Broken Arrow: The Air Force almost A-bombed Goldsboro, NC
Here are links to two consecutive videos on a lost atomic bomb. By the way, I got a lot of buffering pauses; that could just be me.
Part 1 (2:30): http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/travel/video/5050531/
Part 2 (2:21): http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/travel/video/5059120/
Briefly, a B-52 crashed in 1961 with two atomic bombs on board. One was found. The other one never has been completely recovered. I’d heard everything on the video before except I don’t remember hearing the size of the bombs (megaton range) or how long they looked for the missing bomb. Oh, my dad said that he and one of his cousins went to the crash site to go looking around.
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May 20th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Oh, they found it, just not anywhere near where they thought it should be.
Hence, they never found it. It’s easier to accept.
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May 20th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Great, I’m PSC’ing there in a couple months.
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May 21st, 2009 at 1:02 am
can anyone say the hills have eyes….
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CCO reply on May 21st, 2009 4:24 am:
There no hills there; that’s why the bombs kept sinking into the muck.
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May 21st, 2009 at 4:30 am
It’s the only field in Wayne County that glows in the dark :)
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CCO reply on May 21st, 2009 4:44 am:
Don’t know about that; but they do test the water of the neighbors annually for radiation. OK as far as I know.
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May 21st, 2009 at 5:00 am
Here in NC they refer to I-95 as the “dumb line.” As Goldsboro is east of I-95, that explains a lot.
When I was stationed in Turkey, we used to say that the Black Sea was an atom bomb crater because the incidence of birth defects were very high in that area.
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Speed reply on May 21st, 2009 5:01 am:
Oops, RE the dumb line – if you live east of the I-95 the wags say that you are stupid.
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Minty reply on May 21st, 2009 9:26 am:
Thank god I was raised west of I-95. Granted, it was only about six miles west, but west nonetheless.
Do I get extra brownie points for moving as far away from it as possible without actually changing countries?
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CCO reply on May 21st, 2009 8:36 pm:
Yeah, I think I have heard that once before.
It’s really the mosquito line; west of I-95 the mosquitoes aren’t as bad since the land is higher.
I think US-17 is the rattlesnake line; rattlesnakes aren’t found much west of there (maybe in the mountains). (I think it used to be the eastern bear line, but it’s been breached in the last ten years or so.)
I don’t know where the coral snake line is; I’ve never seen one except in exhibits.
As far as the range of black widows and brown recluses I don’t know except black widows live on the ground (think boards laying on the ground, watermelons, and pumpkins) and brown recluses are said to favor window unit air conditioners and empty shoe boxes in storage.
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CCO reply on May 21st, 2009 9:04 pm:
Oh, see this site for more information. Basically it says that I was wrong; water mocasins live in the coastal plain and copperheads live all over the state.
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May 21st, 2009 at 6:05 am
Polmares Spain was a another one. B52 and KC135 collided during refueling. 4 device on board. Took almost the entire navy months to find the one that hit the med. We switch from airborne alert to ground alter not too long after that.
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Schwal reply on May 21st, 2009 9:11 am:
And that one was an H bomb. pretty scary stuff.
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May 21st, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Apart from the risk of radiation poisoning, its not that big a deal. Getting atomic bombs to go off, especially the older styles, is very difficult.
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Jim C reply on May 21st, 2009 1:47 pm:
True, but there is enough conventional explosives to scatter the material over a large area. We always tried to put the alter bombers in a section by themselves, and down wind. Looking back it is amazing that there were not more incidents. Speaks very well for the people involved.
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SPC Hyle reply on May 21st, 2009 3:29 pm:
Not that big an area if it’s underwater. It’s also plutonium, which is highly insoluble in water. So it will just sit there. Wheee. Radiation? Please. All of it will be attenuated by the water, and it won’t turn everything around it radioactive, despite Hollywood’s assertions to the contrary (and a certain segment of the population has taken to heart).
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Simonator reply on May 25th, 2009 7:52 am:
Well, except for the Little Boy “gun assembly” bombs. Drop it from high enough and you might get a decent yield even if none of the explosives went off.
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StoneWolf reply on May 25th, 2009 4:33 pm:
Very low odds on that. Firstly, the pieces would have to be aligned correctly upon impact. Second, they would have to be driven into each other, not scattered on impact. Finally, the forces generated by free fall would be insufficient to cause critical mass, which is why it was a “gun type”, not simply an impact bomb. If the bomb were to experience a powered descent to impact, that might generate enough force. At that point though, its still easier to build a gun type than a rocket that drives the weapon into the ground.
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May 21st, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Perhaps now would be an appropriate time to link to In Praise Of Nuclear Weapons over at Strategy Page.
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CCO reply on May 21st, 2009 5:45 pm:
Re-doing link: In Praise Of Nuclear Weapons
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June 3rd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
The I-40/I-85 stretch is referred to as ‘Awesomeville’. That’s a fact.
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June 23rd, 2010 at 11:57 am
I was stationed at Seymour Johnson when this event occurred, Sep 1957 to July 1961. Believe me, these people were stupid prior to this crash, please no excuses because of this crash. It was rumored that the farmer who owned the land that was destroyed by the crash each year receives a tobacco allotment for the estimated value his crop would have brought.
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