Athena Missile #122 - The US Accidentally Bombs Mexico
Transcript
One of the first lessons a person learns when it comes to handling projectile weapons is to maintain proper discipline of their weapons and ensure it doesn’t strike any unintended targets. Naturally, this is a fundamental principle of safe weapon keeping, and an organization as large as the US Military is prepared at all times to maintain this discipline and prevent unintentional incidents, as an international strike from a ballistic missile would have drastic international consequences.
Ok, so it’s possible my sarcasm is a little unfair given the highly technical processes for missile guidance which were still being refined at the time. On the other hand, I actually have to clarify which time the US accidentally bombed Mexico, as the event we’re talking about today was actually the 3rd such occasion.
Today, we’re looking at the launch of the Athena Missile number 122. The launch occurred on July 11, 1970, at the Green River Missile Launch Complex in Utah as one of many test flights for the US Air Force advanced ballistic re-entry system program. This program used Athena scale model rockets to collect data on ballistic missiles and atmospheric re-entry as part of improving missile capabilities. The rockets would leave the Launch Complex in Utah and travel to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. At least, that was the idea.
The first part of the launch went normally. The missile took off from Green River and telemetry data showed it was behaving as normal. Then contact was lost with the missile, but this part was not unexpected. The intense air friction around the missile created heat and generated a field of plasma which interfered with communication signals.
A 1971 report quoting one Patrick Quinlan depicts what happened next. Working at the Range Control building at White Sands Missile Range, where the Athena was supposed to be received, Quinlan stated that himself and others had gotten into the habit of going out onto the fire escape to look for the glow of the Athena re-entry, which would typically be seen to the north and about 45 degrees over the horizon. This was the first indication something had gone wrong. “Suddenly, the glow appeared almost straight overhead and the reentry streak trailed south” according to Quinlan. The missile had overshot its mark by a considerable amount. Almost immediately, phones started ringing as a collective recognition of what had just happened set in. In one positive note, the missile had re-established communications and tracking data as it re-entered the atmosphere, giving at least an indication of the direction and roughly where it should have impacted - somewhere near the Durango desert.
With a launch issue such as this, those in charge had a lot of firefighting to do - both figuratively and literally. During the failed launch, it was reported that burning fuel falling from the missile had started brush fires on the missile range which they attempted to put out over the weekend, but eventually were left to burn themselves out. By Tuesday, Uprange Division Chief Dale Green was in a meeting with the commanding general of the post, preparing to go to Mexico to recover the missile when it was found. They would eventually leave on July 16th, the 5th day after the launch.
Also involved was Short Range Attack Missile engineer Carlos Bustamante. Bustamante was uniquely suited to the task not only for his experience with engineering missile launch and recovery sites, but also because he was fluent in Spanish. In fact, this trip might have caused some deja vu for Bustamante - he had been sent to Mexico before after a missile overshoot, when a Pershing missile landed 50 miles South of the Mexican border in 1967. Not only would Bustamante’s skills come in handy, the recovery program would lean very heavily on him - it was initially ordered that he would be the only one of the group sent who would communicate with the Mexican officials, to prevent any misunderstandings. The points of contact for Mexican government officials were a very small group consisting of some engineers and two army officers.
Funny enough, Bustamante realized within a couple of days that the army officers actually understood English. He invited them out for drinks and, after they'd had a few, told them that he knew they spoke English and he was tired of having to do all the translating. The officers admitted that they had done some training and school in America and spoke English. This revelation allowed the rest of the team to communicate with the officers as necessary. I don’t actually know how much of an impact this did or didn’t have on the program, but the report I’m reading definitely made a point of including it, and I thought it was a pretty funny part of the story.
Having arrived in Mexico, the team set up a base in the town of Torreon, which was the largest town within the vicinity. They expected to be done within 4 days. This would prove to be a severe underestimate. Air Force specialists had narrowed down the approximate impact site to an ellipse roughly 1.5 miles long and half a mile wide, but there was a big problem - nobody could accurately place where that ellipse might be due to a lack of landmarks in the area. They believed it had landed near a small town by the name of Ceballos, about 100 miles from their base in Torreon.
