Missile 9E on February 4 experienced problems with the propellant utilization system and prematurely depleted its fuel supply, however the warhead landed only a few miles short of the target, so the flight was considered a success.

Almost immediately at liftoff, the B-1 engine experienced rough combustion, causing a fire in the thrust section that led to the explosion of the missile only four seconds after launch.

The ARMA guidance system on 27E also experienced erratic behavior due to an intermittently shorted diode; had the flight continued, it's possible that the missile would not have achieved a proper trajectory.

On September 9, Missile 26E lost sustainer thrust following BECO and tumbled, falling into the Atlantic Ocean almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) short of its target.

On November 10, an attempt to launch a biological mission (Missile 32E) with a squirrel monkey named Goliath ended in disaster as the Atlas's sustainer engine shut down almost immediately at liftoff, while the verniers failed to start at all.

A postmortem examination of the monkey found that he had died of multiple head injuries probably caused by impact with the ocean rather than separation of the capsule from the booster.

The sustainer engine was pulled from the ocean floor and examined, which found that a pressure transducer had accidentally been installed on the test port of the LOX regulator.

Strong vibration in the gas generator from the shutdown ruptured low-pressure ducting and started a propellant leak that led to a thrust section fire.

As evidence of this, he pointed to telemetry data from flights indicating a momentary pitching motion of the missile after booster jettison, which could be the result of the energy generated by exploding propellant.

This upgrade had to be retrofitted to missiles that had already been shipped, but Air Force officials argued that they only needed to add valves to the LOX lines on the grounds that the RP-1 could not detonate without oxidizer.

In addition, an erroneous signal from a pad umbilical threw open the LOX boil-off valve at liftoff, causing a gradual decay in tank pressure during ascent, although this was a secondary failure that did not contribute to the eventual loss of the missile.

A LOX leak, which apparently started at liftoff, resulted in abnormally cold thrust section temperatures and freezing of the helium control lines to the sustainer propellant utilization system.

The failure was traced to a pressure pulse at liftoff that caused the B-2 insulation boot to be jammed upward and snag on the drain valve for the turbopump lubricant oil tank.

This would be the first launch of an active duty ICBM from an operational silo facility, the Mk IV nuclear warhead would be replaced with a dummy unit and the guidance program changed to fire the Atlas into the Pacific Ocean instead of over the North Pole into the Soviet Union.

However, the project quickly met with opposition from Kansas governor John Anderson as well as politicians from neighboring states who protested the idea of a missile flying over populated areas, especially since on-duty ICBMs lacked any Range Safety destruct system in the event of a malfunction.

A failure would damage US prestige, a success would send a needless provocation to the Soviet Union especially coming on the heels of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The flight, which had a series of modifications designed to correct problems encountered on previous Atlas launches, was completely successful and the missile flew 6,000 miles (9,700 km) downrange, missing the target point by only a few hundred meters.

Atlas 24E, launched from OSTF-1 on July 26, experienced an accidental sustainer shutdown at T+143 seconds due to electrical shorts in the Range Safety system which sent a spurious manual cutoff command.

Atlas 71E, the last flight of the year, launched from 576-C on September 25 and experienced a sustainer hydraulic line rupture at staging, leading to missile tumbling and failure of the mission.

Since however the programmer was set up to block cutoff commands during the first two minutes of flight in order to prevent a missile fallback on or around the pad area, nothing happened.

Missile 57E on August 27 fell 70 miles (110 km) short of its planned range when a malfunction of the guidance system accelerometer caused the sustainer and vernier cutoff signals to be issued four seconds early.

In addition, the converted Atlas missiles still had various ICBM hardware features which were unnecessary for space launches and added more complexity and failure points.

As a result of the postflight investigation for Atlas 68E, it was decided to inspect all existing launch vehicles for corroded plumbing and also remove unneeded ICBM hardware.

The last-ever failure of an Atlas caused by the booster itself, as opposed to the upper stages or other external factors, was an attempted launch of the military GPS satellite Navstar 7 on December 19, 1981, using Missile 76E.

The Range Safety officer sent the destruct command moments before impact, leaving a burnt crater only a few hundred feet from Launch Complex SLC3E.

Escaping flames then burned through a LOX feed line, cutting off the flow of oxidizer to the gas generator and causing B-2 engine shutdown.