USAF Almost Nuked North Carolina In 1961 – Declassified Document 586
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."
A little drastic but... (Score:5, Funny)
What an improvement for NC that would have been.
Re:A little drastic but... (Score:4, Insightful)
You guys are all laughing about this, But when I was in the USAF I was stationed at Beale, Armageddon Air Force Base. They had more B-52s loaded full of bombs ready to carpet-nuke Russia than you could count. Hundreds of B-52s with dozens or maybe even hundreds of H-bombs each, ready to rain nuclear hell on the commies.
I was 9 in 1961, most of you weren't even born. Many of you wouldn't have been if that thing would have gone off. Laugh about that.
I saw a lot of scary shit in the Air Force, and that was forty years ago. I can't imagine the shit they have now, when I was in the AF a computer took a whole building. Go ahead and laugh, we have more than global warming and asteroids to worry about.
Human error could cause our extinction. Laugh away, guys.
Re:A little drastic but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Scary in a different way.
Anyway, look on the bright side: we aren't currently in a nuclear cold war. It would seem we either actually learned something and aren't repeating it, or got lucky enough for the moment to not make enemies with anyone else who could blow up the world. Either way, it's a good thing.
Lastly, laughing about
Re:A little drastic but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Human error could cause our extinction. Laugh away, guys.
Human error very likely will cause our extinction yet. In fact, it's something of a minor miracle that we haven't already wiped ourselves out. As you know well, since around 1952 and continuing until present there are still hundreds of nuclear warheads on alert and ready for immediate use. Beyond that there are several thousand more which could be reactivated or made operational within hours, days or weeks. There is also the matter of climate change and the ongoing destruction of the natural environment that sustains all life on this planet. Personally, I rather doubt that humanity will see another thousand years if some big changes aren't made within the next few hundred or so. However, that doesn't mean that we cant laugh at the absurdity of it all or appreciate the irony of an intelligent species using that very intelligence, often cited as our greatest advantage, to bring about our own annihilation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My nieces and nephews really can't comprehend what it was like to grow up with the constant knowledge that at any moment civilization and perhaps all multi-cellular life on the planet could end. To have 'Duck And Cover' drills in grade school and be sent home with maps for your parents showing what buildings were listed as Fallout Shelters (even though our small town was two hours from the closest reasonable target). Hearing the sonic boom of the B-52s based out of McCord AFB as they passed overhead, and
Re: A little drastic but... (Score:3)
Indeed. And given that fear is what caused most of our nuclear near-misses with apocalypse, it means the next generation is much less likely to end the world than your generation.
Re:A little drastic but... (Score:5, Informative)
Hearing the sonic boom of the B-52s
How does an aircraft with a max speed around mach 0.86 make a sonic boom?
Re:A little drastic but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hearing the sonic boom of the B-52s based out of McCord AFB as they passed overhead
The B-52s were (and are) subsonic. I heard the booms, too, from aircraft at Scott AFB, and that was a MAC base. Probably in both cases they were fighters that were stopping off for fuel or something, because cargo and transport planes were subsonic as well.
Re:A little drastic but... (Score:5, Informative)
I was 9 when this happened also, living about 3 counties Southeast of the crash site, certainly close enough to have seen a very bright light and heard a very loud noise if anything went off.
The B-52 in question was trying for an emergency landing at Seymour Johnson AFB, where my Dad did his active duty Reserve obligation every summer back then
Chances are if one of them had gone off it wouldn't have been over Wayne County but "in" it, as in buried in the dirt.
The one with the parachute wound up with about a foot and half of the nose underground but the other one, falling unimpeded, hit a field near a swampy area, and despite digging down over 40 feet, they still haven't recovered all of it.
