Interesting story about the recovered warhead from the Damascus Arkansas missile silo explosion. The warhead was stored at Little Rock Air Force base for a short while. When it came time to move it to its more permanent location, a semi truck pulling a reefer trailer went out the front gate. It was escorted by several MP trucks in front and behind. There were also two helicopters escorting the little parade. This was all a public diversion for the real "meat" of the warhead that was put in the back of a pickup, covered with a standard tarp and quietly driven out the back gate of the base without any fanfare.
That's funny! I remember some friends of my parents in the early '60s relating stories of "picnics" that they would have in Zion Illinois pretty regularly. He was a bank president in Chicago, and they had an affiliate bank in Milwaukee. On these outings they would meet the president of the Milwaukee bank and his wife on the beach and have a picnic, and at the end, transfer millions of dollars in cash from one bank to the other. Maybe the money saved on armored transport funded the coffee mess.
I may or may not know where a piece of re-entry tile from that device is located. Speaking of escorts in a pickup. As an MP we had an anthrax scare at our installation (post-9/11 when there were several real and false attacks). As a result the suspected material was loaded inside a biohazard box, then into a biohazard drum, into the back of a marked MP pickup that was the staff duty truck, then driven down the highway/turnpike to a university hospital that had the rapid testing abilities. The driver of the truck was passed several times by civilian vehicles only to realize “hey, that’s a cop car! I should slow down!”, then realized that it was a military police vehicle off post and decided to pass them. Upon closing the distance several of them apparently saw the biohazard warning placards on the drum and slammed on the brakes. Something else is that when the call initially came out on the radio all responding MP’s were told to *stay outside* and form a perimeter. A K9 NCO along with his four legged partner proceeded to *enter* the building (a shoppette/gas station) only to be required to be decontaminated afterwards… in February, with below freezing temperatures, in the nude. Oh, the biohazard turned out to be nothing but dust from the paper wrapper around a stack of $20 bills. The gas station clerk saw a puff when she broke the wrapper.
Yes it does. Of all the paperwork I signed in my 21 years the only form that ever brought me up short was the one that said: Will you drop a nuclear weapon if so ordered. Or words to that effect, it’s been along time. You have to stop and think, since you are in the military and you and your family live close to a target, will there be anything to come home to? That is the stuff of nightmares.
I can't help remembering the ending to Dr. Strangelove where Slim Pickens rides the bomb down rodeo style. As a kid it caught me by surprise and it has to be one of the greatest movie scenes ever.
"Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream?" _"Good Lord!"_
In a world full of hacks, its nice to know there are a handfull of serious history professionals out there putting out good historical content. Thank you, History Guy.
I was a Launch Crew Member (BMAT) at Little Rock with the 373SMS at the time of the Titan II accident. I escorted several investigators at the site and was able to see the destruction first hand.
As a lifetime history buff, BA in History, and career US Army officer, I find your videos greatly entertaining and enlightening. Keep up the good work; I'll be watching!
How we survived our own nuclear weapons is a miracle that few are aware of. Thanks History guy as this stuff really needs to be remembered. I live near enough to an old BOMARC nuke that blew up on its launch pad in New Jersey and local wine and honey has trace isotopes of hot Cesium now over a half century later.
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of a computer analysis run to determine the odds of a Broken Arrow. The computer scientists interviewed everybody that worked with the damn things, from the guys on the line to the commanders, and gathered reams upon reams of data concerning storage and security and training and maintenance and the like. Then they fed all that data into the computer and asked it, "When can we expect a Broken Arrow?", and the computer started whirring and spitting out dates. The people on the distribution lists for those results found it amusing that all the forecast dates for Broken Arrow events were in the past. Then the implications of that fact sank in, and The Powers That Be realized that it was sheer blind luck that there had not been an accidental firing of a nuclear device. And they realized that depending on sheer blind luck was no way to handle such destructive weapons.
I remember a line from a movie: "I don't know which is more frightening: the lose of a nuclear weapon, or the fact that it happens so often you have a name for it!" When are we humans going to learn, there is no such thing as "failsafe".
