FQ.08.11: Favorite Quote for This Week

On January 24, 1961 ... a B-52, mainstay of the strategic nuclear bomber force, crashed near Goldsboro, North Carolina.  The plane carried two 24-megaton nuclear weapons... [One bomb] fell into a field where it was found intact.  According to Ralph Lapp, former head of the nuclear physics branch of the Office of Naval Research, five of the six interlocking safety mechanisms on the recovered bomb had been triggered by the fall.  A single switch prevented the accidental explosion over North Carolina of a nuclear weapon more than a thousand times as powerful as the bomb that leveled Hiroshima.
—Lloyd J. Dumas, Lethal Arrogance

Comments

[Dan]

Interesting. So, if we consider this historically:

IF the trigger had switched as well, and the bomb gone off...

- the US would have been disgusted with nuclear weapons and those who argued against them would have won the day...

- the USSR would never have collapsed due to our military superiority, in fact, absent our nuclear arsenal and willingness to use it, they would have conquered the world.

- we wouldn't have the freedom to be blogging about this today, comrade.

Thus, this may not have just been a "close call" for the people in North Carolina - but rather, a close call for freedom itself?

[Steve]

Hypothesize to your heart's content, Dan. I do that a lot, too. I just learned about it recently, and thought it was one of the more interesting facts that never became common knowledge.

[PseudoNoise]

Holy mackerel! That is astounding, and I've never heard of that either. Saved by the piece of cheese.

I hope the newer nukes have 12 safeties.

(For those who don't know about the cheese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Cheese_model)

[Fred]

Now you know why the sixth switch was there.

[Fat Man]

Let's try some facts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents

January 24, 1961 – A B-52 bomber suffered a fire caused by a major leak in a wing fuel cell and exploded in midair 12 miles (19 km) north of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, Goldsboro, North Carolina. The incident released the bomber’s two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs. Five crewmen parachuted to safety, but three died—two in the aircraft and one on landing. Three of the four arming devices on one of the bombs activated, causing it to carry out many of the steps needed to arm itself, such as the charging of the firing capacitors and, critically, the deployment of a 100-foot (30 m) diameter retardation parachute. The parachute allowed the bomb to hit the ground with little damage. The fourth arming device — the pilot’s safe/arm switch — was not activated, and so the weapon did not detonate. The other bomb plunged into a muddy field at around 700 mph (300 m/s) and disintegrated. Its tail was discovered about 20 feet (6 m) down and much of the bomb recovered, including the tritium bottle and the plutonium. However, excavation was abandoned because of uncontrollable flooding by ground water, and most of the thermonuclear stage, containing uranium, was left in situ. It was estimated to lie at around 180 feet (55 m). The Air Force purchased the land and fenced it off to prevent its disturbance, and it is tested regularly for contamination, although none has so far been found.

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So, the pilot had not armed it and it did not explode. Good thing that.

BTW, it was not 24 MT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W39

The Mark 39 nuclear bomb and W39 nuclear warhead were versions of an American thermonuclear weapon, which were in service from 1957 to 1966.

The Mark 39 ... had a yield of 3.8 megatons.