_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [11]
The Polaris was a white-and-black stubby thing. Both of its stages were packed full of solid fuel—something like candle wax instead of liquid. That was because the fifteen-hundred-mile-range missiles, with more destructive power than all the bombs dropped in World War II, were to ride inside silos on board nuclear submarines.
The safety people had placed a standard, liquid-fuel missile’s destruct package on board. The explosives were there to blow the Polaris to shreds if it acted up, but this was unknown to the experts; this destruct package couldn’t get the job done. It needed about four times the explosives to blow the solid-fuel Polaris into harmless debris.
The countdown moved through its final seconds, and Polaris leapt from its pad, racing skyward much faster than its liquid-fuel brethren. Cheering onlookers were hooting and hollering as Polaris, unlike the liquid-fuel rockets, climbed on a solid stack of white smoke. It was a joy to see until—you guessed it—Polaris decided to go its own way.
Instantly, the range safety officer sent a radio signal to destroy the missile, to stop it from threatening life or property, but instead of blowing it into harmless burning trash, the underpowered destruct package simply separated the Polaris’s two stages.
The first stage, the one that had been ignited at launch, continued to burn, and took a new course toward coastal towns.
Suddenly, a panicked voice began screaming over the Cape’s squawk box, “All personnel on the Cape take cover!”
No member of the press moved. We stood staring into the sky. The Polaris’s unlit second stage appeared like a huge white barrel tumbling over and over, heading directly toward us.
The squawk box kept screaming for us to take cover, and our escort, Major Ken Grine, kept yelling, “Get the hell off this roof!”
At that very moment, a naval commander was bringing a tray of sandwiches up the stairs, unaware of what was happening.
“Come on, you guys,” Grine yelled again. “It’s my ass if you don’t get off this roof.”
Again, no one moved, and the major stamped his foot and took off running down the stairs, sending tray and sandwiches and naval commander tumbling to the ground. I quickly refocused my attention skyward to see the Polaris’s second stage breaking apart. It was now in several pieces. A large chunk plunged into the roof of a car parked next to our building; it smashed the vehicle flat, including its tires. Other debris, most of it now burning, showered an area around us the size of a football field. One piece smacked into the roof in front of my feet.
The instant smell of burning tar got our attention, but we still didn’t move. Associated Press photographer Jimmy Kerlin had his legs and arms wrapped around his tripod, shooting pictures of everything in sight.
The Polaris’s first stage continued burning its way toward land. God, it could even hit Cocoa! Hundreds could soon be killed. Then, I moved. I ran down the stairs, demanding that Major Grine take us off the Cape so we could get to the impact site and report whatever happened.
Grine agreed. We quickly got on the bus and as we moved through the guarded gate, I jumped off to the safety of civilian soil. I ran for the same public phone booth where I had covered the Vanguard blowup. I was on the air within a minute, telling NBC network listeners what I knew; and when I completed my report I ran onto the highway, waving down the first car coming my way. The driver gave me a ride to the Hitching Post Trailer Park, where the crowd was still growing. The steaming first stage of the Polaris was in the Banana River, only a couple of hundred feet behind rows of house trailers.
“We get all the tornadoes, God,” someone yelled. “Why us? Why stray missiles too?”
“Anyone hurt?” I yelled back, and voices from among the crowd reported, “No!”
I stopped long enough to catch my breath before I started checking the place out, interviewing eyewitnesses.
There were no apparent injuries or damages, but what had the crowd buzzing, of