@ pk kp My dad was a Titan II launch officer back in the 80’s. He was part of the Damascus Arkansas incident. 27 years later I’m working as a DoD police officer and I’m at the hospital talking with a local paramedic in the break room. The movie War Games was on the television and the other on duty paramedic walked in. All of us are prior military, duh it’s a military installation. She looks at the TV and says “is this that stupid War Games movie? It’s so fake, I was a Titan II crew member.” I look over at her and said so was my dad. Without missing a beat she looks at me and says “your dad was Cpt. ****.”
NOV 9, 1979. I was in a Minuteman II silo when we were ordered to do an EWO (Emergency War Order) BACKOUT. Worldwide, SAC came within a few minutes of Armageddon. Launch keys were inserted, B-52 engines were running. It's history that deserves to be remembered. I was there. It happened during daylight hours, in the mid-morning, NOT at 0300 as Zbignew Brzinski remembers it. We KNEW we were going to die ... until we didn't. I still have nightmares. TANGO-6, 341st OMMS/CTT, Malmstrom AFB, MT. OUT.
My Dad was the Navigator-Bombadier on a B-47 in 1958. I only recently learned of this incident. My Dad passed away many years ago. I know he frequently flew training missions from Whiteman AFB in Missouri to Spain and back. I would have loved to ask my father for his perspective on these incidents.
I am old enough to remember the B-36 in flight. Even though they were at a high altitude, they were notably larger than any other airplane that flew over our house. They also were much louder, and when the jet engines were on, they had an odd mix of sounds.
I lived from 1957 in our house in San Antonio, about 10 miles North of Kelly AFB. I got to see just about everything that flew in the USAF inventory. I even got to see the Space Shuttles on the specially equipped 747s. Fascinating!
One of the coolest videos I've ever seen, is of a B-36 at Carswell, and it's making a low pass over the base housing that was so low, it blew tv antennas off the rooftops!!! Got to go inside one of the Shuttle Transport Aircraft during an open house at Edwards...nothing to see, really, there was no interior on the passenger deck: they gutted it to save weight to carry the Shuttles. I don't even recall if the framework that the Shuttles sat on even extended into the main deck. I was kind of bummed out about that, to the point that I don't think I even bothered taking pictures!
Me too. I was a teen, often outdoors for chores on the farm in central Kansas. I could hear the B-36s drone overhead, sighted shortly afterward, so very high up and rather slow moving compared to other military aircraft that crossed the state.
Ya they were big. In the mid 1950's a hurricane forced all the coastal military bases to fly everything inland. I lived in Cleveland, Ohio and was around 10 at tha time. We had all kind of planes fly into the Cleveland airport. One afternoon, around 4 PM, 5 B-36's flew over my house so low I could see the orange helmet of one pilot's, who actually waved at me. I thought the earth was coming apart, from the noise of those planes. Here I am today 12/11/2023, and some 67 years later and I can still see that pilot waving as if it was10 minutes ago.
I worked on the warheads and associated systems for the first deployment of the Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) with the 416th Bombardment Wing of the 8th Air Force, from Jan. 1982 to Jan. 1986. I held a Top Secret security clearance (and no, we never lost, misplaced, or stole a single document in the 10 years I held a TS clearance.) It sometimes amazes me to see formerly classified nuclear information here on the Tubes of You. Fortunately, I've never seen any TS information on RU-vid, but it is still startling to see things that, not that long ago, one would need to hold at least a Secret clearance to see. I remember this incident with the Mark XVII, and we were all shocked when we learned of the incident, in 1982. We were shocked again when we saw it in the papers in '86. Aside from the few Broken Arrows, there are also a considerable number of Dull Swords and Bent Spears (weapons and/or systems that were damaged but were repairable). Thankfully, I was never involved with any of those; the USAF took those issues extremely seriously, and one would not want to get swept up in the investigations that always follow such incidents. We all took our jobs as seriously as you would want us to, and we did it with care and dedication, every moment of every day. -Thanks so much for your delightful channel!! I make sure to catch at least one video every day.
Your experience was pretty antiseptic. Mine on the other hand was not. Dealing with the older units had its drawbacks. Safety system failures, denied dosimeters because our exposure was too high, the dumping of waste in our site in the past causing visitors from LLL and Sandia to be concerned, being at the NTS, designs that facilitated EDM but increased our exposures , and more. The belly of the beast. It is good that era is behind us and I hope that production doesn't begin again. It is also good that most of the older units have been dismantled. The older the unit the more problematic it becomes.