Most of the stuff in this latest release was already known, though.
http://www.newsargus.com/news/archives/2011/01/23/the_bomb_one_click_from_armageddon/ [newsargus.com]
http://www.ibiblio.org/bomb/story.html [ibiblio.org]
http://www.restorationsystems.com/uncategorized/whoops-atomic-bomb-dropped-in-goldsboro-nc-swamp-neuse-huc-02/ [restorationsystems.com]
Re:A little drastic but... (Score:4, Interesting)
If it had gone off and you were outside you'd probably have been blinded, and died of cancer within twenty years, along with your neighbors.
This book [wikipedia.org] will scare the hell out of you (I was a teenager when I read it).
Here's a PDF [kevindeweese.com] of the book. I wish someone would OCR it.
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Ah, the younger generation.
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If I may add my 2 cents, one of the trickier parts of Buddha's message seems to be how to live with care, lightness, and compassion, whilst knowing it is all just dust blowing in the wind.
Yes, I learned quite a bit about Buddhism while stationed in Thailand (the B-52s there weren't nuclear-armed). I was once admonished for swatting at a fly. Oddly, the Thai boxers (surely Buddhist, every Thai I met was) had no problem at all with sending Chinese Kung-fu fighters to the hospital. Thais taught me how to use n
Re:A little drastic but... (Score:5, Funny)
It can't possibly be any worse than Detroit.
a Left wing DNC experiment
Do you two want to take your little thing out in the hall?
If the bomb did explode, would USA blame USSR? (Score:5, Interesting)
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)?
Re:If the bomb did explode, would USA blame USSR? (Score:5, Insightful)
It probably would've been good for his presidential popularity/authority. With it being his third day in office nobody could've blamed him for making the military incompetent, and huge national tragedies (including accidental ones) usually cause Americans to rally around their leaders and vote more powers to their president.
And certainly Kennedy wasn't going to blame the USSR, possibly start a nuclear war, be made a fool of by other countries not seeing evidence for USSR involvement (for example NORAD would not have seen a soviet plane), probably be arrested by a military coup who would rather admit blame than die, etc.
Re:If the bomb did explode, would USA blame USSR? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If the bomb did explode, would USA blame USSR? (Score:5, Informative)
A fault with the warning system rather than bombs per se, but it makes you think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saved_the_World [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
That's kind of a tough question. If it were another administration, say Nixon or Reagan -- Hell yeah they'd blame the Commies.
But a lot of people still think Kennedy planned the Bay of Pigs invasion. Not considering how NEW to his term he was when it happened and the fact that he gave it ZERO support. So basically, the copped to it so Americans wouldn't think that the CIA and parts of our military could go rogue and try and start wars, just like a lot of people cannot conceive that false flags is how we ALW
Re: (Score:3)
Using some rough and ready assumptions about the distribution of people in North Carolina (an area I'm unlikely to ever need to know much about ; swampy and Southern, wasn't it?), I get around 1.3 million dead, just under 14% of the population.
A substantial number. It's around the number of American civilians killed by guns since 1960. 20-odd years of traffic deaths. Less than a year of cancer deaths. Substantial ; but hardly devastating.
old, really old, news (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
the triple fail-safe worked.
or put it another way, a simple switch on a nuclear bomb failed as it fell to earth, rendering it inoperable. doesn't inspire much confidence for when it is used in war.
Re: (Score:2)
or put it another way, a simple switch on a nuclear bomb failed as it fell to earth, rendering it inoperable. doesn't inspire much confidence for when it is used in war.
Well, if you choose to ignore the fact that the US has successfully used two nuclear bombs in war...
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Interesting)
or put it another way, a simple switch on a nuclear bomb failed as it fell to earth, rendering it inoperable. doesn't inspire much confidence for when it is used in war.
Well, if you choose to ignore the fact that the US has successfully used two nuclear bombs in war...
I don't care as much about the reliability of bombs used in the past, so much as the reliability of bombs we may use in the future. I'd prefer them to inspire confidence!
btdubs, does anybody know if this switch failure was a safety feature that worked, or a malfunction of a critical piece that was a lifesaver in this scenario?
