The Danish Missile Crisis
Denmark’s history of missile-related mishaps.
It has been a rough month for the Danish Navy.
A Danish Iver Huitfeldt class frigate was engaged by Houthi drones this week. This marks the first time a Danish vessel has seen direct combat since the 1940s.
The frigate was participating in Operation Prosperity Guardian but was recalled due a malfunctioning weapon system. Which, seems fairly sensible. However, Denmark’s Chief of Defence was later fired for failing to disclose the event to the government.
This followed another dramatic incident in the same week where Danes closed the Great Belt Straight (a busy shipping lane between Fyn and Zealand) due to the risk of “falling missile fragments."
Naval Officers were unable to deactivate a malfunctioning missile system, meaning there was a high risk of a misfire.
The irony of this will not be lost on those with a little knowledge of Denmark’s naval history…
The Legendary ‘Oops’ Missile
In 1982, a missile was launched accidentally, just off the north-western coast of Zealand. It travelled over thirty kilometres until it hit the shoreline, exploding and destroying four summerhouses and damaging over one hundred more.
It is worth noting: the Danes take their summerhouses very seriously.
Miraculously, there were no casualties.
The blame was pinned on the Captain, Henning Olsen. Olsen was the Naval Captain charged with fixing the missile system on the day of the accident. And, after all, he was at the console when the missile was fired.
Case closed.
Or not. It was later revealed that Olsen never had the key required to fire the missile. It also surfaced that a US warship had the same malfunction a year earlier while on tour in the Caribbean.
Ultimately, it was decided that the defence contractor, McDonnell Douglas, was at fault. They settled with the government for 3 million kroner, a measly $400 thousand (around $1 million in today’s money).
The Ghost of McDonnell Douglas
The spectre of McDonnell Douglas continues to haunt us to this day.
They merged with Boeing in 1997 and their toxic corporate culture is widely considered as the reason for Boeing’s decline in quality over recent decades. So we can thank McDonnell Douglas for the 737 disasters the Alaska Airlines door plug failure, and the Danish Missile Crisis.
History, it seems, is anything but original.
