Authors: Patrick Tilley
Fade Out
FADE-OUT
To my wife Janine who, as always, helped me
in every possible way
but didn't want her contribution acknowledged.
This one is for you. With love.
The date was Friday, the third of August. For some people, depending on where they lived, the day was just beginning. For others, it was the end of another, perfectly normal, day. Suddenly, all around the world, every ground and airborne radar screen went haywireâ¦
OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE/OMAHA/NEBRASKA
For the Headquarters Staff of the Strategic Air Command, it was the tensest situation they'd faced since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
Created in 1946 as the backbone of America's nuclear deterrent policy, SAC had been, and still was, the best equipped, most highly trained and motivated force in the world. Its organization was superb, its planning faultless â a brilliant fusion of American money, skill, and dedication. That dedication had been needed. For over forty years, SAC's bombers had stayed alert and ready behind an increasingly sophisticated screen of electronic devices that monitored every move the Russians made. Suddenly, at 11:13 A.M. Central Standard Time, every radar screen SAC owned turned into a plate of luminous spaghetti.
Momentarily off balance, SAC started burning the wires between Omaha and the North American Air Defense Headquarters at Ent AFB, in neighbouring Colorado. Roughly translated, the high-speed teleprinter message asked just what in hell was happening. NORAD couldn't tell them. The worldwide network of American-owned radar stations, designed to give early warning of a sneak Russian missile attack, was feeding back nothing but confused static to NORAD's Operations Center deep inside the Cheyenne Mountains.
Instead of tracking Russian planes and missiles, setting
up interception courses and simultaneously relaying the appropriate instructions to all Air Defense Command bases, the serried ranks of computers at the heart of the complex system clicked and whirred like distraught fruit machines. It was a totally unforeseen and frightening breakdown of the most foolproof system ever devised by man.
For years, both the Americans and Russians had spent billions of dollars trying to find a way to jam each other's radar defences. Was this sudden snafu proof of a Russian breakthrough? And if it was, would they follow it up with a Sunday punch?
General William Mitchell Allbright, Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command, pondered these questions as he took the elevator down from the daylight to his underground headquarters at Offutt AFB. To Allbright, it looked like the moment he and the rest of the SAC staff had spent the better part of their lives preparing for.
Allbright had already set things in motion from his upstairs office in the yellow brick headquarters building. As he settled into his basement seat, he got a quick rundown from his senior staff. The around-the-clock airborne patrols were already on their way to failsafe points around the globe. The remaining aircraft, streaming off runways scattered across the USA, would fly to similar holding points, their radios tuned in on SAC's special side-band communications network over which would come the crucially important Presidential Go-Code that would, if necessary, transform this defensive alert into an all-out attack on Russia.
But something had gone badly wrong. Contact had been lost with the orbiting Air Force communications and navigation satellites, and the static that was fouling the radar screens was also causing severe fade-out on the vital UKF frequencies that would carry the President's
order. And without radar responses, there was nothing coming down the line from NORAD in Colorado. Nothing for the millions of dollars' worth of machinery to translate into coloured position markers on the huge situation maps. Nothing to show what might â or might not â be on its way in from Russia.
Their birds may already be up, thought Allbright â and we are flying blind. His wife and daughter were on vacation in Santa Barbara, California. His son was in his fourth and final year at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. From the intelligence reports he had read on Soviet targeting, Allbright knew that both places lay within designated first-strike zones. If the Russians
had
launched their nuclear missiles, it meant that his family would be obliterated within the next seven to ten minutes.
Allbright lifted his gold telephone and conferred with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. They had an open line to the Secretary of Defense who, in turn, was briefing the President on the situation. Washington was desperately trying to establish the degree and nature of the crisis that seemed to have engulfed them â and whether or not it had been engineered by the Russians.
Five minutes and forty-two seconds after Allbright had called the alert, the last of SAC's big B-52s lifted off the runway at Loring AFB, Maine. It wasn't the best reaction time the crew had turned in, but they had blown a tyre on the main undercarriage and had had to stop to change a wheel. Allbright reported to Washington that his entire force was airborne.