Re:old, really old, news (Score:4, Informative)
Most likely it was a safety feature since nukes have to be armed right before they are used. This is by design so that they do not go nuclear is the event of an accident such as this one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. You wouldn't want that either. Bombs are supposed to detonate on their target, not in random places. This is especially true for really large bombs that can level entire cities.
Contrary to what the liberal media will tell you, real armies prefer to destroy what they're actually trying to destroy and nothing else.
Spraying bullets is for Hollywood.
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are using a thermonuclear bomb (and the only reason that a bomber with such a bomb would be over enemy territory is the intent to drop it on some target) then it means that you are prepared to destroy a city or some other large area. If the plane is shot down then it won't reach the intended target, if it is over enemy territory them it may as well detonate the bomb. Also, this way you prevent the enemy from recovering the bomb and using the uranium/plutonium in his own bombs.
Let's say in WW2 the Japanese managed to shoot down the plane carrying Little Boy. It the bomb detonated over some other city instead of Hiroshima, would that have made a difference? Even if the bomb detonated over an empty field it would still have made an impression. If the plane quietly went down, then maybe the war would not have ended as soon.
Such large weapons would either be weapons of last resort by the losing side or an attempt to force the enemy to surrender in fear by the winning side. In any case, detonating it anywhere on the enemy territory would be preferable to having it fall to the ground and not go off.
At least in my opinion.
Re: old, really old, news (Score:3, Interesting)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were specifically targeted for their geographic position. The US needed to test it in these places as they had specifically left both cities unbombed through out their entire campaign. The places for the bombs to detonate planned specifically to maximize the information they could gather about the bombs effect.
Dropping nukes on a whim isn't generally considered well thought out plans.
On a side note it is interesting to note that japan were already under the process of surrender, and w
Re: old, really old, news (Score:5, Insightful)
> On a side note it is interesting to note that japan were already under the process of surrender
You're talking to an amateur student of WWII history here. I have to put in my two cents on that one. :)
Your assertion is disputed, even by Japanese historians. Yes, Hirohito had told his people in mid-summer to begin working toward surrender. But the Potsdam declaration for "unconditional surrender" knocked them back. There were many hardliners in the Japanese military who even considered a coup, followed by a scorched-earth policy. Hirohito didn't demand surrender until after the atomic bombings and after the Soviets declared war. You can decide which was the primary cause. I think it was both.
The US dropped the bombs for several reasons. Yes, part of it was that they wanted to see the effect on a city. But another part is something that you don't hear discussed much, and that certainly didn't appear in the patriotic films from that era. The fact is, after years of war, morale was slipping in the US military. There were desertions. Some in the military made it clear -- respectfully but firmly -- that it was time to wrap up the game and head home. So, that was another pressure to use the bombs: to get it over with quickly.
If the hardliners in Japan had held out (and the Allies had no way to know what Hirohito was thinking for certain), Army estimates are that the Allies would have lost around 1,000,000 men if they'd invaded Japan. You can dispute that nowadays, but that was their best estimate. Truman was horrified, and coupled with what I just said -- the threats of desertion and mutiny in the Pacific -- he elected to use the "doomsday weapon.".
We'll never know for sure. But just as wars rarely start because of one simple reason, the same is true of how they end.
Re: old, really old, news (Score:5, Interesting)
There were significant elements in the japanese government that were comitted to fighting until they got more than just keeping the emperor (and Shinto, a secondary tier issue, because more of the Japanese had informal contacts assuring them the US had a big thing for freedom of religion). They wanted a "No War Crimes Trials" guarantee for the civilians who had overseen the military and possibly for some of the military personnel as well. The US would have probably given them the assurances on religion quickly, but the issue wasn't as far along in the negotiations as the Imperial presence was. The "No War Crimes Trials" bit, that had all the chance of success of a nitrocellulose cat being chased by an asbestos dog in a grove of already burning white phosporus trees, after word got out about Bataan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March [wikipedia.org]
While I agree that the US wanted to test those devices, you have to include the history of the Japanese Politicians who were holding out. These were the very people who had made one wrong predicition after another, and not gotten fired (or ordered to retire for health reasons or actually to commit Sepuku), despite those mistakes. The ones who had sworn that it would be impossible for the US to hit the Japanese mainland with bombers for at least 2 years if Pearl Harbor was attacked. The ones who told the Emperor that since Hawaii wasn't a state, just a territory at the time, the US would be open to a negotiated settlement behind the scenes, whatever their public actions. The ones who swore that the US would have to let the Japanese take territory for at least 2 1/2 years before they could even possibly see a reversal. These were people who every time they made a claim and it turned out to be blowing sunshine up the emperor's kilt, somebody else died for having pointed it out and potentially embarrassing them, and they went right on proclaiming the inevetability of eventual victory.
