Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Goldsboro NC...well, two outta three ain't bad

[CountDeMoney]

US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina – secret document
Exclusive: Journalist uses Freedom of Information Act to disclose 1961 accident in which one switch averted catastrophe
Ed Pilkington in New York
theguardian.com, Friday 20 September 2013 12.03 EDT

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US 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.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.

Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".

Writing eight years after the accident, Parker F Jones found that the bombs that dropped over North Carolina, just three days after John F Kennedy made his inaugural address as president, were inadequate in their safety controls and that the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt, leading to a nuclear burst. "It would have been bad news – in spades," he wrote.

Jones dryly entitled his secret report "Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb" – a quip on Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical film about nuclear holocaust, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

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. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy's Road.

Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones concludes.

The document was uncovered by Schlosser as part of his research into his new book on the nuclear arms race, Command and Control. Using freedom of information, he discovered that at least 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone.

"The US government has consistently tried to withhold information from the American people in order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear weapons policy," he said. "We were told there was no possibility of these weapons accidentally detonating, yet here's one that very nearly did."

[The Brain]

No harm, no foul.

[Ideologue]

The switch worked, right?

[Jacob]

Vaguely related - nuclear test blasts visible from Los Angeles:







From here: http://www.retronaut.com/2013/09/atom-bomb-tests-seen-from-los-angeles/

[grumbler]

There are far scarier stories in the secret annals of the atomic bomb, as I discovered when I took the Nuclear Weapons Safety Officer course back in the day.  I don't know when they will be declassified, but in those early days even routine maintenance risked cities and aircraft carriers.

All of those potential disasters were averted by the exertion of either common sense or (in retrospect) flimsy "fail-safes."  One of the lessons I learned was that the anonymous "little guy" is not as stupid as is generally asserted. One of the "guaranteed" detonations was avoided by an E-4 saying "that doesn't seem right" when following a checklist.

[Caliga]

Didn't something like this happen over South Carolina too, where a nuclear bomb was jettisoned by mistake and did explode, but somehow didn't go nuclear?  IIRC it left a huge crater in a farmer's field that is now a little pond.

[Ideologue]

What I do in my spare time is none of your business.

[Admiral Yi]

Didn't something like this happen over South Carolina too, where a nuclear bomb was jettisoned by mistake and did explode, but somehow didn't go nuclear?  IIRC it left a huge crater in a farmer's field that is now a little pond.

Just read about this one in the NYT Book Review.  Those bombs had not pits in them.

[grumbler]

BTW, it is no accident that the book limits itself to incidents between 1950 and 1968.  I can attest to the fact that the underestimation of the risks in 1950 had been corrected by 1968 (though I, obviously, went to the school many years later).  Even in the early '80s, though, learning what was going on at the dawn of nuclear weapons deployment was scary stuff.

[Caliga]

Didn't something like this happen over South Carolina too, where a nuclear bomb was jettisoned by mistake and did explode, but somehow didn't go nuclear?  IIRC it left a huge crater in a farmer's field that is now a little pond.

Just read about this one in the NYT Book Review.  Those bombs had not pits in them.

Ah, I see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Bluff,_South_Carolina

On March 11, 1958 a U.S. Air Force B-47 Stratojet from the Hunter Air Force Base's 308th Bombardment Wing in Savannah, Georgia took off around 4:34 p.m. It was scheduled to fly to the United Kingdom for Operation Snow Flurry. The plane was required to carry nuclear weapons in the event of war breaking out with the Soviet Union. Air Force Captain Bruce Kulka was the navigator and was summoned to the bomb bay area after the captain of the plane had encountered a fault light in the cockpit indicating that the bomb harness locking pin for the transatlantic flight did not engage. As Kulka was reaching around the bomb to pull himself up, he mistakenly grabbed the emergency release pin. The Mark 6 bomb dropped to the floor of the B-47 and the weight forced the bomb bay doors open sending the bomb 15,000 feet (4,572 m) down to the ground below.
Although the bomb did not contain the removable core of fissionable uranium and plutonium (the core was securely stored in a containment area on board the plane and thus not technically a traditional "atomic" bomb per se.), it did contain 7,600 pounds (3,447 kg) of conventional explosives. The resulting explosion created a mushroom cloud and crater estimated to be 75 feet (23 m) wide and 25–35 feet (7.6–10.7 m) deep. It destroyed a local home, the residence of Walter Gregg, and leveled nearby trees. Nobody was directly killed from the blast but several people in Gregg's family were injured from the explosion.
The crater is still preserved, but obscured by a swamp.

[Caliga]

Here's the Mars Bluff crater/pond.  Neat.



edit: goddamn it.

edit2: finally

[Admiral Yi]

About the same size as the crater at Petersburg.   

That was really a let down.

[Caliga]

Petersburg, VA?  The whole town is a letdown, according to my brother who was there the other week for an estate sale.

[Admiral Yi]

Petersburg, VA?  The whole town is a letdown, according to my brother who was there the other week for an estate sale.

What else is there to be let down about besides the crater?  It's a defunct river port suburb of a 4th rate city.

[Caliga]

He said the whole thing is basically a ghetto.