In 1980, a seemingly ordinary day in Arkansas quickly turned into a terrifying race against time when a report of a fuel leak at a missile silo near Damascus sent shockwaves through the community. What started as a local news story escalated into a gripping tale of danger, cover-ups, and a forgotten nuclear mishap that could have obliterated an entire state. Join us as we uncover the incredible actions of dedicated journalists who were on the ground, piecing together the events of a Cold War incident that remained hidden for decades.
Witness the moment a dropped wrench ignited an internal explosion, launching a powerful nuclear warhead from its silo and into a roadside ditch, mere feet from unimaginable catastrophe. This program reveals how a determined news team, fueled by a tip from a scanner enthusiast, obtained a clandestine recording that exposed the shocking truth about the Damascus, Arkansas, nuclear accident. It’s a powerful reminder of how close we came to disaster, a testament to the pursuit of truth, and a pivotal event that forever changed the landscape of American journalism, including the birth of CNN.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: And we returned to Our American Stories. Up next, the story of a forgotten nuclear mishap in Arkansas that could have blown the state off the map. You’re to tell the story is former newsman Randy Dixon, director of News, Archives, and Media at the Center for Arkansas’s Oral and Visual History at the University of Arkansas. Take it away, Randy.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: It was a normal day. We were in the newsroom. I worked the night schedule. So, we got word that there was a fuel leak at a silo. And we would hear about the silos because there were close to a dozen in Arkansas. And this one was outside of Damascus, which is near Conway, and it’s about a 45-minute drive from Little Rock. So, we heard about this fuel leak. So, a reporter and I hopped in the car, and we drove up there, and it was the regular military, had the roadblocks up, the flashing lights. And we got our video and our pictures, and we needed to get something back for the next morning. And ABC Good Morning America had called, saying they wanted a report. So we left, and we started working on this story for Good Morning America. Well, it was about 2:00 in the morning. We’re still working on the story, and there were no cell phones because this was 1980. And we heard on the two-way radio the reporter who had replaced us. You could tell in his voice he was panicked, and he said, “It blew up!” And we said, “Repeat?” And he said, “The da-da-da-da blew up!” So, we knew that, well, that story we were working on was no longer valid, and it turned into a giant story. Well, there was a leak, which is what we first covered, and they had workmen in there in suits. And one of the airmen dropped a wrench, and it dropped down the silo and started to bounce off the sides. And it hit the side of the missile and punctured it, and a spark caused it to blow up. And it was, you know, the doors were closed, and they are designed to take a nuclear blast from the outside. But this was a, this was a huge explosion on the inside, and it just popped the doors off, sort of like, I guess, squeezing a bottle, and it pops the top off of it. That’s what happened with the silo. There’s missile. There was nothing left of the missile. It was just that warhead that came flying out. At the time, we didn’t realize exactly how big of a story because the, uh, Air Force wouldn’t confirm that there was a nuclear warhead on top of that missile, ’cause sometimes there was, sometimes there wasn’t. And we also didn’t know that it had been blown out of the silo and had gone into a ditch on the side of the highway. And it wasn’t until later that we heard that it happened and we could have been obliterated. That size warhead would have pretty much destroyed the entire state. And even now, to this day, you would not be, because of the radiation. You wouldn’t be able to come anywhere near Arkansas because of that explosion. But what we found out a week later: I was sitting on the assignment desk on the weekend, and we got a phone call from a guy who was sounding very nervous, very guarded, and he was what we call a scanner freak. He was a guy that would listen to scanners, and he could tune them all in and well. He said that he had a recording. He had found the Air Force frequency and had recorded the radio traffic from that night. So, I talked to him, and he seemed legitimate. So, I met him in a little diner in a town called Fordyce, which is in South Arkansas. And it handed me—never told me his name—it handed me just an envelope, slid it across the table, and high-tailed it out of the diner, and I had a cassette tape.
00:05:44
Speaker 3: Come on, boss. Uh, this is a Command One. If we can’t get in touch with the chopper, we want to move out with these guys. George Conway. That’s Roger. Let me try to get Dolphin Charlie One again. Bring a command post. Adult Charlie One. Uh, tell me Candyland right here on the road. It’s Rogers. Roger. Own Team Commander. The team, uh, went to the unit. They—now they’re own their way out to give ’em a full report. Team Commander, Command Post. What the unit are you talking about? Sir? Let’s don’t talk about that. Future traffic, please say, “Let’s don’t talk about that.” That’s Rogers. I wish I had, uh, something secure, but right now, uh, our people tell us that a forklift can go in and, uh, and do its job and return without any difficulty. And that’s the EOD people talking. And, uh, the it’s laying in the ditch. Besides, you know, it’s, it’s not even up close. It blew it out, and it’s laying in the ditch. It’s all exposed and, uh, only need.
00:06:57
Speaker 2: Is doing its it itch, and the commanding officer says to cover it up with a tart.
00:07:05
Speaker 3: They’ve located what they want to locate. And right now, where it’s laying out there, we’re just concerned about the airplane flying, or we’re taking pictures. Should we go cover with a—
Tart? That?
00:07:15
Speaker 2: At that point, I realized that we could have all been killed. We played that on the air. ABC wouldn’t run it because they were afraid of the recording being made of the Air Force, and I believe there is an FCC law now that does not allow rebroadcast of certain radio traffic.
00:07:50
Speaker 3: But it was.
00:07:51
Speaker 2: It was a big story for months because there were investigations, and we had to wait three days at the gate outside. We had someone stationed out there to get that one shot of the flatbed truck pulling out with the warhead on top of it, because they were taking it down to Texas. And that was when CNN first went on the air, and they brought a giant flatbed with a satellite dish, and they were on 24 hours a day from there, and that was the birth of CNN.
00:08:31
Speaker 1: That story, and a terrific job on the storytelling, editing, and production by our own Monty Montgomery, and a special thanks to Randy Dixon, director of News, Archives, and Media at the Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History at the University of Arkansas. And by the way, we do our show in Oxford, Mississippi. And that’s home of Ole Miss. So it’s a fellow SEC school doing the storytelling, the story of how a nuke almost blew up the state of Arkansas and started CNN, here on Our American Stories.
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