The US very likely figured the negotiators US diplomats spoke with, were hoping to get a truce, but the warhawks may not have even known what the Ambassador and staff were proposing, and might simply drop the proposals and maybe shoot their own messengers at any time. There were too many well-identified lying bastards, some of whom were known for killing the whole families of people they had political disagreements with, and other such nastiness, who still seemed to be able to just jump in there and gum up any settlement on a whim without facing personal consequences.
Re: old, really old, news (Score:4, Insightful)
On a side note it is interesting to note that japan were already under the process of surrender, and were committed to leaving the war roughly two weeks after the bombs dropped. They had their own terms, to be allowed to keep their emperor as the head of Japanese political heirarchy.
Yes. The Japanese had put out feelers to see if a conditional surrender (we keep our government and our weapons, we just stop shooting and you, and you stop shooting at us. Oh yeah, and we keep China) would be accepted. None of the terms were reasonable for a nation that started a war, let alone all of them. But yes, nobody doubts the cease-fire-like surrender had been mentioned. The US was pushing for an unconditional surrender, which is generally the only one accepted when the surrendering party started the war. Yes, there could have been some armistice, but nothing that would have gotten Japan out of China and disarmed or punished the leaders that started the war.
Re: old, really old, news (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were specifically targeted for their geographic position. The US needed to test it in these places as they had specifically left both cities unbombed through out their entire campaign. The places for the bombs to detonate planned specifically to maximize the information they could gather about the bombs effect.
Dropping nukes on a whim isn't generally considered well thought out plans.
An interesting historical note is that Nagasaki wasn't the intended target for the second bomb. They originally intended to drop the bomb on Kokura, but were thwarted when they got there by poor weather. Nagasaki was their secondary "target of opportunity". Because, you know, it would have been a shame to fly all the way out there without dropping a bomb on someone.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: old, really old, news (Score:4, Insightful)
One can of course argue about hypotheticals, but the fact remains that the US chose to two densely populated civilian targets, with the intent to massacre as many civilians as possible, as efficiently as possible, most of them women, children and elderly. They did this without warning, and they chose to drop two bombs with such a short interval that the Japanese hardly had a chance to fathom what had happened before the second one dropped. The original plan even was to drop four, but they apparently had the decency to change their minds before manufacture of the other two had finished.
No matter what rational one can come up with, there is no other word for those actions that atrocities. That a lot of Americans will not recognize this, I personally find despicable. As former US Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara said, quoting General LeMay: ""If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?".
Re: old, really old, news (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, part of it was that they wanted to see the effect on a city.
That is the part which is inexcusable. If they just wanted to end the war there were plenty of other targets which had military value but fewer civilian casualties, or even just sparsely populated areas that could demonstrate the weapon's power. Instead they went straight for the maximum suffering, maximum casualties, maximum crime against humanity option.
I'm sorry, but there can be no justification for testing nuclear weapons on human beings, even if they are your enemy.
Re: (Score:3)
>At least in my opinion.
And does your opinion about the benefits of failpositive (as opposed to failsafe) nukes take into account the plane falling apart/being destroyed just after launch from friendly territory, like a military base or a carrier air group?
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Being over enemy territory but not over the target does not mean that it wouldn't be your own troops the bomb fell on.
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FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Weapons_Emergency_Separation_System [wikipedia.org]
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This is a common misconception. The nukes developed during the Cold War weren't for destroying cities. Yeah a few dozen were targeted at the larger cities as an afterthought. But the vast majority were targeted at hardened missile silos. The idea being (as silly as i
Re: (Score:3)
If not, the ideal thing to do would be for the bomb to "self-destruct" without detonating; by injecting chemicals causing the nuclear material to be rendered useless to any adversary, and permanently locking out the detonator assembly.
Sorry, real life doesn't work like that. Chemicals won't stop a nuclear reaction unless the chemicals target the explosive that triggers the fission explosion that triggers the fusion explosion. If it doesn't go off, the enemy has their own new bomb. And the electronics are t
Re: (Score:3)
According to Wikipedia, if the right command is sent to the permissive action link, the bomb will "explosively re-machine" the pit into something that cannot support an implosion. Reading into this euphemism of mass destruction, I suspect that since bombs are single-point safe (a single-point initiation - like a bullet - will produce no si
Re: (Score:3)
The simplest way to do this is to detonate the explosive lenses at different times, rather than simultaneously. Rather than the implosion you need to go critical, you just blow the core into little pieces.
There's a bit of a radioactive materials clean up job, but no earth-shattering kaboom. (Just a small kaboom.)
Re: (Score:3)
That's why they designed in quadruple redundancy.
You have to remember that this is a journalist understanding of what happened.
Left unsaid was what the tree other safety mechanisms were. Presumably the first two or three were destroyed as the plane broke up and the bombs were severed from the device holding the bomb on the airplane. B52s would almost certainly carry this size of bomb internally.
Jones never actually saw the bomb, all he did was rummage thru papers, and decide on his own, that the "switch co
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The WW2 atom bombs have as much in common with a cold war H bomb as a medieval musket has with a with a modern belt-fed machine gun. The principal is vaguely the same, but the actual mechanism is almost wholly different.
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Insightful)
or put it another way, a simple switch on a nuclear bomb failed as it fell to earth
No, the switch didn't fail - apparently three of its siblings did, but the fact that this one didn't prevented the unarmed bomb from detonating.
Re: (Score:2)
the triple fail-safe worked.
or put it another way, a simple switch on a nuclear bomb failed as it fell to earth, rendering it inoperable. doesn't inspire much confidence for when it is used in war.
I don't care as much about the reliability of bombs used in the past, so much as the reliability of bombs we may use in the future. I'd prefer them to inspire confidence!
btdubs, does anybody know if this switch failure was a safety feature that worked, or a malfunction of a critical piece that was a lifesaver in this scenario?
Re: (Score:3)
btdubs, does anybody know if this switch failure was a safety feature that worked, or a malfunction of a critical piece that was a lifesaver in this scenario?
Well, if you read TFA, you'll learn that three of the four safeties failed and this simple switch safety worked. Probably why they designed in four redundant safeties, don't you think?
If you do read TFA, you'll also find that the author doesn't know the difference between "broke up in mid-air" and "went into a tailspin", since he claims both happened. And in either case, the bombs were not dropped (a specific action releasing the bombs), they fell out of the sky -- a normal side effect of an aircraft carr
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Insightful)
Your way of looking at it is just a straight out lie.
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The point is that of 4 safeguards in place, 3 failed to properly work. That's not concerning?
Presumably that's why there were four instead of two or three.
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Funny)
Presumably that's why there were four instead of two or three.
The fourth switch has been since discontinued due to budget cuts.
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No. This is basic statistics in a safety system. You identify a consequence and a likelihood of a disaster and use that to get a quantitative risk number. You compare that to the risk you're willing to wear and that gives you a factor for reducing risk. Then it's up to statistics to design a system that meets this criteria.
You design the system around likelihood of failures of any component in the system. To reduce your risk you either have to pick and maintain components of the utmost reliability or you pi
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I'm not sure you understand how these things are really designed to work. A Bomber crashing is supposed to be in the design scope of the munition. A mid-air collision or any other type of disaster should never send active bombs downward. This is true for conventional munitions as well as nuclear weapons. Nuclear bombs are supposed to be activated prior to release so that they can detonate. They are never supposed to be loaded in an armed state except for during combat missions. An inactive bomb should
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I'd like to think (perhaps that's not reality) that the nuke shouldn't go off no matter what---unless it was propery activated. E.g. dropping bomb out of an airplane, burning in jet fuel, putting the thing into an incinerator, or have folks go at it with blow torches until they get tired... shouldn't cause anything other than a conventional explosion---not a nuclear one. Perhaps that's too much to wish for, but I'd imagine temper proof circuitry that controls the timings of conventional explosives can enabl
Re: (Score:3)
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Insightful)
And why shouldn't the bombs go off if the plane goes down?
You can't be serious! Surely this example of crashing in North Carolina is the exact reason why bombs shouldn't explode during crashes. Would you really want an accident during take off or landing to destroy your own airport or carrier? Do you want to take out your own troops on the ground because your plane got shot down before it reached its target?
A plane spends a large percentage of its life flying over its own country or allied territories. Generally you prefer to not bomb those places if you can help it.
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Funny)
You'll have to excuse the grandparent post; he inadvertently had a triple safety failure and went full retard.
Re:old, really old, news (Score:4, Informative)
the triple fail-safe worked.
or put it another way, a simple switch on a nuclear bomb failed as it fell to earth, rendering it inoperable. doesn't inspire much confidence for when it is used in war.
Nope. It was a safety mechanism that worked as intended, after three others did not. The bomb did not malfunction.
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or does he ride down atop the bomb waving his cowboy hat?
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Informative)
Egads.
If you had the choice between a repeat of this, vs. a certain 9/11-scale attack tomorrow, which would you choose?
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Both options suck and you know it.
Especially because 9/11 takes our freedom as well as our lives.
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Especially because 9/11 takes our freedom as well as our lives.
Don't think this wouldn't have either. In the Northwoods era [wikipedia.org] they probably would have used the occasion to blame it on Cuba (or another political foe) and taken the nation to war.
Every time a second amendment argument devolves into "so you think everybody should own nuclear weapons?" feel some solace that eventually people will look back on our period and realize that nuclear weapons were a signal that States were too dangerous to keep around.
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You have got to be kidding. A ground burst is the worst case scenario, it would produce a horrendously radioactive plume that would spread far beyond the affected area of an air burst.
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Informative)
No, a ground bust is not the worst case scenario. A near ground burst is. My understanding is most nukes are designed to go off a few hundred meters above ground. Still plenty close enough to toss a plume of horrendously radioactive dust and debris all around but also position to expose a large area to the heat and shock of the blast.
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Informative)
Re:old, really old, news (Score:5, Informative)
I forget the physics term,
Mach stem.
You're welcome. ;)
**what caused the plane to 'drop' the bombs?** (Score:2)
right, I agree that the article is completely burying the lead (seriously talk about FUD..."It was a single switch!"...)
but what bothers me is the ridiculous lack of detail about **how the plane 'dropped' the bombs in the first place**
that's the first thing I looked for as I skimmed TFA
this is all we get:
Re:**what caused the plane to 'drop' the bombs?** (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org].) 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.
still wondering after wiki... (Score:3)
purely my imagination...if I think about it, I have to say it relates to how the story is told and the 'zomg switch!' tone of the article
I checked the wikipedia, and there is plenty of details. The pilot reported a fuel leak in a wing during in-flight refueling. Problem got worse, were told to go into holding pattern to use up fuel to prep for landing...fuel leaks too fast (?) then:
"As it descended through 10,000 feet (3,000 m) on its approach to the airfield, the pilots were no longer able to
Yikes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yikes! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm thinking that there's probably a higher chance of a devastating meteor impact... launched by giant space-bugs.
