I know a guy from Chelyabinsk who was a colonel in the Russian armed forces and worked at a guided missile factory as an inspection engineer.

He has loads of crazy stories. One, he was called to an airfield where some pilots and ground crew were conducting training on a new missile type. The factory had a “warranty” of sorts on the missiles, and in this case, the ground crew were complaining that the fins and body of the missile were bending after only one flight. So my friend watches a jet come in to land, taxi in front of the armament bunker, and straight up drop the missiles on the ground before taxiing to the hangar! The ground crew were surprised to learn that this was not healthy for the missiles. “They were bent and would not fly straight after that, and the customer’s air force was not happy” I recall him saying.

In another story, he was sent out to supervise a test at Kapustin Yar. Whenever there was a malfunction, he recalls sending out the “fastest running” young officer he could find to go out and take a peek at the launch pad. In the event of a fire, they would be highly motivated to run back to the bunker at high speed. There were “only a few” explosions in that era.