I wonder what the reaction would have been if the thing would have detonated. I’m SURE the communications between countries back then was nothing compared to what they are today. Would we have launched an all out retaliatory strike against the USSR, assuming they struck us first?(though their apparent first strike target would have made no sense at all)
Would we have retaliated even knowing it was an accident, as a face-saving measure? I tend to doubt it, as history would have been VERY unkind to such a thing, but worse things have probably happened. Of course, this is also assuming the .gov was as crooked back then as it is today.
Seems to me a dummy bomb would not have been difficult to construct; and real ones were mongo expen$ive. What could they have been thinking?