1961 US B52 Plane in 'Nuclear Bomb Near-Miss'

[Corncrake]

Evidence of near nuclear accident in 1961:

"Goldsboro revisited: account of hydrogen bomb near-disaster over North Carolina – declassified document

This document was written on 22 October 1969 by Parker F Jones, the supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia national laboratories. The document has recently been declassified having been acquired under freedom of information provisions by the investigative reporter Eric Schlosser for his new book Command and Control. It is published here for the first time.

In the document, Jones gives his response to a passage in a book by Dr Ralph Lapp, a physicist involved in the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear bombs, that describes the accident in 1961 in which two hydrogen bombs were dropped inadvertently over North Carolina. An extract of Lapp's book is reprinted on the left hand column of the first page of this document, and Jones's expert response is printed on the right hand column.

The second page of the document is all in Jones's words, giving his expert opinion on the serious nature of the accident and how close America came to catastrophe."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/sep/20/goldsboro-revisited-declassified-document

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

That must have been a horrible day for the air force... it's kind of hard to believe that something like that could happen!

It was literally a miracle that it didn't detonate... may it never happen again!

ND!!! ND!

[Cidersomerset]

I saw this on the news before I went to work this morning
and thought I 'l post that later. Who said the government
can't keep secrets ...LOL...



21 September 2013 Last updated at 07:34

US plane in 1961 'nuclear bomb near-miss'


8rSvtlRN-RU


Eric Schlosser: 'We nearly had a hydrogen bomb detonate a few days after JFK's
inauguration'

A four-megaton nuclear bomb was one switch away from exploding over the US in
1961, a newly declassified US document confirms.

Two bombs were on board a B-52 plane that went into an uncontrolled spin over
North Carolina - both bombs fell and one began the detonation process.

The document was first published in the UK's Guardian newspaper.

The US government has acknowledged the accident before, but never made public
how close the bomb came to detonating.The document was obtained by journalist
Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act. Schlosser told the BBC such
an explosion would have "changed literally the course of history".

The plane was on a routine flight when it began to break up over North Carolina on
23 January 1961.

As it was breaking apart, a control inside the cockpit released the two Mark 39
hydrogen bombs over Goldsboro. One fell to the ground unarmed. But the
second "assumed it was being deliberately released over an enemy target - and
went through all its arming mechanisms save one, and very nearly detonated over
North Carolina," Mr Schlosser told the BBC's Katty Kay.

Only the failure of a single low-voltage switch prevented disaster, he said.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70034000/gif/_70034176_us_goldsboro_0913.gif



Map
The bomb was almost 260 times more powerful than the bombs that fell on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The accident occurred during the height of the Cold War between US and Russia,
just over a year before the Cuban missile crisis brought nuclear fears to the US's
front door. There has been ongoing speculation ever since, including a 1961 book
by former government scientist Dr Ralph Lapp.The newly declassified document
was written eight years after the incident by US government scientist Parker Jones -
who was responsible for mechanical safety of nuclear devices.

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, not five out of six as
originally thought by Lapp.

"One set off by the fall. Two rendered ineffective by aircraft breakup," Mr Jones
writes. "It would have been bad news in spades."

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

There has been no official comment to the newly declassified details.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24183879