[FreedomStar3028]

It’s funny a lot of strange things happened that prevented nuclear war. Miracles I think.

[cynwoody]

Much ado about the pilot's armed/safe switch.

Which, fortunately for North Carolina, was on "safe" when the crash happened.

You see, the way it works was:

• Bomb drops, parachute automatically deploys in order to let the bomber crew escape while the gadget descends to the optimal altitude for city erasure.
• Bomb gets ready to go off. Capacitors are charged to be ready to detonate the shaped charges around the plutonium core and compress it to a supercritical configuration.
• Radar altimeter determines bomb has reached optimal altitude, so DETONATE!
• Pilot's armed/safe switch is on "safe". So NOTHING HAPPENS. Bomb descends, chute gets caught in tree. Bomb is recovered. Classified report is written.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash

[Zakeet]

The US government has acknowledged the accident before, but never made public how close the bomb came to detonating ...

... except to Wikipedia (see the last paragraph in the history section).

[fso301]

These type incidents also highlight why such a large number of nuclear weapons are needed. Had it been a real war, the bomb may have been a dud.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Who’s got the Slim Pickens picture riding the bomb in Dr Strangelove?

[naturalman1975]

In it, he comments on and corrects Lapp's narrative of the accident, including listing that three out of the four fail safe mechanisms failed

Seems to me that that is why there were four fail safe mechanisms. Three failed, one worked, no detonation.

That's why you build redundancies into fail safe systems.

"One simple dynamo-technology low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe."

And you want at least one of your safeties to be simple technology - because simple technologies are often the ones that work when the advanced technology fails.

[Vinnie]

There’s a Mark 15 nuke buried in the mud off Savannah, Ga.
It’s never been found.
Jettisoned by a B-47 in the late ‘50s.

[Repeal The 17th]

Here is a list (with links) to a few of the known “broken arrow” incidents:
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Arrow_%28nuclear%29#Broken_Arrow
-
1950 British Columbia B-36 crash
1956 B-47 disappearance
1958 Mars Bluff, South Carolina
1958 Tybee Island mid-air collision
1961 Yuba City B-52 crash
1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash
1965 Philippine Sea A-4 incident
1966 Palomares B-52 crash[4]
1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash

[Flick Lives]

If that nuke had gone off, I wonder how the Feds would have attempted to explain it. I mean sorry we make a mistake and took out a million or so people in eastern North Carolina just doesn’t slice it.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Ping

[headstamp 2]

http://news.sky.com/story/894024/last-us-cold-war-super-nuke-dismantled

[logi_cal869]

Sorry, folks; it gets much, much worse.

Regarding

Goldsboro Incident 23 Jan 1961 Almost "Goldsboro Detonation Event" due to inadequate safety measures on MK39 Thermonuclear Bombs

"The MK39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne-alert role in the B-52," Parker Jones wrote.

ALL THREE aircraft-borne safety measures failed during aircraft breakup; one little switch on the bomb...

Note the footnote regarding the B53.

On that subject: The B53 was incorporated into Titan ICBM warheads as the W53, in service up through 1997, the last of which not disassembled until just under 2 years ago. Recall the Titan silo explosion on 19 Sept 1980 in Arkansas...

As late as September 1995 during Clinton the DOE explained, "...the B61-11 was not a new bomb but simply a modified version of the existing B61-7 to replace the older and unsafe B53. "There is no new mission," DOE assured."

IIn the latter-linked release, they also make the alarming statement:

"The B61-7 does meet modern safety design criteria, including electrical nuclear detonation safety.."

Translation: The B53 DID NOT meet modern safety design criteria, removed from service only in 1997 and only finally completely rendered 'safe' (all disassembled) 2 years ago October.

The government had known about safety issues in the B53 "for twenty years," Sandia Director Paul Robinson stated in 1997. But the brute force of the weapon was considered the only means for holding a few high-priority Soviet underground targets at risk, so public safety was disregarded.

Warm & fuzzy, huh?

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

Didn't we lose a couple of H-bombs from a B-58 off Spain. I seem to recall that one hit land and cracked open and the other went down in the Mediterranean. I don't know if it was ever recovered.

Regards,
GtG