Word: bullis
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Military Retreat. His plane at the ready, Bulli met with the commander of the alert crew that he relieved, and received the Positive Control envelope (containing Fail Safe procedures, codes, frequencies) and the black combat data box (target information, maps, radar photos). Signing for it in the presence of a supervising officer, Bulli, 37, now legally assumed responsibility for the thermonuclear bomb in the bay. The spring was drawn: Plane 264 was ready to roll, had a full load of fuel and a multimegaton bomb aboard that is equal in force to ten Atlas ICBMs...
...seven days of their alert duty, Bulli and the other five of his crew go into a military retreat. They sleep in the same quarters, stay always within reach of one another. They travel in a blue station wagon that is striped with a yellow band and topped with a revolving red Grimes light, is always kept warmed up and ready...
...their molehole quarters, Bulli and his men sleep, lounge, eat in a special mess hall (no highly seasoned or gas-forming foods). They keep in touch with their families by phone (most frequent request: bring laundry to the base), often find, as one officer says, that alert duty is usually the time that "your furnace at home goes out or the dog gets lost, or your wife gets moody on the phone." There is no time for boredom. Some sit in seclusion in locked-door study rooms, poring over target data (they never discuss targets with other crews; no crew...
...uuggghha! The Bulli crew was lounging amiably at 11 a.m. one day last week when came the blood-curdling aa-oo-uuggghha! of the klaxon that pierces ears and reverberates in stomachs. Bulli and his men exploded from the molehole and raced for their plane. Copilot Richard Franz, 40, scampered up the forward ladder, and started to snap switches. Pilot Bulli clambered after him, swung his leg over the throttle quadrant, taking care not to upset switches or move dials...
From the radios came the command post voice: "Brakes, brakes. This is Alert Bravo. Authentication Delta. Brakes, brakes. This is Alert Bravo . . ." (The radio reminds Bulli to secure his brakes so that his plane will not roll when he starts his engines.) Bulli flicked on his engine switches. No. 3 fired up, then No. 4; he gangbarred the other six simultaneously. In 45 seconds, all eight fires were roaring. Outside, crewmen hustled around disconnecting external power units. At exactly 11:04-four minutes after the klaxon-Bulli was ready for taxiing. If command post should signal a Coco alert, Bulli...