Disaster at Silo 7

Based on a true story. On September 18, 1980, a Titan II ICBM inside Silo 374-7 of the US Air Force's 308th Strategic Missile Wing, located outside of Damascus, Arkansas, suffered a fuel leak due to a dropped socket wrench which struck and pierced the missile's skin. The missile exploded as two Propellant Transfer System airmen, Sgt. Jeff Kennedy and Sr. Airman David Livingston, were attempting to vent the leaking fuel and potentially save the missile. SrA Livingston died of his injuries. Sgt. Kennedy and twenty other airmen were injured in the blast. The nine-megaton W53 warhead was ejected from the missile and was found outside the complex with minimal damage. Jeff Kennedy was a technical advisor for this film.

The movie takes place at a Titan II missile silo in East Texas, surrounded by desert and scrub brush. For one, East Texas is dense forest, not desert. Second, there were never any Titan II silos in Texas. The actual 1980 incident occurred in Arkansas, and the film was shot at the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona, which is the only fully-intact Titan II complex still in existence.