McNamara revealed nuke almost dropped on NC

[ccharles000]

You have to wonder whether, during the 1962 crisis over Cuba's missiles aimed at America, the man in charge of the nation's defense ever thought about the time the year before when his department almost blew up part of eastern North Carolina.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who died Monday, shocked the state in 1983 when he revealed that a B-52 bomber crash in 1961 near Goldsboro was one switch from detonating a 24-megaton hydrogen bomb.

The bomb was about 1,800 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II. It was capable of destroying everything within a 10-mile radius.

McNamara was defense secretary from 1961 to 1968 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In his later years, he was a proponent of nuclear disarmament. In a 1983 news conference in Washington, he cited the Goldsboro incident as an example of the need for reducing nuclear weapons.

"The bomb's arming mechanism had six or seven steps to go through to detonate, and it went through all but one, we discovered later," he said.

http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/mcnamara_revealed_nuke_dropped_on_nc

[Mrs. Overall]

1. I had forgotten about this. Very scary.

[MrModerate]

2. You think that's the only "broken arrow" they ever had?

My father, an Air Force pilot, used to fly something called the RB66 out of the UK in the early 60s. He was a test pilot, and the RB66 was eternally in test mode.

On one particular flight, shortly after takeoff he pulled the lever to retract the landing gear, and instead one of his 10 megaton hydrogen bombs fell off. He noticed immediately (it's hard to miss) and returned to base as soon as he could swing around.

As he later told the story, before he had even touched down, the security forces had surrounded the site where the bomb fell (breaking up but not detonating), purchased the farm on which it had crashed from the puzzled owner with a suitcase of cash, and bundled the farmer and his family off in official cars to enjoy their sudden wealth. The Air Force then dug up and removed the farm site to a depth of 10 feet and sent the spoil somewhere in Spain (which was happy to receive such debris -- for a price -- at the time).

Was it close to detonation? Probably not. Did it spread high explosive and (whatever nuclear material they had in hydrogen bombs in those days) all over the English countryside? Yes.

And that's just one story from one old pilot.

[ThirdWorldJohn]

4. Why would a test pilot be flying with nuclear bombs?

[MrModerate]

9. "Test" can involve a variety of routines, even with aircraft that have been . . .

formally deployed into combat-ready squadrons.

In the case of the RB66, the Air Force had convinced itself that the plane was deployable but the pilots and squadron leaders were not so sure.

The test program my father was involved in was to see who was right. He was flying mission simulations, but due to the high international tensions at the time, his test flights could have been converted into combat missions at any time.

Ultimately, the RB66 was taken out of service and replaced with something else (I don't recall what).

[Optical.Catalyst]

11. Ya' recon that covering up a lost nuke resulted in a few "UFO" sighting reports?

:tinfoilhat:

SPEAKER AT UFON CONFRENCE:

What ever they was diggin' up twernt man made I tell you - it was a Martian Spacecraft!

:tinfoilhat:

[MrModerate]

12. Not everything on the X-Files was fictional . . . n/t

[Wraith20878]

3. I never knew about this

That is really scary, and makes you wonder how many close calls we have had.

[Statistical]

7. Lots. There have been a couple books written about it.

I have one on my bookshelf somewhere.

There have been more than a few times when we came close to launching against a russian "attack" due to various communication, data, and system failures.

Here is just one example:

Early in the morning of 9 November 1979, missile crews working deep under the prairie grass of the American Great Plains received warning that a massive nuclear strike from the Soviet Union was on its way. This was no drill. As the crews strapped themselves into their combat chairs, they mentally prepared to do the unthinkable: launch their ballistic missiles in an existential act of retaliation--before being destroyed by the hundreds of megatons of nuclear explosives they believed would be arriving within minutes.

It is now known, of course, that no missile attack was under way. A training tape that simulated all the signals of a massive Soviet first strike had mistakenly been loaded into a computer at the U.S. Strategic Air Command's Cheyenne Mountain control center in Colorado. The mistake was discovered only when U.S. leaders viewed the raw data from U.S. early-warning satellites--part of the standard threat assessment procedures--before deciding to launch a massive nuclear counter-strike. None of the satellites showed any missile launches--and accidental global nuclear war was averted.

Those satellites, known as Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites, can detect the infrared energy radiated from the hot exhaust of a missile's rocket engine launched from anywhere on the earth's surface. DSP satellites reportedly detected all the Iraqi Scud missiles launched during the Persian Gulf War, which also marked the first time the general public became aware of their existence. Though designed to provide an early-warning alert of missile launches on the other side of the earth, their most important function to date has been to assure policymakers that missiles have not, in fact, been launched.

Of course the Soviets had their fair share of glitches too. Remember either side glitching and launching would likely result in a massive retaliatory strike by the other side. So it wouldn't matter which side screwed up both sides would be wiped out.

