Tom Denchy was part of a crew in charge of a Titan II missile, a U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that had a 7,500-mile range, carried nine-megaton warheads, and was aimed at the Soviet Union. He was interviewed for COLD WAR in August 1996.

On missile crew alert procedures:

We had different DEFCONs ["defense conditions" of alert] which would [indicate] different states of readiness. ... And depending on what DEFCON we were in ... we [had] to be ready to turn the key within a certain number of minutes. When we got right up to the top and couldn't go any closer to being ready, we'd be sitting with our keys ready to turn, waiting for a message [to launch].

We all knew and felt that if a message did come, it was only because we were probably already too late; the other missiles were already on their way and this was just a way of not letting [the Soviets] maybe take over the entire Earth without any obstruction at all. But most of us felt if we did our job right and the Russians knew that we were on alert here ... that they would not attempt [a nuclear strike]. And that was our whole premise: If we were ready and they knew it, they would not attempt it.

On missile launch procedures:

[The system] was designed against one person being capable of launching the missile. It took two of us to decide that yes, the message was a valid message, and that in fact it did tell us to launch. And then [there was a] safe which had two locks on [it]; I would have one combination and the other officer had the other combination. So all along there was this check and balance that it took two people to do it.

Once we decoded the message and determined it was a valid launch message, then we'd open up the safe and we would take out the documents. Then, on the launch code -- no one knew what the launch code was until it was sent [to us] -- then we would open the documents and check to make sure that the codes matched. And if they matched, then we would determine our launch time. ...

Then you had to break a seal to get to the key slot; you would break the seal, put your key in the slot, and be ready to turn. And the commander would count down: "Three, two, one, turn and hold." One, two, three: we'd turn and hold for three seconds, or until the [launch] sequence started. And he would be reading through his checklist; and I could tell, as a deputy at the time, when the sequence started. Later on you saw the lights run across in the control center there, and we just watched that and ... it's all over within a minute. ...

With all the training that we had, doing it over and over again, it would be done before we had time to stop and think about what we were doing. It doesn't take all that long and it was just automatic, you know: we got the message, it went through, decoding the message. ... And we trained this over and over and over again, and you know, we could do it in our sleep. There was no question in our mind that this was the thing to do. ...

The combat crews themselves really would not ever think about launching a missile for any reason other than getting that message. We were under a program called "PRP" -- "Personal Reliability Program." About every six months, we had to go and see a psychiatrist who would check us out to make sure we weren't one of these [unstable] people -- although, you know, the odds of two people on one crew going batty at the same time are very remote. But it was one of the things that made it so stressful, because you were always watching your brother to make sure that maybe something that's happening in his family isn't grating on him and, you know, making him not think right. We watched each other very closely and made sure that they got help when they needed help.

On the Titan II missile:

Titan II was a strategic missile that was designed to be launched from underground. It was the first one in our inventory that could be launched immediately without raising it above the ground. ... It was called an ICBM, or inter-continental ballistic missile. We launched from here and it landed on its target in approximately 25 or 30 minutes.

This missile was built to withstand a nuclear blast, therefore there was no way that they could annihilate us to keep us from launching at them. ... It was a very important missile system, due to the size of the warhead -- it was the largest in our inventory. ... Although there were only 54 of them in the inventory, the size of the warhead allowed many targets to be covered by one missile. Therefore, it released many other weapon carriers to be used in different ways or in different places. As far as I know, this is the missile system that [the Soviets] were definitely afraid of. It's big; it's the type of missile that they're familiar with; it's a liquid propellant missile, therefore we can throw a lot more weight up into the sky. And they knew that.

On the life of a missile crew:

This was the front line of the Cold War, as far as weapons were concerned. ... We were out here for at least 24 hours day, and sometimes went to 30 hours on alert every third day, for quite awhile. It got to be sort of irritating a little bit, because we didn't get a chance to do anything with anyone else. There was full alert, go home and crash, get up the next day and train, go home, eat supper, go to bed, get up the next morning, go to pre-departure briefing and come out and be back on alert. ...

The Cold War was, in fact, a war to us. And in fact whenever we came on alert we were required to wear dog tags, just the same as if we went on alert on an aircraft. It was the same type of thing. We just did it in a different way than an aircraft crew -- we did it day in and day out, I think, a lot more than they did, more often than they did. ...

When Vietnam heated up, all these people were scooped up and sent over to Vietnam. Consequently the crew force in numbers dwindled, and [during] quite a few alerts we were meeting ourselves coming and going -- it was very strenuous mentally, because we never had a chance to sit back and rest. We came off alert, we had that day to "rest," quote unquote, which most of us couldn't do, because you're over-tired. The next day we went in and had training and the day after that we went back on alert again.

So we were out there, and I knew my crew much better than I knew my own family. Now my kids really didn't know who I was, because all they'd ever see was this sleeping person that was passed out on the couch when they went by, and it was a problem for our families [and for] the wives -- we were so tired, we'd be laying there, worthless, and they had to pick up the garbage can and take it out. ...

There were a bunch of us ... [who] decided that it would have been much easier to be in Vietnam and go in, do our tour and have it over with, instead of going through this every third day alert type of thing. And we also wanted to do something to get involved; here we were sort of pushed back from anything and nobody even knew what we were doing. This way we felt we'd go there and be able to contribute something to the Vietnamese War. Well, we went down [to apply] and they just looked at us and laughed; [they said], "Go home and get ready to go on alert the next day." We weren't eligible to go out of the country because of the classified material that we had available to us. ...

The public ... didn't really realize how hard it was to keep this country as safe as we were keeping it. ... It was not an easy task. There was an awful lot of things that went on, on a day-to-day basis, 24 hours a day. There were times when it got very hard, after spending a day and a half without sleep, trying to find a way to counteract something, to come up out of a hole and walk down the street, trying to go to your car and have people spit on you because you're in uniform. It just made it that much harder to go back again and to do this for these people who didn't appreciate it, because they had no idea what we were doing.

On being in charge of a nuclear-tipped missile:

At times the responsibility of knowing the power of annihilating whatever my target was, did [weigh heavily]. At first it wasn't too bad, but once I had a family -- you sort of think a little bit differently about things, once you have children. Then, at times, I really did think about it. And unlike maybe a lot of other people, I did have a box of canned food and canned water at home and I had a password that if it looked like the situation in the world was getting hot enough, I would call and pass this word [to my wife] in a sentence and she would take my kids and this box of food and go into a cave and wait to see what happened. I don't believe [a nuclear strike] was total annihilation; it would not have been and it isn't. You know, if it was, we couldn't have tests and still be here. They've tested many of the weapons and they're very limited in some respects, although they're very powerful. And I fully expected to have my family survive.