Word: failed
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...fashioned a safety catch for its hair trigger, a crucial check upon the deterrent power, so as to rule out the minuscule but horrifying chance that World War III might explode out of one aircrew's accident or aberration or miscalculation. Name of SAC's safety catch: Fail Safe...
...Fail Safe is a cold-war projection of an engineering principle used for decades in aircraft design and around dangerous machinery. The principle: if a device can fail, it must be assumed that it will fail, and it must be designed so that its failure will do minimal or no harm. Fail Safe on U.S. railroads, for example, means "the dead man's throttle." If an engineer dies at the controls, his pressure on a foot pedal or hand lever is released, and the train automatically goes into an emergency stop. Fail Safe at SAC means that SAC bomber...
...Emergency War Plans-E.W.P.s-designed to meet every calculated contingency to be put into immediate operation. SAC flashes its orders-"PLAN BLANK"-to any or all of some 70 SAC bases worldwide. At the bases the alert crews scramble and head off with a roar toward target-via a Fail Safe point that varies with every mission...
...today's kind of instant warfare, SAC will know long before the alert crews get to the Fail Safe point whether the attack upon the West is real or just a commonplace false alarm. Chances are overwhelming that the alert airplanes will be recalled long before they get to Fail Safe point...
Should they get to Fail Safe point without getting coded follow-up orders to proceed, they must automatically turn around and head home. Should they get the order to go on-e.g., "Implement Plan Red Fox Eight"-they must still check the order with base command; they must go through several cross checks on message and frequency to ensure against decoy; they must get yet another confirmatory order to proceed. In a normal tactical situation, the only man who can give the final order to attack is the President of the U.S., who relays it to General Power...