Secrecy & Adaptation
Captain Hank Brandli, a U.S. Air Force meteorologist at Hickam Air Force Base on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu, had irrefutable information that the designated landing site for APOLLO XI's splashdown was in the middle of a forming tropical storm.
However, since his information came from a highly classified weather satellite (at the time code-named 417, since redesignated as the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program [DMSP]) that was part of the even more highly classified CORONA reconnaissance program, he could not freely share this information.
In a December 2004 interview with Aviation Week & Space Technology, Brandli said:
“With just 72 hours to go, I had all these classified photos of a deadly ‘Screaming Eagle’ thunderstorm, with tops at 50,000 feet, forming over exactly where I knew the Apollo 11 astronauts were going to come down. The [storm] would have ripped their parachutes to shreds. Without parachutes, they’d have crashed into the ocean with a force that would have killed them instantly. I was the only person who knew this and, because the [DMSP] program and its technology were strictly classified, I couldn’t warn NASA.”
Fortunately for Capt. Brandli, the Pentagon's chief weather officer at the Fleet Weather Center in Pearl Harbor (CAPT Willard "Sam" Houston, Jr.) was cleared for information on the 417 satellite. Capt. Brandli brought him into the vault to show him the photos, and convinced him that the USS HORNET carrier task force and the returning Command Module would have to all be moved 250 miles to the northwest. CAPT Houston was then able to persuade RADM Donald Davis (Commander of Task Force 30) -- but without being able to divulge "how" or "why" -- that the aircraft carrier that would be carrying President Nixon had to be relocated.
Only after President Clinton declassified the CORONA program (in 1995) could Capt. Brandli and CAPT Houston talk about their role in saving the APOLLO XI mission.
If it weren't for Capt. Brandli's perseverance, and the fortuitous fact that he was cleared for the program that could give him a glimpse into the weather five days hence, APOLLO XI would have been a devastating failure -- a national embarrassment as we would have mourned the death of three of our finest astronauts.
How many failures can be attributed to the absence of a Capt. Brandli? How many more will we endure due to anachronistic policies and the cultural reticence to sharing information across departmental and agency boundaries?
Labels: history, innovation
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home