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After being delayed for two days by snow and bad weather, the nuclear exodus from Kazakhstan finally began late on the afternoon of Nov. 20, when the first of two C-5s ferrying the nuclear material lifted off. Their flights home were nonstop, made possible by extra pilots aboard and aerial refuelings over the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. "As soon as the wheels left the ground," said Navy Commander Paul Shaffer, the top military man on the mission, "everyone was cheering and clapping." More than 20 hours later, they landed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the cargo was then shipped to Oak Ridge aboard four nondescript but heavily defended three-truck convoys.
"We have put this bomb-grade nuclear material forever out of the reach of potential black marketeers, terrorists or new nuclear regimes," Perry said just after the last convoy rolled in to Oak Ridge. "This is defense by other means and in a big way." While U.S. officials said the challenge of the mission was unique and unlikely to be repeated, they conceded that if faced with a similar situation, they would probably do the same thing again. For team member Richard Taylor, a 20-year Oak Ridge employee, the sense of accomplishment was exhilarating. "How many times do you get to cross 11 time zones, spend a month and a half in a foreign country and get to perform a secret operation?"