It would take until the 2nd of August for the nosecone to be located. This was done with the use of a special airplane used by the Atomic Energy Commission which was equipped with a scintillometer and spectrum analyzer calibrated to search for radiation given off by Cobalt 57, of which the nose had been carrying two small vials. We haven’t touched on this yet, but this added an extra level of urgency and responsibility, as there were concerns that the remnants of the missile could be leaking radiation into the surrounding area. If you’ve seen my video on the Poseidon nuclear torpedo, you may remember that Cobalt is a radioactive element of concern when used in nuclear weapons. Although the Cobalt 57 used in this case was for purposes of scientific measurement and of a much smaller quantity, this would still naturally lead to scientific concern on the part of the Mexican government.
Once the crash site was located by plane, the team still had a little bit of work to do locating it on foot. They began by following directions radioed in from the overhead plane to get the general idea. Once they had narrowed it down as much as possible, the team then followed a trail of flour sacks which were dropped from the plane overhead to lead them to the precise area. Finally reaching the site, all that remained of the impact was a small crater with a few metal shards and some contaminated sand.
Radiation at the site measured 0.6 milirems per hour. This is roughly 50 to 200 times higher than the average level of background radiation a human receives. At first it was thought that this was low enough, and far enough away from civilization, that the hole could simply be filled in. However, Mexican officials later came back and stated that they wanted the levels reduced to no more than one-half of a milirem. It was decided that US officials would be brought in to clean up the site and remove radioactive waste, in what would be called “Operation Sand Patch”.
The cleanup operation involved a number of logistical issues. There was very little infrastructure already built in the area, and it was decided that US officials would travel by train and would be required to avoid any military markings. The operation would require a train consisting of 19 total cars which would move equipment and contaminated materials, house and feed all personnel, and provide essential resources such as water and fuel. The men slept and lived on the train which was air conditioned.
The train arrived at the nearest siding available in the small town of Carillo, Mexico on the afternoon of September 24th. From there, they would have to travel an additional 20 miles to the site. The day after arriving, the team unloaded equipment and began preparing a road to the site. Then Murphy decided to make an appearance, as “the heavens opened up with rain falling on and off for several days”. The weather significantly delayed progress and teams would spend several hours each day just clearing vehicles from mud to continue with their operations. Eventually, though, the rain did let up and they were able to continue their movement to and from the site unimpeded.
All told, 60 drums of contaminated soil would be excavated and removed. Additionally, 3 19-gallon drums were used to store contaminated protective equipment worn by the workers to protect against radiation. Once loaded, there was a delay of several days to clean up the site and prepare for the final exit. It’s reported that during this time, workers performed some helpful tasks in the town of Carillo, including repairing the only working television in the town and working on the water system. The train finally departed on October 5th, and upon hitting Juarez it received customs clearance almost immediately - something which Green attributes to the immediately visible radiation hazard stickers on the barrels.
Operation Sand Patch finally came to an official end on October 7th, 88 days after the failed launch, when all of the materials were unloaded from the train. The barrels of radioactive sand were stored in the Nuclear Effects Laboratory at the White Sands Missile Range, before eventually just being dumped into the desert. With a half-life of 270 days, it’s said that the radiation in the barrels was undetectable after just 7.4 years, so the dumping of the contaminated sand should have no effect on the surrounding area.
At this point, I do want to apologize if the video portion of this topic is a little light on primary source pictures. It seems that many were collected at one point, but the further I look, the more I encounter dead links and incomplete archives. The White Sands Missile Range even had its own publication, the White Sands Missile Ranger, and archives from the paper are ostensibly available wsmrhistoric.com, but none of the archive links work and some of them even go to other random webpages. The state of the archival is pretty unfortunate, but I’ll do my best to present what I can.
