3 ms·
Wait, whaat?
by polynomial 3y ago
Wait, whaat?
- ceejayoz 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll... It's not the only missing nuke, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Mars_Bluff_B-47_nuclear_weapon_loss_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Mars_Bluff_B-47_nuclear_w... is probably the (darkly) funniest one in the list. That one was recovered, but "the Air Force tried to nuke my kids' play house" is a story not many people can tell.
- tomatotomato37 3y agoFortunately, the fissile nuclear core was stored elsewhere on the aircraft While I'll admit that is very effective failsafe, did they actually require the crew to do bomb surgery with a demon core during flight if they needed to arm the device?
- ceejayoz 3y agoYeah, the early ones were designed to be armed in-flight. https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/mk6.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/mk6.htm > This weapon was a capsule bomb, meaning that the nuclear material for the bomb was kept in a special capsule separate from the rest of the device for safety's sake. Just before the bomb was to be dropped from the delivery aircraft the capsule was inserted into the bomb casing and the weapon became armed. It was also the first atomic weapon to offer the delivery aircraft's bombardier the option of changing the detonation altitude while the bomber was in flight to the target.
- cbm-vic-20 3y agoVeritasium just did a video on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILgSesWMUEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILgSesWMUEI