The station was a sitting-duck target for an air attack but no guided weapon had come anywhere near it. This was not surprising — indeed it was to be expected — because it was very much in the interests of the Russians, in their non-nuclear war policy, not to risk anything that might so much as vibrate the hair-trigger of the Allied nuclear response. For the same reason the persistent jamming to which the other electronic warning systems had been subjected from the sea and air had not been directed against BMEWS. There was an occasional indication from badly tuned airborne equipment to remind the crew that the electronic battle was still in progress, but otherwise the displays were clear.
At 1005 hours a neighbouring air defence radar warning station rang to say it was no longer affected by jamming. Wing Commander Warburton, the Controller, entered this in his log and thought it curious enough to tell his controller colleagues in the other operational centres. An airwoman brought round the tea. It was all very different from the smoke, dust, blood and horror of the battle raging in the Central Region — but they were concerned here with a different kind of war. Warburton had finished his tea when an American controller from the Detection and Tracking Centre at Colorado Springs called to say that they had detected a launch via a warning satellite over the Indian Ocean. It had come from a distance, west of Baikonur, the site from which the satellite launches had been flying during the last sixteen days, and they had not reconciled it. It would not be visible within the Fylingdales detection range for a while, and he said he would call back as soon as they had any tracking information on it.
The line to the Springs was crystal clear. The whole watch had strained their ears to piece together the message and they had all mentally worked out where the response would appear on the display before the American controller had finished what he had to say. There was a scraping of chairs as each one took up a position so that he could see over the observer’s shoulder. The seconds ticked by and the radar movement seemed more sluggish than it had ever been before. Suddenly there it was: the next scan of the radar confirmed it and the computed display gave a very firm digital threat assessment on one missile on an approaching path. Instantaneously the threat light flashed and the tracking radar slewed.
The Royal Air Force control staffs were well used to calming their adrenalin flow, both through exercises simulated on magnetic tape and by the frequency with which bells punctuated the various steps in the computer process, but this had a very different feel about it. A single missile launch against the UK or the US was a highly improbable event, but the confident mood of the computer had come through to them, and with war raging in Europe anything could happen. Very definitely something was happening now.
It was twenty-four minutes past ten when the digital display abruptly upgraded the threat as the tracking radar picked up the missile soaring out of the atmosphere into space. The computer instantly calculated that it was on a sub-orbital trajectory with 353 seconds to impact. The whole watch was galvanized: if this was a real nuclear attack how could a single missile on its own make any sense? The digital warning display had gone instantaneously to all the other operations centres, including the Government Situation Room, but the Controller pressed the switch which connected them all on the voice circuit to confirm, even though they could make no sense of the alarm, that the BMEWS was 100 per cent serviceable and that the computers were continuing to upgrade the threat assessment.
While he spoke one of the plotters called out ‘impact somewhere in UK, sir’, and the computer print-out typed that before his eyes. The digital time-counter had now spun down to 317 seconds to impact. Warburton kept the voice circuit open to his fellow controllers with an additional hand-set to his ear connecting him directly to the Controller at Strike Command, High Wycombe, where he knew his commander-in-chief would be standing behind the control desk.
The Polaris Executive was the man in the system who would have the most to do if the President and the Prime Minister decided that a nuclear response was to be made, but it seemed hardly likely that they would agree to let sixty-four submarine-launched megaton missiles fly to the heart of Soviet Russia in response to this one baffling radar trace. ‘We still don’t understand it,’ said Warburton as he confirmed the amplification of the threat which had just gone up on the display, showing the Midlands as the impact area. The two plotters were poised over the print-out waiting for the next mathematical refinement of the target information as the seconds to go slid down to 227. It was the RAF Strike Command Controller who had the news first: ‘It’s real — it’s the real thing,’ came over the voice system. ‘The Government Situation Centre have just told us that a message has come in on the hot-line. Acknowledge — acknowledge — and Fylingdales have you any better estimate of the point of impact yet?’
The print-out started up again and in a split second it had written ‘Lat/Long 52° 23’ N. 001° 49’ W.’ As this appeared simultaneously on the main display there was no need to plot it on a map, for by one of the miracles of electronic automation a luminous green circle with a cross in the middle had appeared on the cathode ray map of the British Isles. It was over Birmingham. ‘It’s Birmingham — repeat Birmingham,’ Warburton called into the voice circuit. The other controllers acknowledged this grim news in the disciplined and mechanical way in which they had been conditioned for so long to think about the unthinkable. But on the other hand-set at his ear Warburton detected more than a tremor in the voice of the Strike Command Controller when he overheard him say, after his acknowledgement, ‘Oh my God!’ At High Wycombe only his squadron leader assistant knew that when mobilization was ordered the Wing Commander had sent his wife and their three children to stay with her family on the outskirts of that now hapless city.
The time-counter showed 114 seconds to go as the Fylingdales assistant controller exchanged and cross-checked data on the line to his opposite number in the Detection and Tracking Center at Colorado Springs. A US Air Force major was repeating back the facts and factors as he verified them with the information at the master control centre. All the space satellite and ground radar information was now integrated in the main computer at Colorado Springs, and as he logged the details from Fylingdales he said, ‘Yeah — yeah, that all checks with our data here’ — and then, with more than a touch of melancholy in his voice, as the counter slid down to sixty-three seconds, ‘It sure is going to be hot in Birmingham England.’
The SS-17 missile detonated its nuclear warhead 3,500 metres above Winson Green prison at 1030 hours on the morning of 20 August. Within a fraction of a second the resulting fireball, with temperatures approaching those of the sun, was over 2,000 metres in diameter and reached down towards the centre of Birmingham. The incredibly brilliant flash which accompanied the detonation was visible in London. Even at that range, individuals looking at the fireball suffered temporary blindness and felt a faint flush of heat on their faces.
The tremendous heat given off by the fireball had a more significant effect upon people and materials within a range of twenty kilometres. Lightly clad yachtsmen on Chasewater about nineteen kilometres from Winson Green felt their skin begin to burn as the lasting pulse of heat from the fireball hit them. The thoughtful ones dived into the water to escape the burning heat. Those who did not suffered blistering burns on all exposed skin. The varnish on their boats bubbled, nylon sails melted and newspapers lying in the boats burst into flames. Only those who were protected from the pulse of heat by their clothing, or were shielded in some way, escaped severe burns.