At 11:23, after ten minutes of total fade-out, the White House authorized Allbright to bring his ICBMs to Condition Red. Instantaneously, via armoured underground telephone lines, the signal went out to alert the crews of the concrete missile silos sunk deep into the
wheatfields and the Rocky Mountain spine of the Midwest. Keys turned in sealed locks to start complex preignition sequences. Target data fed automatically into inertial guidance systems. The great countdown began.
At 11:24, while General Allbright was still on the line to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a call came through from an Air Force base in Turkey. An airborne electronic surveillance unit patrolling the borders of Soviet Armenia had reported that the Russian radar network was fouled up too. Allbright asked for independent verification of the report. While he was waiting, the Russian Premier came through on the hot line to the White House.
At 11:33, while the two leaders were still reassuring each other of their peaceful intentions, the radar screens blipped back into life and the sitation maps in SAC's underground headquarters lit up like overloaded Christmas trees. There were plenty of Russian planes in the air, but their missiles were still on the ground. General Allbright sat back and watched the screens for the next hour as the US and Soviet Air Forces pulled off their collision courses and headed for home.
It was all over.
Somewhere around 15:30, Allbright handed over control to his senior duty officer and drove from Offutt Air Force Base to his nearby home. He dismissed his aide, poured himself a large drink and took a long, thoughtful shower. As he dried himself, he saw in the mirror that the stress of the sudden alert plus the gut-wrenching breakdown in the radar defences had turned his face into a taut, deeply-lined mask.
Allbright poured himself another drink and put in a person-to-person call to his wife in Santa Barbara. He asked her about the weather on the West Coast and his daughter Lynn. His wife told him, adding that she'd heard on the car radio that there had been a sudden
breakdown in the Air Traffic Control system covering the major California airports. It had happened around 9:15 local time. Airlines had been diverted to avoid midair collisions and flight schedules had been disrupted throughout the day. The people next door were anxiously awaiting news of a relative who had, so far, failed to signal his safe arrival in Los Angeles.
Allbright told her he'd heard most of the states had been briefly affected but that he didn't know what had caused the breakdown. He checked the date of her return to Nebraska and hung up without telling her about the alert.
THE WHITE HOUSE/WASHINGTON DC
The urgent inquest on the twenty-minute radar breakdown instituted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not produce any satisfactory answers in time for their breakfast meeting with President John “Jake” Lorenzo at the White House.
When the three of them arrived, they found Mel Fraser, Arnold Wedderkind and Bob Connors already sitting around the table with the President. Fraser was Secretary of Defense, Wedderkind was the Administration's chief scientific advisor. Connors' title was Special Assistant to the President.
There were plenty of rolls, bacon, and coffee on a side table, but no one seemed to want any.
The President raised a hand to acknowledge the arrival of Admiral Edward Garrison, Air Force General Chuck Clayson and Army General Vernon Wills. Admiral Kirk, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was cruising
somewhere north of Diego Garcia aboard the US Navy carrier
Lexington,
getting a firsthand impression of the growing Russian naval presence in the Indian Ocean.
As the three Chiefs of Staff sat down, Arnold Wedderkind recapped briefly what he'd been saying about solar flares. âThe interference that hit us on Friday is known to radio buffs as “fade-out”. It's a familiar problem and, in varying degrees, one that is with us most of the time â'
âExcept nothing on this scale has ever happened before,' interjected Clayson.
âNot in the last ninety years,' admitted Wedderkind. âBut until Marconi invented the radio, the problem didn't exist.'
The President, Fraser and the others nodded in sombre agreement but General Chuck Clayson found little comfort in Wedderkind's reply. Of the three armed services, the Air Force had been the hardest hit by the paralysing effects of the radar breakdown and he was probably the most worried man in the room.
Wedderkind directed his explanation at the President and kept it as simple as he could. âFade-out is caused by magnetic storms in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere. They, in turn, are usually caused by bursts of short-wave radiation coming from the sun and they're emitted by volcanic eruptions of incandescent matter known as solar flares. Flares are associated with sun-spots â which I'm sure you've heard of.