15 MINUTES TO BEAT THE BOMB

To SAC, the Klaxon Is a Call to Arms

If the 1960 defense debate has raised new uncertainties about the growth of Soviet missile power, it has underscored one certainty about present-day U.S. deterrent power: the U.S. deterrent is only as good as its reaction time. Today, the free world's one great deterrent is the Strategic Air Command's 24-hour-a-day, year-round ground alert system, a wonder of organizational achievement that keeps a rotating one-third of SAC bomber forces so sensitized that they can get off within 15 minutes' notice from any one of at least 65 SAC bases on the globe. Last week TIME Correspondent Ed Rees reported from SAC's Westover A.F.B. in Massachusetts on one B-52 alert crew in action:

IN the act of reporting for alert duty, Lieut. Colonel Dante Bulli and his crew in effect braced themselves at the end of a taut, outstretched spring. The trigger was the rasping sound of a klaxon horn. At any moment, that horn might blow. It could mean that a Soviet nose cone was on its way carrying destruction, and that there were 15 minutes in which to get off the ground and head for preassigned Soviet targets. There would be no time for second thoughts, no room for second-guessing as to whether some button-pusher was running a test. To the SAC alert crews, the klaxon is a cry to arms.

Command Pilot Bulli's first business was to get his eight-jet B-52 combat-ready. Aircraft No. 264 was towed to a spot near Runway 05 called "the Christmas Tree," a hardtop strip that is branched with parking stubs, one for each alert plane. The six-man air crew then spent three hours "cocking" the plane so that it would be ready for instant takeoff. They ran through pages of checklist items, threw on selected switches that would bring scores of units to life as soon as the main power was turned on. Pilot Bulli finished his part of the check list, made sure that his 40 lbs. of printed manuals were in place, stowed his .357-cal. Smith & Wesson Magnum near his seat. Finally, he put a sign in the windshield. It read "COCKED."

Military Retreat. His plane at the ready, Bulli met with the commander of the alert crew that he relieved, and received the Positive Control envelope (containing Fail Safe procedures, codes, frequencies) and the black combat data box (target information, maps, radar photos). Signing for it in the presence of a supervising officer, Bulli, 37, now legally assumed responsibility for the thermonuclear bomb in the bay. The spring was drawn: Plane 264 was ready to roll, had a full load of fuel and a multimegaton bomb aboard that is equal in force to ten Atlas ICBMs, or to the sum of all the bombs dropped on Europe by all the Allied planes in World War II.

For the seven days of their alert duty, Bulli and the other five of his crew go into a military retreat. They sleep in the same quarters, stay always within reach of one another. They travel in a blue station wagon that is striped with a yellow band and topped with a revolving red Grimes light, is always kept warmed up and ready to go.