[ThirdWorldJohn]

5. Here is the AF report of the incident

No. 21, January 24, 1961/B-52/Goldsboro, North Carolina
During a B-52 airborne alert mission structural failure of the right wing resulted in two weapons separating from the aircraft during aircraft breakup at 2,000--10,000 feet altitude. One bomb parachute deployed and the weapon received little impact damage. The other bomb fell free and broke apart upon impact. No explosion occurred. Five of the eight crew members survived. A portion of one weapon, containing uranium, could not be recovered despite excavation in the waterlogged farmland to a depth of 50 feet. The Air Force subsequently purchased an easement requiring permission for anyone to dig there. There is no detectablex radiation and no hazard in the area. CDI: This report does not adequately convey the potential seriousness of the accident. The two weapons were 24 megaton nuclear bombs. Combined, they had the equivalent explosive power of 3,700 Hiroshima bombs. All of the bombs dropped on Japan and Germany in World War II totaled 2.2 megatons. The Office of Technology Assessment's study, The Effects of Nuclear War, calculated that a 25 megaton air burst on Detroit would result in 1.8 million fatalities and 1.3 million injuries. Upon recovering the intact bomb it was discovered, as Daniel Ellsberg has said, that "five of the six safety devices had failed." "Only a single switch," said nuclear physicist Ralph E. Lapp, "prevented the bomb from detonating and spreading fire and destruction over a wide area." This accident occurred four days after John F. Kennedy became President. He was told, according to Newsweek, that, "there had been more than 60 accidents involving nuclear weapons,' since World War II, "including two cases in which nuclear-tipped anti-aircraft missiles were actually launched by inadvertance." As a result of the Goldsboro accident many new safety devices were placed on U.S. nuclear weapons and the Soviets were encouraged to do the same. No. 22, March 14, 1961/B-52/Yuba City, California
A B-52 experienced failure of the crew compartment pressurization system forcing descent to 10,000 feet altitude . Increased fuel consumption caused fuel exhaustion before rendevous with a tanker aircraft. The crew bailed out at 10,000 feet except for the aircraft commander who stayed with the aircraft to 4,000 feet, steering the plane sway from a populated area. The two nuclear weapons on board were torn from the aircraft on ground impact. The high explosive did not detonate. Safety devices worked as designed and there was no nuclear contamination.

CDI: The crew of eight survived though a fireman died extinguishing the fire. The nuclear weapons involved could have been either the free fall bombs located in the interior bomb bay compartment or "Hound Dog" (AGM-28B) air-to -ground missiles which are carried in pairs underneath the wings of B-52s. The Hound Dog was a stand-off nuclear tipped strategic missile with a range of 500-600 miles. It was intertially guided and powered by a turbo-jet, air- breathing engine and had a warhead of about 1 megaton. It was first assigned to SAC in late 1959, and was part of the Air Force's nuclear inventory until it was phased out in 1977.

By July 1961, SAC had increased the percentage of the bomber force on 15-minute ground alert from approximately 33% to 50%.

http://www.milnet.com/cdiart.htm

[Poll_Blind]

6. I really hate reading information like this- and yet I'm drawn to it like a moth to flame. n/t

PB

[ThirdWorldJohn]

8. If you go to the site, I think there are 37 events listed. Moth - flame flame - moth

[Statistical]

10. For what it is worth nuclear weapons have been made "safer" over the years.

Strong link - weak link is one thing that came out of this crash.

The arming mechanism physically separates the firing mechanism from the warhead by an exclusion zone (heat resistant, damage resistant, Two links are involved in linking the firing mechanism to the detonator. A strong link which requires substantial physical force is required to close the gap between arming + detanator. As a safety a weak link also exists. Any crash that could force the strong link will break the weak link making the bomb unable to detonate. Any crash not sufficent to break the weak link will not have sufficient force to close the strong link.

Other safety features include a physical metal chain inside the core. It must be removed in order for the core to be compressed sufficiently to go prompt critical.

The detonators are shock insensitive as is the explosive. They can't detonate from shock alone. The explosives are also fireproof they don't burn. It requires heat + shock from the detonator to trigger the explosives.

Also as explosives improved the cores were made to be less critical. Critical mass is the point when a sustained fission reaction takes place. Limits on power of the explosives used to compress the core resulted in a core that was less than critical but very very close to critical in the 50s and 60s.

So still scary stuff but some scientists over the years have worked hard to make these very scary weapons less accident prone.


Even scarier is some of the human stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_on_warning

We had a policy to launch quickly in a detected russian "attack" this was to destroy the Soviets before their missiles hit us. From warning to launch the window in the 70s was only about 11 minutes. By the late 80s that had increased to 30 minutes.

As you can imagine 11 minutes is not a long time to assimilate a lot of information to determine if the threat is credible. In the numerous false warning scenarios that happened over the last couple decades either side would have launched if the mistake hadn't been detected in <11 minutes out of fear that the "other guys" first strike would wipe out launch ability.

It was a shoot it or lose it mentality.

Launch on warning could have ended the human race.