North Carolina, a state known for its beautiful mountains, relaxing beaches, and rich history, has a lesser-known claim to fame. In the 1960s, the government accidentally dropped two nuclear bombs on rural North Carolina. Not once, but twice. This isn’t a widely known fact, but it’s a fascinating piece of history that deserves to be told.
The Cold War and the Rise of Nuclear Weapons
The early 1960s were a time of global tension. The Cold War was in full swing, with the United States and the Soviet Union locked in a standoff over the spread of communism. This era was characterized by espionage, proxy wars, and most alarmingly, the stockpiling of nuclear weapons.
After the infamous “I am become death, destroyer of worlds” moment by Oppenheimer, nuclear weapons emerged as the superweapons of a new age – a nuclear age. An age of fear, uncertainty, and the looming threat of total destruction.
The Accidental Bombing
Given the catastrophic potential of these weapons, one would expect the utmost care in their handling. However, the reality was far from it. In the 1960s, the United States accidentally dropped a thermonuclear warhead on Greenland.
In 1960, during the height of the Cold War, America received intelligence that the Soviet Union had approximately 300 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). This meant that the Soviets could theoretically take out every American airfield simultaneously, leaving America unable to retaliate.
To counter this threat, the Air Force proposed a solution. They would load their new B-52 Stratofortress bombers with 1.1 Megaton thermonuclear warheads and have them constantly circling North America. If a nuclear strike occurred, these planes would be already in the air, ready to retaliate. This plan, known as Operation Chrome Dome, saw B-52s circling North America every minute of every hour of every day between 1960 and 1968.
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Operation Chrome Dome: A Risky Endeavor
The operation was aptly named Chrome Dome, a name that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence when you’re dealing with nuclear warheads. The operation continued until 1968, but not without incidents. One such incident occurred when a B-52 bomber was circling the east side of Canada and a heater malfunctioned. In an attempt to warm up the cabin, a pilot opened up the vent to bleed heat directly from the engine manifold. The cabin got so warm that it set the upholstery on fire, forcing the pilots to bail out and the plane to crash. The conventional aspects of the nuclear bombs exploded on impact, spreading radioactive material all over the place.
This incident sparked a political controversy as Denmark, the owner of Greenland, was not pleased with the presence of nuclear weapons on their territory. The United States, however, continued with Operation Chrome Dome, despite the incident.
The Unfortunate Incidents Continue
Unfortunately, the Greenland incident was not the only one. There were also instances where nuclear bombs were accidentally dropped on Maryland, California, and even Spain. But the focus of this blog post is the North Carolina incident, which is arguably one of the wildest ones.
The North Carolina Incident
The year was 1961, around midnight on January 23rd. A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress was flying over eastern North Carolina. This B-52, based out of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, was carrying two Mark 39 nuclear bombs. These bombs weighed about 6,500 pounds each and had an explosive yield of 3.8 megatons. To put that into perspective, these bombs were about 250 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.
The B-52 was undergoing an aerial refueling when the commander was informed of a fuel leak. Ground Control was immediately informed, and the B-52 was instructed to abandon the aerial refueling and go into a holding pattern off the coast of North Carolina to burn off the majority of its fuel.
The Fuel Leak and the Inevitable Crash
The B-52 soon lost around 37,000 pounds of fuel in just three minutes. With such a rapid loss, the crew knew that the plane was going down. They attempted to turn back, but it quickly became clear that the plane wouldn’t make it back to the base. The decision was made to abandon the plane and bail out.
Out of the original crew of eight, one didn’t survive the parachute landing, and two died in the crash, leaving five survivors. Interestingly, Lieutenant Adam Maddox became the only person to ever successfully bail out of the top hatch of a B-52 without an ejection seat and survive.
The plane broke up in mid-air, leaving a debris field over a roughly two square mile area around Faro, North Carolina. The debris included the two nuclear bombs.
The Fate of the Two Nukes
Miraculously, neither bomb detonated. One of them parachuted in a controlled manner down to the ground and was found standing upright with its parachute caught in a tree. The other bomb hit the earth at high speed and buried itself without detonating or even setting off the conventional explosives within the bomb itself.
However, based on information that was declassified in 2013, we now know that both bombs almost detonated. All of the bomb safety mechanisms were tripped and ready to blow, except for one. The one safety that didn’t fail was different on each bomb. These two doomsday devices didn’t go off because of sheer luck.
The first bomb was basically intact, so the recovery team was able to disarm it and send it somewhere safe. The second bomb, however, had broken apart on impact and was stuck in a deep hole. In the process of trying to recover it, the team accidentally hit an underground water reservoir. Upon finding the majority of the second bomb, Lieutenant Jack Revell, the EOD officer in charge of recovery, was quoted as saying, “Until my death, I will never forget hearing my sergeant say, ‘Lieutenant, we found the arm safe switch.’ And I said, ‘Great.’ He said, ‘Not great. It’s on arm.'”
The Potential Catastrophe
In 1960, around 28,000 people lived in the city of Goldsboro alone. Had these devices gone off and leveled the town instantly, the death count would have been ten times that of 9/11. Most locals don’t even know that they were one sketchy rocker switch failure away from it.
The Cover-Up and the Aftermath
The second bomb was never fully recovered. The thermonuclear stage of the bomb was left intact, although the pit or the core, which contains the uranium or plutonium that makes the nuke do the nuke thing, was taken. With the core in hand, the government just called it good, leaving the rest of a nuclear weapon just chilling in the ground.
This information was only declassified about ten years ago. During the Cold War, it wouldn’t have been a great look to let it slip that the government was routinely losing nukes and then just leaving half of them around because they got tired of digging.
The Army did, however, purchase a 400-foot diameter easement on the property and forbid any structure from being built on top of it. They did say that the area is okay for farming. Farming on top of an almost live nuclear weapon might sound alarming, but that’s what was deemed acceptable.
The Historical Marker
The historical marker that marks this incident is almost comically understated. This was almost the worst nuclear disaster in human history, and the only reason you would ever know it happened is a little plaque that makes it sound like it is absolutely not as big of a deal as it definitely was.
So, that’s how an entire section of North Carolina almost received a Darwin Award at the hands of the federal government, the same government that still has control over our nuclear arsenal and loses these things so often that they have a term for it: Broken Arrow.
Conclusion
This story is a stark reminder of the potential dangers of nuclear weapons and the importance of handling them with the utmost care. It’s also a testament to the power of luck and the resilience of the human spirit. Despite the potential for disaster, the people of North Carolina and the crew of the B-52 bomber survived this incident, and life continued on as usual.
This incident, along with others like it, serve as important lessons from history. They remind us of the need for vigilance, responsibility, and transparency when dealing with such powerful and potentially destructive technologies.