Here is something the media didn’t create, a “Bent Spear” alert, one step down in military terms from a “Broken Arrow”. A “Broken Arrow” is triggered if a nuclear missile has been lost or detonated in a way that does not create the risk of nuclear war.
2007
“At least five U.S. Air Force commanders are facing criminal charges for allowing armed nuclear cruise missiles to be flown across America.”
The alert on August 29 involved a B-52 Stratofortress bomber being flown 1,500 miles from North Dakota to Louisiana with six armed nuclear warheads in launch position below its wings. Each one had ten times the destructive force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The B-52 flight sparked a dramatic security alert. White House and defence chiefs were horrified when the mistake was spotted after the plane landed at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana.
It sat overnight on the tarmac at Minot, North Dakota, without the special guards all nuclear weapons require, and only a chainlink fence and an occasional roving security patrol to protect it. One Security Council official said: “All the elaborate safeguards built in involving crew, munitions, storage and tracing procedures meant this could never happen. But it did.”
yep ... dump on US.
“only a chainlink fence and an occasional roving security patrol to protect it.”
Many, many, moons ago, during a TDY and after a long night of AF drinking, I accidently ended up on the ramp at Minot, in the middle of a raging blizzard. It only took about two minutes before I saw several headlights through the snow, and several weapons pointed at my head.
Things must have changed dramatically from the 80’s.