Sterling Hall bombing

Coordinates: 43.074278°N 89.405408°W

Part of the opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam


Sterling Hall

Location: Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Coordinates: 43.074278°N 89.405408°W
Date: August 24, 1970; 3:42 am (UTC-5)
Target: Army Mathematics Research Center, Sterling Hall, UW–Madison
Attack type: Car bombing of a school building
Weapons: Car bomb (ammonium nitrate)
Deaths: 1
Injured: 3
Perpetrators: Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, David Fine, and Leo Burt
Motive: Protest against the Vietnam War

The Sterling Hall bombing occurred on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus on August 24, 1970, and was committed by four men as an action against the university's research connections with the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. It resulted in the death of a university physics researcher and injuries to three others.

Overview


Sterling Hall historical marker

Sterling Hall is a centrally located building on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. The bomb, set off at 3:42 am on August 24, 1970, was intended to destroy the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC) housed on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors of the building. It caused massive destruction to other parts of the building and nearby buildings as well. It resulted in the death of the researcher Robert Fassnacht, injured three others and caused significant destruction to the physics department and its equipment. Neither Fassnacht nor the physics department itself was involved with or employed by the Army Mathematics Research Center.

The bombers used a Ford Econoline van stolen from a University of Wisconsin professor of Computer Sciences. It was filled with close to 2,000 pounds (910 kg) of ANFO (i.e., ammonium nitrate and fuel oil). Pieces of the van were found on top of an eight-story building three blocks away and 26 nearby buildings were damaged; however, the targeted AMRC was scarcely damaged. Total damage to University of Wisconsin–Madison property was over $2.1 million ($14.7 million in 2022) as a result of the bombing.

Army Mathematics Research Center


Sterling Hall after the bombing

During the Vietnam War, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors of the southern (east-west) wing of Sterling Hall housed the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC). This was an Army-funded think tank, directed by J. Barkley Rosser, Sr.

The staff at the center, at the time of the bombing, consisted of about 45 mathematicians, about 30 of them full-time. Rosser was well known for his research in pure mathematics, logic (Rosser's trick, the Kleene–Rosser paradox, and the Church-Rosser theorem) and in number theory (Rosser sieve). Rosser had been the head of the U.S. ballistics program during World War II and also had contributed to research on several missiles used by the U.S. military.

The money to build a home for AMRC came from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) in 1955. Their money built a 6-floor addition to Sterling Hall. In the contract to work at the facility, it was required that mathematicians spend at least half their time on U.S. Army research.

Rosser publicly minimized any military role of the center and implied that AMRC pursued mathematics, including both pure and applied mathematics. The University of Wisconsin student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, obtained and published quarterly reports that AMRC submitted to the Army. The Cardinal published a series of investigative articles making a convincing case that AMRC was pursuing research that was directly pursuant to specific U.S. Department of Defense requests, and relevant to counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam. AMRC became a magnet for demonstrations, in which protesters chanted "U.S. out of Vietnam! Smash Army Math!"

The Army Mathematics Research Center was phased out by the Department of Defense at the end of the 1970 fiscal year.

The bombers


FBI wanted posters published
shortly after the bombing

The bombers were Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, David Fine, and Leo Burt. They called themselves the "New Year's Gang", a name which was derived from an exploit on New Year's Eve 1969. In that earlier attack, Dwight and Karl, with Karl's girlfriend, Lynn Schultz (who drove the getaway car), stole a small plane from Morey Field in Middleton. Dwight and Karl dropped homemade explosives on the Badger Army Ammunition Plant, but the explosives failed to detonate. They successfully landed the plane at another airport and escaped.

I still feel we can't rationalize someone getting killed, but at that time we felt we should never have done the bombing at all. Now I don't feel that way. I feel it was justified and should have been done. It just should have been done more responsibly.

—Karleton Armstrong, in a 1986 interview

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