This originally appeared on the website of Ryukyu Shimpo on October 26, 2017.

US Army veteran gives interview on 1959 Naha accidental nuke missile firing

October 26, 2017 Ryukyu Shimpo

Washington Special Correspondent Yukiyo Zaha reporting

On June 19, 1959, a Nike Hercules surface-to-air missile equipped with a nuclear warhead at US-controlled Naha Air Base was accidentally ignited and fired due to a maintenance error, and ended up submerged in the ocean.

A former U.S. Army Nike Hercules missile maintenance man who was at Naha Air Base during the incident, now 81-year-old Robert Roepke of Wisconsin, provided his account in an interview with Ryukyu Shimpo.

Roepke said that just before the missile was fired a blue-alert had come down.

This meant the battery was preparing for potential missile launch due to a perceived threat.

The Nike Hercules battery to which Roepke belonged recognized that even after the incident occurred, another missile, this one equipped with high explosives, was being made ready for launch.

Roepke first made details of this accident public this September during the broadcast of an NHK special titled Okinawa and U.S. Nuclear Weapons (Okinawa to Kaku).

According to Roepke, the accidentally fired missile contained a warhead similar in size and yield to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

While the missile equipped with high explosives was topside, a stand down order came through the chain of command.

One soldier was immediately killed due to the accidental firing, and another died a week later.

The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) of the National Archives at St. Louis, Missouri, has the Nike Hercules battery’s daily reports for safekeeping.

On June 19 that year, the report recorded the cause of the soldier’s death as “ignition of a Nike Hercules missile.

“This accident could have resulted in a catastrophe, but the U.S. military announced no detail of the incident and had the missile recovered from the ocean in secret.

The battery’s daily records on the next day and onward note duties being executed as usual.

At that time Roepke was in charge of missile assembly and maintenance.

He said that after the incident the battery received communiqué from incident investigative teams belonging to organs like the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency.

However, the incident was kept secret, and those involved were forbidden to disclose anything about the accident.

During the Cold War, U.S.-occupied Okinawa bore a large quantity of U.S. nuclear weaponry.

This lasted between the mid-1950s and 1972, when Okinawa was returned to Japanese sovereignty.

The Department of Defense announced for the first time in 2015 that the U.S. had possessed nuclear weaponry in pre-return Okinawa.

This originally appeared on the website of Nike Hercules Accident Site 8. We've made some edits for readability

The 207th Ordnance Platoon arrived in Okinawa in January of 1959. We were stationed at the Machinato Army Post. Because of a backlog of work, we were temporarily assigned to assist the 96th Ordnance Detachment in performing direct support instead of our original mission as a heavy maintenance platoon. This temporary assignment lasted several months, if I recall accurately.

The accident occurred on a Friday, the very Friday that was our last day on direct support. As of the next Monday we were finally going to work as a heavy maintenance platoon which meant no more traveling to the sites.

We arrived at site 8 which was at Naha Air Base and proceeded to start work, probably installing modifications, inside the launcher area, on one of the underground launchers just past the first launcher. I went back upstairs for something and was told by one of the battery officers to get my men out of the area, they were going into "blue-alert."

I called downstairs for everyone to get out, we got into our truck and drove past the first launcher again. We stood by the guards shack watching the preparations, this was interesting stuff for us Ordnance guys, because we never saw a missile battery go into action before.

We were asked to move away from the launcher area because they were going to raise that missile. As we were walking away there was a tremendous explosion, I thought we were bombed by whatever plane caused this "blue-alert." We dove behind a building with dirt and stones raining down on us.

When things stopped falling we got up and walked towards the launcher area. I heard people moaning and could see 2 or 3 men laying on the ground. I then realized that the launcher was still in the lowered position and that the missile was not there! We ran inside the fence and tried to do whatever we could for those who were injured. One man, apparently the one who was attempting to connect the first cable to the back of the first booster, was dead with his leg blown off and a terrible head injury.

I went over to another man who was badly injured but conscious with his fatigue jacket and undershirt completely blown off his body and his skin peeled and burned from the blast. I put my fatigue jacket over his upper body and my undershirt on his leg which was also injured. Other people were also busy helping all the other injured men.

Later I noticed that the cyclone fence, behind where the missile was positioned, was distorted from the blast and the guard shack, where we were standing earlier had the windows blown out. I walked up to the front of the launcher and saw a hole ripped in the fence where the missile had gone through it. The missile was several hundred feet away, down on what I think was a beach-like area. It was mangled pretty badly but still in one piece, I think.

We found out later that the suspected cause of the accident was a short in the launcher that was not detected by the squib tester which several people said they saw the man use before he attempted to connect the cable to the booster.

That is pretty much all I can recall about that awful experience. It is quite a bit considering it was 40 years ago. We were very fortunate that we were not among the injured or dead, we came that close.

I don't remember ever hearing about how many died or how the injured made out.

Tim Ryan