Of the several names recorded in documents, I was able to find that at least two of our characters have been inducted into the White Sands Missile Range Hall of Fame. Carlos Bustamante ended up serving White Sands in an official capacity for 45 years, from 1952 to 1997, and his work in multiple recovery efforts in Mexico is listed among his accomplishments. Dale Green was inducted in 2009 for his efforts in facilities management and keeping the missile range running smoothly, In 1972, he was promoted to the Commanding General’s uprange coordinator - perhaps partially in recognition of his work in recovery of Athena 122.
A lot of discussion has taken place around the high-risk atmosphere of missile test launches of the time. The risks of a missile overshoot starting an international incident were not overlooked, as a 1963 report makes clear. Titled “Report on peacetime launch from ICBM Operational Sites”, the memorandum states that there could not be a high degree of confidence that launches would go as planned, based upon a history of prior performance issues. This might lead some to question why the Air Force would continue with missile test launches in the face of these noted previous performance failures, but the answer is in the cold war mentality of maintaining missile overmatch capabilities with the Soviet Union.
US Intelligence reports at the time indicated that Soviet missile technology and quantity was quickly accelerating, and that it was quickly approaching the point where this capability would be on par or even exceed the capabilities of the United States. Thus, it was believed that developing intercontinental missile technology was necessary to maintain public security through superior firepower. The report notes that the public had been very supportive of missile tests and even overshoot incidents, emphasizing that this was due to a public perception that these activities were necessary for national and public security. To some extent, it’s even believed that Mexico were receptive to working with the US to clear up multiple overshoot incidents as they benefited from the US developing such defensive capability.
That’s where the story of the missile launch ends, at least officially, but it’s left behind a bizarre legacy of its own.
Many are familiar with the Bermuda Triangle and its mysterious disappearances and effects on communication and navigation equipment. However, far fewer people have heard of the Zona de Silencio in the Mapimi Desert. This mysterious zone has bizarre behaviors of its own, notably areas of radio silence that are reported to drift throughout the zone, blocking outside communications. Others believe that the area attracts unusual weather events and even meteor strikes at a highly unusual rate, with some speculating that this may be due to a high level of the mineral magnetite in the soil.
As tends to happen, these rumors have gotten more and more out there. Locals have even reported sightings of UFO and tall alien creatures, turning the area into something of a tourist attraction for the “zonarios” who come to the site hoping to see paranormal activity. Locals have largely encouraged the activity, with some providing guided tours of the wandering silent zones.
There’s some small amount of argument over whether or not the Athena missile landing in the area was the starting point for these rumors. There are reports of pilots who encountered communications issues in the area prior to the missile landing, but there is notably little discussion of the Mapimi Silent Zone prior to the events surrounding Operation Sand Patch. Whether you believe the stories or not, one thing is hard to argue; the further you dig, the stranger this unusual and little-discussed historical event becomes.
I’d like to take a second to acknowledge some sources that I used to research today’s video. You’ll find these linked in the description and it’s definitely worth checking into them if you’re interested in this topic, as even this fairly long video is a very condensed account of the events that took place. The blog at unredacted has a good write up on this where I was able to find many primary sources to verify different aspects of this story. One of my main sources for official reporting is an article now archived as a .pdf at utah.history.gov, which was a great resource but sadly once held embedded file photos that I can no longer seem to find. Atlas Obscura has a great write up on the Mapimi Silent Zone if you want to read more about the weirdness that goes on there. Finally, the White Sands Missile Range Museum had a lot of good archival information.
Thanks for watching, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and learned something new from it today. This episode is a little longer than usual, but I do enjoy doing the occasional deep dive into a subject. So, if you’ve made it this far, let me know if you enjoy these longer, more in-depth videos and would like to see more of them. Or if you’d prefer shorter videos that get right to the point, let me know that too. Whatever your feedback, you’re welcome to leave it in the comments. Until next time, it’s been a pleasure as always. Thank you.
