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What the article neglects to mention is that after months of searching, they never found the bomb. It's still somewhere under the silt near Tybee island, biding
by madaxe 13y ago
What the article neglects to mention is that after months of searching, they never found the bomb. It's still somewhere under the silt near Tybee island, biding its time.
- Zikes 13y agoIf they never found the bomb, how did they determine what safety mechanisms did and did not fail?
- lolcraft 13y agoWith the other bomb. And the fact that it didn't explode.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- fhars 13y agoAccording to wikipedia, they found most of the second bomb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsboro,_North_Carolina#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsboro,_North_Carolina#Histo...
- saltyPeter 13y agoUS was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961 The plane was carrying 2 of those bad boys. But it sounds like the whereabouts of both may have actually been determined. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy's Road.
- Jgrubb 13y agoThat's specifically not what the article fails to mention, because it states where both of the bombs were found. You're just thinking of a different narrowly avoided nuclear catastrophe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll...
- andrewflnr 13y agoHoly crap. They don't even know for sure if they were real bombs? For that matter, why is carrying real nuclear weapons on a practice run even a possibility?
- fennecfoxen 13y agoI actually read a good book about nuclear bombs in the pre-missile era which directly speaks to that concern: http://www.amazon.com/15-Minutes-General-Countdown-Annihilation/dp/0312611560/ http://www.amazon.com/15-Minutes-General-Countdown-Annihilat... You think carrying bombs on this flight is extraordinary? You don't know the half of it. They were dragging bombs all over the place, all the time, to a ridiculous extent. The practice run could turn into nuclear war while the planes were in the air. And some of the terminology-fiddling is Fun: when they told people things like "the bombs were not armed", they meant that were only a quick switch away from being armed. in related news, the NSA doesn't have "direct access" to Google servers. :P
- jlgaddis 13y agoThat was 55 years ago. It's not like incidents like that could happen nowadays. Oh, wait. http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/05/loose.nukes/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/05/loose.nukes/index.html
- cpleppert 13y agoThat was another incident.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_collision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_colli...