Posted 1-15-2005 at 08:02 PM

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Air Chief Marshall Roy Slemon (DND)
On Oct 5, 1960, for a matter of minutes, the world - oblivious from the fact - was on the brink of a nuclear war and a senior Canadian air force officer may have saved the world.

Air Chief Marshall Roy Slemon, a 55-year-old veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force, was the deputy commander at NORAD HQ in Colorado Springs when the incident occured. US Air Force General Laurence Kuter was in his C-118 on an inspection mission over South Dakota leaving Roy Slemon in charge of operations.

At 4:17pm ET, radar data on a display board in the war room began flashing alarm-level indicators. They rose to level 5, meaning 99.9% certainty of a missile attack. Other displays showed size and strength and possible targets of the attack. These signals came from the Ballistic Early Warning System, an elaborate radar complex designed to provide maximum warning of an attack.


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Air Chief Marshall Roy Slemon with General Laurence Kuter (DND)
NORAD battle staff composed of 20 top-ranking Canadian and U.S. Officers, were in constant communications contact with the war room. They received the coded message "Coca Colour actual." meaning "This is for real!"

In Air Chief Marshall Slemon's own account, he wrote, "I received a call for assembly of the battle staff and hurried to the Combat Centre. Here we found that the BMEWS system was indicating the presence of a number of objects far out in space which showed some characteristics of a threatening nature."

If the attack was confirmed, the president, Dwight Eisenhower, would be alerted and a retaliatory response would be immediately launched.


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Air Chief Marshall Roy Slemon and other officers (DND)
Air Chief Marshall Slemon's first question to NORAD's chief of intelligence was "Where's Khrushchev?" The Soviet premier was at the UN in New York, so an attack from the Soviets seemed unlikely, but the radar alerts could not be ignored.

Air Chief Slemon reported to General Kuter on the confusing scenario and contacted war rooms in Washing, Ottawa and Strategic Air Command. The number of missiles, 99, exceeded all estimates of Soviet apability. THe objects were coming over Norway. But radar signals from Thule in Greenland reported no "minutes-to-go" closing rate toward impact.

Air Chief Marshall Slemon wrote in his journal, "Intense checking indicated that the radar returns from the objects far out in space did not entirely ocnform to what would be expected from intercontinental ballistic missiles launched against us." He added there was no indication the objects were moving closer. An observer at Thule, meanwhile, had reported seeing the moon rising over Norway.


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Roy Slemon with then Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip at the opening of the Commonwealth Memorial Gates at CFB Trenton (DND)
"Within minutes, we determined that the BMEWS radars, more powerful and precise than had been hoped, were receiving radar pulses reflected back from the moon," The Air Chief Marshall recalled. The situation "happened and ended in a few minutes", he said. A 1961 account published by Popular Science magazine said the uncertainty lasted through "45 minutes of feverish checking."

The BMEWS, operational for only five days, was in "shakedown stage." Its signals had bounced off the moon, 239 000 miles away, misconstrued the echoes as ICBM blips and multiplied them to indicate a massive attack. The early warning system was later reprogrammed to avoid a repeat of the "moon-bounce" phenomenon.

Air Chief Marshall Slemon had assessed the situation quickly enough to avoid alerting highest-ranking authorities that a genuine attack was underway. He was credited with defusing a crisis and possibly averting retaliation that would have meant global catastrophe.


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Air Chief Marshall Roy Slemon (DND)
Air Chief Marshall Slemon, a native of Winnipeg, would have turned 100 last October. He died in 1992 at 87. The Americans considered him a "modest, common-sense gentleman," and referring to him as "steel-nerved".

And the moral of this story is
"Man and his judgment should always be part of the weapons systems"


Parts of the article are excerpted from the National Post and edited.

Original Article written by Ian Sutton for the Ottawa Citizen.

Thanks to Ian Sutton for sending me the awesome pictures of Air Chief Marshall Roy Slemon.