a glimpse back to the good ole cold war

where did that come from?

An investigative journalist, by the name Erich Schlosser, recently obtained a document through the Freedom of Information Act, that described an incident in 1961.  This incident was the near detonation of an atomic bomb over Goldsboro, North Carolina.  According to the report, a B-52 broke apart in midair and dropped two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs.  One of the bombs performed as if dropped for a nuclear attack and only failed to detonate due to a faulty switch.  http://news.yahoo.com/atom-bomb-nearly-exploded-over-north-carolina-1961-230654850.html

Mark 39 bomb found near Goldsboro, NC 1961,

A Mark 39 hydrogen bomb is a 3.8 megaton thermonuclear weapon.  The bomb dropped on Hiroshima "Little Boy" was 16 kilotons and "Fat Man" dropped on Nagasaki was a 21 kiloton bomb.  Now keep in mind that a Kiloton is 1000 tons of TNT explosive force.  A megaton is a million tons of TNT force.  This measure is equated to amount of force produced by an explosive device set around the detonation of TNT so is sort of arbitrary, but the point is that a megaton is much larger amount of force than that of the kiloton. At any rate, the detonation of this bomb in NC would have been devastating to nearby cities such as Washington DC.

image showing scale of force, you can see 4 megatons is quite large.

Seeing this post about the near disaster over North Carolina got me curious about how many times this sort of thing has happened.  I have heard of it before and the incidences being called a "broken arrow" which was the military code for lost nuke.  So I did a simple web search to see what sort of compilation of near mistaken nuke attacks had happened and this is what I got.

Feb 13, 1950-  An American B-36 enroute from Alaska to Texas dumped a 30 Kiloton Mark 4 into the ocean due to loss of engines.  The conventional explosives went detonated in the Pacific but not the uranium corps.

B-36 Peacekeeper  not always keepin the peace

March 10, 1956- A B-47 left MacDill Air Force Base Fl, carrying 2 nuclear weapons to Ben Guerir  Air Base, Morocco, completely disappeared over the mediterranean and was never reported as being relocated.  Not the bombs or crew who were pronounced dead after an extensive search.  According to the Air Force the weapons were incapable of detonation in the state that they were carried.

B-47 Stratojet, a true stealth bomber it disappears and no one can find it!

December 5, 1965- An A-4E Skyhawk fell off the back of the USS Ticonderoga carrying a 1 megaton thermonuclear weapon off the coast of Japan.  The US Navy didn't admit to the incident until 15 years later and said that it was far out in open sea.  It was discovered that it actually happened only 80 miles off Japan's Ryuku Island chain, which caused an uproar in Japan since it was prohibited to bring nuclear weapons to Japanese territory.

A-4E Skyhawk ohh no not again!

October 1967- The submarine USS Scorpion on its way back from the mediterranean to Norfolk Virginia sank and was lost.  This sub was carrying 2 nuclear tipped torpedoes.

January 17, 1966- A B52G and KC 135 refueling tanker collided over Spain dropping 3 of the 4 MK28 Hydrogen bombs near the small fishing village of Palomares.  All the weapons were recovered although one landed in the sea and required extensive searching with the aid of Dr. Craven and Bayesian Search Theory and the deep dive submersible Alvin. All 4 crew of the refueler were killed when it's fuel ignited and 3 of the 7 bomber crew were lost.

Gone fishing, the MK28 thermonuclear bombs carried by B52's.

The Department of Defense released a summary of nuclear weapon accidents (32 incidences) that had occurred from 1950-1980 http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/operation_and_plans/NuclearChemicalBiologicalMatters/21.pdf

It is amazing that no nuclear blast has ever been sit off by accident and that does show that the military does operate at high standards of safety regarding how these things detonate.  Still many of the weapons that fell or exploded while enroute did considerable damage.  The craters, from the high explosive charge that is used to start the nuclear reaction, are quite sizeable. In the report many of them are some 20-30 feet in diameter and 10 feet deep.  Not something you would want dropping on your neighborhood.

At any rate, whatever your feelings may be towards nuclear devices, they are a part of our world and these incidences an interesting little niche in our history.