An Atomic Bomb Almost Detonated In North Carolina [Report]

An atomic bomb almost detonated in North Carolina when the plane carrying it crashed in 1961, according to a report released Friday by The Guardian.

The information was obtained by Eric Schlosser, an investigative journalist, using the US Freedom of Information Act. For the first time, the report gives reliable evidence that the US narrowly averted a nuclear disaster on its own soil.

The incident happened on January 23, 1961 when a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air ver Goldsboro, North Carolina. The bomber was carrying two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs carrying a payload of four megatons each.

Had they detonated, the explosion would have been 260 times more powerful than when the US dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Lethal fallout from one explosion could have devastated Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and even New York City.

Thankfully, disaster was averted — barely. One of the two bombs behaved exactly as it should have. Its parachute opened and its trigger mechanisms engaged, preventing any possible explosion from happening. However, the other one didn’t.

The atomic bomb that landed in Faro, Oklahoma fell into a field and three of four safety mechanisms failed to engage. The Huffington Post reports that, on impact, a firing signal was sent to the bomb’s nuclear core. The only thing that stopped disaster was the final, and highly vulnerable, switch.

In the document made public for the first time, Parker Jones, a senior engineer in the Sandia National Laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons, concluded that “one simple… low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe.”

Jones concluded that the atomic bombs didn’t have “adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52.” The document was one of many Scholler uncovered during his research for his new book on the nuclear arms race, called Command and Control.

According to the journalist, the North Carolina atomic bomb drop was one of at least 700 “significant” accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons between 1950 and 1968.