I think I saw a documentary on that once.
Surprising amount of tits featured for an astrophysics documentary.
Re:Yikes! (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to know more...
Here's what's new (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Safety design was fine (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike the article implies, the safety design was just fine - after all, the bombs didn't go off.
Sure, three out of four of them failed - that's why there were four.
I'd be good for someone with actual statistics knowledge to say what the probability of 3/4/5 safeties failing would be.
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I'd be good for someone with actual statistics knowledge to say what the probability of 3/4/5 safeties failing would be.
You'd have to know about the system and what the probability of each type of failsafe failing is, not just the number...
Re:Safety design was fine (Score:5, Funny)
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!
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When 5 of the 6 arming mechanisms on a 3.8Mt bomb activate when they're not supposed to, it doesn't take an advanced knowledge of statistics to realize it was pretty close. Hopefully they went back to the drawing board on that one.
Re:Safety design was fine (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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NASA has a saying, "If you're running on the backups, you're already in trouble." This was the backup to the backup to the backup to the backup.
OTOH, now we have evidence as to why you do NOT choose the lowest bidder for systems that are absolutely MUST NOT FAIL!
One Low-Voltage Switch (Score:5, Interesting)
only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.
Just imagine if there had been a Tin Whisker [wikipedia.org] shorting that switch.
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Fortunately, no one used lead-free solder back then.
Re:One Low-Voltage Switch (Score:4, Informative)
The military still doesn't.
Why were nukes making routine flights inside USA? (Score:5, Funny)
"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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
During the Cold War, we had nuclear-armed bombers in the air 24/7 in case of a Russian strike. When you're doing something 24/7, it becomes routine.
Re:Why were nukes making routine flights inside US (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This accident happened again in 1966 (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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There's been a bunch of these over the years. To get the weapon to actually initiate fission, all the charges have to be fired with very precise timing, to compress the material into critical mass. If the charges go off accidentally, you don't get fission, rather it just blows the fissile material all over the place. What murrican tv likes to call a 'dirty bomb' i guess.
A B52 crashed and its bombs went off near Thule AFB in the late 60s (non fission, again). Greenland/Denmark had been lying to it's citizens
Why are we pushing this guy's book? (Score:3)
Atom Bomb ? (Score:3)
an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.'
With that sort of yield it was a Hydrogen Bomb, not just an atom bomb
Re:I wonder who they would have blamed (Score:5, Funny)
joshua (Score:2)
and some person will get a fake death as well.
Re:I wonder who they would have blamed (Score:4, Funny)
Think about it... if you were the Russians back then, and you were going to drop a nuke on the US, would North Carolina be at the top of your list?
I'll give you Fort Bragg, but outside of that, what there would be worth risking a counter strike?
In all likelihood they would have just blamed Bush.
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no, it probably would have triggered the doomsday clock and caused armaggeddon.
Re:That would have sped up nuclear disarmament (Score:5, Insightful)
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You meant possible triggering of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war) [wikipedia.org], right?
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It would've been some ironical justice for what was done to innocent children and women in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think all U.S nuclear weapons should on completion have been pointed straight upwards and fired immediately. It would've been the most appropriate use.
Ok, but what should we have done to avenge the millions killed by the Imperial Japanese forces, wiped out every last man, women and child in Japan? Thankfully the US leadership was not as vengeful and bloodthirsty as you.
Re:Ironical justice (Score:4, Informative)
Japanese killed millions of Americans?
Can you read? Where did I say Americans?
US leadership was and is The single most bloodthirsty entity ever to have occurred on this side of the Universe. You can drink any cool-aid you want but that is a fact, you can check the list of illegal aggressions by the US.
The Nazi invasion of the USSR killed over 30 million people. The Japanese invasion of China killed between 20 and 35 million. The Rape of Nanjing alone killed more people than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. What are you smoking?
Re:Broken Arrow. (Score:4, Funny)
They killed an unarmed cow? How could they?