How Sun-Watchers Stopped World War III in 1967
As an intense solar storm interrupted radio and radar communications, scientists and military leaders scrambled to decipher the cause.
On May 23, 1967, on-duty officers at the U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) were huddled in an underground command center outside Omaha. They had less than 30 minutes to determine if a sudden bout of radio and radar interference was a natural event or Soviet subterfuge masking a nuclear attack.
Al Buckles was the emergency action controller on duty that day at SAC. As soon as he got word of the apparent radio jam, he and the SAC Emergency Actions Team, which included senior officers, were on the phone with NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs, and the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon.
The U.S. radars that had gone on the fritz were part of
