The last declassified accident occurred in September 1980
at Damascus, Arkansas, when an Air Force repairman dropped a.
heavy wrench socket, which rolled off the work platform and fell
toward the bottom of a silo. The silo contained a Titan II missile
with a nine'megaton warhead. The socket bounced and struck the
missile, causing a leak from the pressurized fuel tank. About eight
and a half hours after the initial puncture, fuel vapors within the
silo ignited and exploded the liquid fuel. One man was killed;
twenty other people were injured. The nine'megaton hydrogen
bomb was catapulted hundreds of yards away and was found lying in
a field next to a grazing cow. Had this weapon exploded, its effect
would have been approximately 720 times greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb.