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USAF Almost Nuked North Carolina In 1961 – Declassified Document
Freshly Exhumed sends in a story about how close the United States came to accidentally attacking itself with nuclear weapons just a few days after John F. Kennedy took office.
"A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the U.S. Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima. The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage."
What an improvement for NC that would have been.
the triple fail-safe worked.
FTA: "the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt, leading to a nuclear burst."
South Carolina.
Have gnu, will travel.
The accident has been known about for some time (I first read about it while researching a story I was writing - the protagonist had to build a nuclear bomb, so I was looking for lost and unrecovered nuclear material).
We have also had reports that one of the bombs was nearly armed. These were officially denied by the military, but it was confirmed by several military members.
The new development is that the documentation saying "yeah, that bomb nearly went off" has been declassified. Basically the same deal as the Area 51 thing a while back - everyone knew, but now everyone is "allowed" to know.
only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.
Just imagine if there had been a Tin Whisker shorting that switch.
I'd be good for someone with actual statistics knowledge to say what the probability of 3/4/5 safeties failing would be.
1/8 | 1/16 | 1/32. I'm a statistical god!
Article says:
"The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast."
If carrying A-Bombs across the eastern coast is a routine flight I would love to know what the USAF considers an exceptional flight.
From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash
The B-52G began its mission from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, carrying four Type B28RI hydrogen bombs[3] on a Cold War airborne alert mission named Operation Chrome Dome.
Guess where the B-52 that broke up over Goldsboro flew out from? That's right, Seymour Johnson Air Force base!
What the article doesn't make clear is if the detonation of the bomb in Goldsboro would have been nuclear, or whether it would have only set off the non-nuclear charges like the two bombs in Palomeres.
The doomsday clock is already triggered. Yes, "triggered", its been ticking back and forth since 1953. The doomsday clock is actually an indicator, not a countdown timer.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The arming mechanisms are only supposed to work when you arm the bomb! That was not done. Wisely, the USAF decided that an airplane crash should not cause a nuclear explosion, hence the requirement to arm the bombs before detonation. The intent was right, but the execution was a close run thing.
Others have already linked to Wikipedia's article about the crash, with one guy saying "sounds like a wing fell off". Reading the article, that seems fairly close to the mark, though not quite right. Here's a summary of what happened to the bomber:
The bomber was on an "airborne alert mission", meaning that it was carrying live nukes while flying on a route and schedule that would make it ready to perform a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union on short notice. (This was part of a program called Operation Chrome Dome.) While it was refueling from a tanker over North Carolina, the tanker crew told the bomber crew that the bomber's right wing was leaking fuel. The bomber broke off from the refueling, informed ground control, and were ordered to fly offshore and hold to burn off most of their fuel load, to reduce the risk of an emergency landing. However, on the way to the holding point, the fuel leak rapidly worsened and became critical, and the plane was then ordered to land immediately. During the descent toward the field, while passing through 10,000 feet altitude, the pilots found they could no longer keep the aircraft under control. The captain ordered the crew to eject; those who survived reported that the plane was still intact when they last saw it. Once the airplane went out of control, it must have gone into an uncontrolled spiral dive, a "tailspin"; that's what frequently happens to a flying airplane when control is lost. Such a dive is often fatal for the airplane long before it reaches the ground; the aerodynamic stresses increase so fast that it breaks up in the air.
From the sound of it, there was some sort of structural failure in the right wing which got rapidly worse. The wing did not actually fall off while the pilots were inside, but the failure became so bad that they couldn't maintain control and were forced to bail out. Unfortunately, even this article puts so much focus on what happened to the nukes that the important question of what caused the bomber accident in the first place is ignored. It would be nice to see what the Air Force's accident report has to say on this.
Let's say the bomb did explode over NC. Millions died.
A total disaster for the Kennedy administration (it was only his 3rd day as POTUS).
What would the Kennedy administration do ?
Would they admit that the explosion was an accident, or would they place all the blames on the then USSR (sneak attack by them commies)?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This was 1961, at the height of nuclear proliferation. The US government was selling uranium-235, in blister packs, out the back door of every nuclear power plant. Radioactive material was the iPhone of its day. Nobody knew enough to be afraid of it, yet. We were a small step away from having millions of plutonium-powered cars driving around.
It's only today that we're hyper-sensitive about the risks of accidents... Back then, we were pretty sure we'd be on the receiving end of 1,000 Soviet ICBMs any old day, so a stray US nuke wasn't such a big deal.
Of course, if one nuke HAD accidentally gone off over over US soil, you have to wonder if the military could own-up to their failure killing tens of thousands of dead Americans, or if it would be called a Russian attack and cause a full-scale retaliation.
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