How can you mistakenly draw six weapons from storage, transport them to the flight line, load them on an airplane, fly them to a different base, then let them sit for 10 hours? All told, I would guess they were unccounted for for at least 15 hours. Four-star heads should roll for this one.
There’s a big whoops.
I don’t have a military background but I can’t help but wonder how it could happen. I’m assuming the nuclear ordinance is stored separately and under heavy guard.
I’m suspicious. If it happened, why was it leaked to the press? Sounds like notification to Ahmadinejad that American nukes are on the move.
But then. . . I’m paranoid.
Where’s General Buck Turgidson when we need him?
No one needs to answer this, but I wonder is these cruise missiles are usually stored with special weapons. If they are in a separate magazine, then it's harder to understand the mistake.
A possible mix-up with ALCM trainers...thought the B52 was headed to the load barn...?
The Safe-Arm switch had been repaired and the wires were soldered backwards. The Quality control failed to note the error. The Sidewinder worked perfectly and Gino's B-52 crashed in a swampy area in Pennsylvania. The four nucs in the bomb bay were recovered but....Oops are easy to make, even with nucs.
Four of six crew members survived. The nucs were recovered and the whole thing was minimally covered by the press. Whoever leaked this info should be provided with a nice condo at Leavenworth for the next 20 years!
WHOA........
“How can you mistakenly draw six weapons from storage, transport them to the flight line, load them on an airplane, fly them to a different base, then let them sit for 10 hours? All told, I would guess they were unccounted for for at least 15 hours. Four-star heads should roll for this one.”
I am going to have agree with you on that. Wonder what they were actually doing?
Former Army tactical missile nuke guy here with questions on USAF procedures:
1. Are ACMs always mated with warheads, whether HE or nuke?
2. Is it normal USAF procedure to bring out the nukes for anything other than an elevated DEFCON setting? Given the satellite abilities of most of our enemies, I would think that evidence of weapons being drawn from the Special Weapons bunkers (which are obviously different than regular bunkers due to the exclusion areas) would lead to excitement by the Russians, etc. From my Army experience in Germany during the Cold War, we were only admitted to the war stock storage area once for a practice upload of missile motors but not for warheads -- we were never given access inside the exclusion area.
3. Why would the pilots fly this load? Were they not required to sign for the weapons in order to know to maintain the two-man rule?
This whole matter just smells...
This story only makes me wonder what the real story is.
If it is a mistake, I suppose some discipline is in order, but I wonder if this isn’t being blown out of proportion. After all, the bomber in question is designed to carry those weapons and the pilots that fly it are trained to carry them and, as the article pointed out, they never left Air Force control.
It was six, then. The many other threads said five, although the many radio news reports said six all along.
O.K., I have it figured out.
Cheney was p. o.’d some of the levees were left standing. He’s really going to fix that before he’s out of office.
TYhis store is what? two days old.
Maybe. But then again who says they were drawn from storage? Maybe they were deliberately loaded onto the BUFF, and then left on, probably unintentioinally, for the trip to Barksdale.
Back in The Day, every SAC base had 3 or 4 BUFFs loaded for war, nuclear war sitting on the alert pad at all times. Early on they would scramble, take off and fly to their positive control points, or be recalled before they'd even climbed out. Sometimes they'd be recalled before they got to the takeoff end of the runway.
Earlier they flew airborne alert with nukes on board. Never, ever, did they blow anything up witha nuke, although they did lose one in the Med off Palomares, Spain. The BUFF went down during refueling ops, two of the bombs (of four) had their HE go off on impact, but no nuclear explosion. One landed more or less intact and was found quickly. The fourth fell into the sea, and although it took "only" two weeks to find it, it took over three more months to recover it.