Thomas, and the PTS guys in the trailer, using the telephone and the radio. It wasn’t easy with a gas mask on. Frost would pull off the mask momentarily, speak, put the mask back on, and listen for some response. Nobody answered him. And then, clear as a bell, he heard Malinger shouting over the radio.
“My God, help us, help us, we need help.”
“Hey, door eight is locked, we’re locked in, you guys get out,” Frost told him.
Malinger kept repeating that he needed help, and Frost tried to make him understand that the blast door was stuck.
The emergency phone rang, and Frost answered it. Someone was outside blast door 8, asking for help.
“Hey, you guys, get out of here, get out of here now,” Frost said, “just get out, door eight is locked, so you guys get out.”
Wessel and Wong could hear the commotion on the floor above them and cranked the ratchet on the escape hatch as fast they could.
Blast door 8 swung open, and Malinger ran into the control center, carrying his helmet, yelling that Sergeant Thomas was dead. A cloud of oxidizer followed him, and then Hepstall came in, without a helmet, and collapsed onto the floor. He landed near the stairs, as Malinger kept screaming. None of it made sense to the missile crew.
Commander Matthews said, “Come help me,” to Frost, and they entered the blast lock. Sergeant Thomas lay unconscious on the floor. They picked him up, carried him into the control center, and shut the door. Thomas was having convulsions, his head nodding side to side in the RFHCO helmet. Malinger took off the helmet and started to give him mouth-to-mouth.
“This is three-seven,” Frost told the command post at McConnell Air Force Base. “The locks are on the safe and the keys are in it. We got one man possibly down and we’re evacuating now.”
Thomas died on the floor, staring at the ceiling.
“Where’s the dep, where’s the dep?” Wessel shouted, calling for Frost, their deputy commander. They were getting tired, and they needed his help to open the escape hatch. The light grew dimmer as the control center filled with oxidizer.
Malinger didn’t want to leave Thomas behind. It seemed wrong. After getting knocked down by the powerful stream of oxidizer, Malinger had gotten lost in the silo, near the base of the missile, unable to see more than a few feet, unaware that Hepstall had taken the elevator and left him down there. Sergeant Thomas had found him and brought him out, and now Malinger didn’t want to leave Thomas on the floor.
“We’ll get him later,” Frost said, heading downstairs to work on the hatch.
