Investigative journalist Eric Schlosser has uncovered near disaster of epic proportions after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request confirmed that a 4 megaton nuclear bomb almost exploded over North Carolina in 1961 — an explosion that would have been 260 times more powerful than Hiroshima and would have devastated the United States. What is amazing is that, once again, the government used classification laws to hide that fact that it almost destroyed the large part of the country and was saved by a simple low-voltage switch that fortunately was able to deactivate the armed bomb. The details were hidden for over fifty years by the government.
The incident occurred when a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air. For years, many objected to the flying of such weapons over populated areas due to the danger of accidents, which occurred repeatedly in this country and other countries. In this case, two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs fell to Earth on January 23, 1961 and one of the bombs went “hot” with a deployed parachute, trigger mechanism engaged, and ready to explode. Only the single low-voltage switch stopped the explosion. If that little switch had malfunctioned or was damaged, the Air Force would have unleashed the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive on this country — sending lethal fallout over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city.
One would have thought that such an accident would have led to a public debate over safety protocols and flight patterns. However, that did not occur because the public was never told. Instead, Congress and the military repeatedly assured the public that such flights were entirely safe and subject to overlapping failsafe systems.
You will notice that there is no call in Congress to investigate the use of classification laws to hide the incident for over 50 years. Indeed, the story has been barely reported at all.
We do however have a picture of our military safety team responding to the mishap:
Source: Guardian
Yes OS you can buy one of those silos if your rich enuf’ Temperature control is a cinch as I think that far down the temp is a constant 70 degrees year round.
Little did people know in the mid-Cold War years that we (USA) had top-secret NIKE sites in almost every metropolitan area. We (USA) hid them on top of mountains in the woods and guarded them with about 2 or 3 soldiers to run snoopy people off. The shelters and NIKE cabinets are really too small to sell off as real estate. Connecticut is full of them. Nobody is buying them. They’re too small.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nike_missile_locations
They were made to fend off the threat of Russian long-range strategic bombers. They were scrapped as it was too impractical to think a few NIKE/Ajaxes could take out several waves of bombers.
OH and there is only four countries TODAY still detonating nukes ABOVE ground. India and Pakistan did it in Kashmir Region 1990’s forcing Clinton to write them a very angry letter. They could have caused EMP’s. China hasn’t stopped yet. South Africa and Israel are secretly doing it in Antarctica south of Johannesburg. Some people say they saw “flashes” but they checked out as nuclear.
Then there is some really strange shiat going on in Western Australia. Some claim that a Japanese terrorist group has old senior-citizen Russian nuclear scientist working on some really strange crap out there in the out back. Looks nuclear but also looks like huge ball lightning that cause earth tremors on collision:
http://www.cheniere.org/misc/brightskies1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjawarn_station#The_seismic_event
OS – What date or year was that? I think it was a B36 that dumped the dummy into the Pacific. It did detonate but only the HE package not the nuke.
Juris – Because they are obviously lying. They DON’T know the exact location and it’s in deep swamp land. They can’t pinpoint it with GPR and there’s no crane or heavy equipment that can go out there. It hit the swamp at 700 mph (that’s almost Mach 1 – speed of sound!) So there it lays for decades in the “armed” state. No plutonium only uranium and HE package. They think no bad guys can find it either. Let’s hope that’s true.
The Russians lost a few nuke subs themselves like the Kursk (K-141). They still think we (USA) boned her with two LA Class subs (USS Toledo & Memphis). But truth be told they boned themselves with something in the torpedo room that went wrong (i.e. HTP propellant). Yes we were not too far away (USN always there). But we did not shoot her with a fish (Mark 48 ADCAP). That’s Putin’s nightmare he chose to stay on his Black Sea vacation while men were drowning in the Barents Sea.
There were a lot of nukes being detonated in the US in 1961.
Fascinating stuff OS and sonofthunder.
“Until my death I will never forget hearing my sergeant say, ‘Lieutenant, we found the arm/safe switch.’ And I said, ‘Great.’ He said, ‘Not great. It’s on arm.’ […] It’s STILL there!!!”
Sonofthunder, I wonder if that is why it is still there. Digging it up is more risky?
I was born in the 1980s so this whole “oops I lost a nuke” and “oops I almost nuked part of the homeland” (which I now know is called a “Broken Arrow” thanks to our great posters here) is all new to me.
If we (USA) have this many skeletons on this issue, I can only imagine the number of other nuke countries’ skeletons (ahem…Russia and China) that are out there. Fascinating and scary stuff.
Q&A: Eric Schlosser on the Secret History of America’s Nuclear Arsenal
In a new book, the ‘Fast Food Nation’ author investigates the many near-misses that could have caused catastrophes
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/q-a-eric-schlosser-on-the-secret-history-of-americas-nuclear-arsenal-20130916
sotb,
My cousin was a crew member on the B-29 (It may have been the upgraded version called the B-50) which managed to drop a dummy nuke in the Atlantic. At the time he was limited in what he could say, but I got the impression it was a realistic dummy. They never recovered it. It’s not in the list of Broken Arrow incidents because it was only a dummy. Later in life he developed Alzheimer’s disease and I never did get the rest of the story. He was a survivor of Pearl Harbor, and died in 2006.
Great article Professor. I am now reading Schlosser’s book that highlights this little nuclear blooper. The classified designation can many times be just a means to prevent family and friends and citizens from finding out the truth.
As has been discussed here earlier, my father was in a Strategic Air Command C-124 that went down in the Atlantic on March 23, 1951. The crash report was fully classified for over 50 years and there are parts of the report still “missing”. It is likely that the plane was carrying nukes or nuke parts and that may be why the government thinks families should be left in the dark for over 60 years. Disgusting.
@Gene H – I think I got one in the JT “shredder” spam filter. Can you give it a good whack with your spanner? 🙂
lust imagine what was contained in documents that made it to the shreader.
@OS – We (USA) have had so many “broken arrow” events we choose not to be so forthcoming with details. Fortunately our USN found one in the MED and portrayed in the movie “Men of Honor (2000)”. But what about the ENTIRE B-47 that went MIA (Twilight Zone style) on 10 March 1956 somewhere between MacDill (FL) and Morocco maybe over the MED? Guess what they had in two radiation cases? The Russians and Chinese had a few too but here’s a almost total list of everybody’s broken-whatevers:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/weapons/q0268.shtml
Fortunately, they left out this one in August 2007:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/b-52-nukes-headed-for-iran-air-force-refused-to-fly-weapons-to-middle-east-theater/6909
One of the birds was lost at Damascus, Arkansas. Technician dropped a tool, which started a chain of events that culminated in the biggest explosion in Arkansas since the Ozark Mountains were active volcanoes. The 1.5 million pound blast proof door was shattered and chunks of it were found thousands of feet away. Somebody who was there told me a 90-ton piece of the door was found a half mile from the silo.
The “package” somehow, miraculous remained intact and was found not far from the site. Dented, but the skin not compromised. In that case, there was no risk of a detonation, but if the integrity of the “package” had been breached, the contents are some truly nasty stuff.
http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2013/05/26/coming-behind-the-scenes-account-of-1980-titan-missile-accident-in-damascus-ark
@To All: It’s amazing how MSM leaves out the parts that are too sensitive for public consumption. There’s more to this story than JT revealed. Read on:
It’s STILL there!!!
@Darrel C. Carlson(Son of S/Sgt Carl Edwin Carlson, K.I.A. 22June1944) – “…my vow to never take any flight unless the provider is an Israeli Airline.”
As much as I kibitz about Israel Darrel, I must agree with you 100% about EL AL Airlines Security. It is better than our TIA or any other security service on Earth! Privacy and civil rights are a petty annoyance to them. So they don’t bother with it. I mean they have so many enemies to hide from you really can’t blame them for being so security conscious.
I wonder how many “accidents” have happened at Dimona at the Negev Nuclear Research Center 13 km SE of the city in the desert. Tell me why again does a tiny circa 65 year old country needs nuclear arsenal? BTW it’s 1st reactor went live shortly after this incident in USA.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/
Juris,
I have worn several hats in my lifetime. In a previous career, I worked on this little project.
OS, that is mindboggling. 100 million degrees Fahrenheit is sort of like hearing the $100 billion (or million) dollars. My mind can’t fathom the thought of something that hot or high in number. Although, your info and picture help to visualize the consequence of this type of weapon. Thanks for that.
If you don’t mind me asking, how do you know so much about this topic?
I don’t know which is more scary/disturbing, the story itself or the fact that the mainstream media doesn’t seem to be running with it.
Juris,
Good observation and quite true. Just as private citizens are learning that true privacy is a myth, that is a knife with two edges. Public officials and even the military are learning the hard way the same applies to them. Despite repressive measures, even the most oppressive regimes are finding it hard to keep the door closed on information.
barabajagal, interesting question. The answer to which is scary to ponder. Especially so when, at a time it seems to me more than any other in the history of our country, certain government deception and lies are more difficult than ever to pull off. Largely due to the internet, I think those who are paying attention are finding out more about the corruption, deception, lies, and propaganda of our governance and lawmaking than ever before. A far cry to the rosy picture I was taught in my upbringing. Unfortunately, the realist in me says “tip of the iceberg.”
Juris and Gene,
The test shown in that video had a fireball 4 1/2 miles in diameter, with a temperature more than 100 million degrees Fahrenheit. It left a crater 1 1/4 miles in diameter and about 250 feet deep. The cloud and fireball went to 130,000 feet ten minutes after detonation, and was 62 miles wide.
Copy and paste these coordinates into Google Earth and see the crater on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands:
11°41’46.24″ N 165°16’19.51″ E
If the bomb would have exploded do you believe the correct source and responsibility for explosion would have been reported? Most likely it would have been reported as an attack from USSR or Cuba.
“How the U.S. Narrowly Avoided a Nuclear Holocaust 33 Years Ago, and Still Risks Catastrophe Today”
http://youtu.be/k3vgl_xe7VE
AMY GOODMAN: Is there a possibility of a domestic Stuxnet, you know like the U.S. released against Iran, a virus that would affect command and control?
ERIC SCHLOSSER: It is a great concern. These weapons are not connected to the internet, but there are command information systems that run software. During the Cold War, Zbigniew Brezinski was woken up in the middle of the night. He was National Security Adviser. He was told the United States was under attack. He got another call and was basically preparing to call President Carter and advise a retaliation. It turned out that there was a faulty computer chip in the NORAD computers that was saying that Soviet missiles were coming toward the United States and they weren’t. So, as long as you have a weapons stance in which we need to be able to retaliate immediately, it puts enormous pressure on acting quickly and there’s are all kinds of possibilities for error.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what has to be done?
ERIC SCHLOSSER: I think firstly, the reason that I wrote the book, is in a democracy these sort of decisions need to be debated by the American people. And really, since 1944 or 1945, fundamental decisions about nuclear weapons have been made by a small group of policy makers acting in secret. So firstly we need openness, secondly we need a debate, and thirdly we need fewer nuclear weapons much more carefully managed, not only in this country, but in every country.
AMY GOODMAN: Eric Schlosser, we want to thank you for being with us. “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety” is the book. It has just come out.