@@mrb-6118: I understand some of those older systems had some gremlins, but, thankfully, we've never had an unauthorized nuclear detonation. I WAS shocked when I read about a B-52 that mistakenly took off while loaded with live nukes. -I only ever worked on B-61s for about a week, at Griffiss AFB, due to some temporary personnel shortage (a few fellows broke PRP protocol and wound up in some trouble. I don't even remember what I did at the bomb shop, it was such a short stay. The rest of my time was spent on ALCM and SRAM, which were new systems at the time, and far more robust than previous nuclear weapon iterations.
We had a bent spear (almost broken arrow) at Minot in Sept 93. I was working (security police) that Sunday, or maybe Saturday. DOE convoy truck entered the WSA and turned too tight and the truck tipped sideways and a large/tall fire hydrant type device (about 6 feet tall), pierced the truck and impaled the war head coming out of the missile fields and back to the base. At first they had all the ARTs and the AFT (2 man alarm teams and the alert 4 man fire team), standing under the truck helping to hold it upright lol Then to compound the response, the buck sergeant accidentally crushed the wing commanders car in the gate while he was responding to the incident. I deployed to Peru the following week and didn’t have to deal with all the fall out bs from the event. The truck incident occurred about 60 feet from these chemical vats that held classified stuff…people were freaking out for sure. Good video!!
The first broken Arrow incident was in February 1950 and it happened just south of my little town on an island in Alaska. The bomb was Jetson from a B 36 in a big storm when the plane was losing engines do to icing. it was blown up several thousand feet over the ocean minus its plutonium core. the crew bailed out and I believe five of them died in the ocean. The Air Force claimed that the bomber had flown out to see him disappear but years later it was found on a mountaintop in Canada and cost a lot of consternation to both nations. Very interesting story, pieces of the bomber are in a little museum in Smithers British Columbia that I went to last year.
Yeah that’s my hometown, there was a wrecked dual 20mm turret from the bomber in the museum for a number of years. Not sure if it’s still in there haven’t been for a few months
I grew up about 30 miles north of Damascus. Lots of crazy stories from that time period, I actually did a college paper on the Titan 2 incident. I got to interview one of the police officers that worked the scene and one of the engineers brought in after the incident. I had to turn the tape recorder off for some of the conversation, although I have completely forgot what he told me. I was 19 years old lol
There's that nuke that was jettisoned over the mouth of the Savanna river after the B-47 that was carrying it collided with an F-86, badly damaging the bomber and causing the fighter jet to go down, pilot ejected safely while the bomber fell over two miles before the pilot was able to recover... crew were told to dump the bomb in the water in order to have a better chance of safely landing the crippled bomber which was done without further incident. Per several news articles, the bomber pilot was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions to save the airplane. The bomb was never found, still buried in the silt. There is also the story about the two incidents at Johnston AFB on Johnston Atoll (discussed in another History Guy video) where in the 1960's there were Thor rockets carrying nukes which were being launched from there for high altitude detonation testing. During those launches two (other accidents didn't cause nuke material to be released) of the Thor rockets, in separate incidents, experienced drastic malfunctions, one on the pad and the other shortly after it lifted off, and the rocket motor propellants exploded violently and shattered the nuclear material in the warheads, scattering fragments around the end of the island and into the bordering lagoon. Cleanup involved scraping up contaminated ground material and dumping it into the lagoon. Years later during expanding the atoll, some of this material was dredged back up again, to use as "fill dirt" to further enlarge the atoll and raise ground levels in shallower areas, evidently having AMAZINGLY escaped the notice of current authorities who either forgot what was in the lagoon or the Air Force failed to inform them where NOT to dredge filler material. Later, following the chemical weapons disposals, additional tests for radioactivity in the area of the Thor rocket launch site were done and although surface levels were not too bad, three feet underground in the built up areas the levels were hundreds and sometimes thousands of times greater. More than a few of the people who worked there have developed various types of health problems including cancers, and some of them have since passed before their time. Now, all that said... Johnston Atoll was an amazing place, scratch built up from almost nothing during WW-II as a runway and a ship dock, into what became for all intents and purposes a town with over a thousand military personnel and civilian contractors. Living quarters of various kinds resembling hotels were constructed along with a movie theater, an olympic size swimming pool, a golf course, baseball field, and service facilities for various aircraft and ocean vessels. Along with the AF control terminal and runway was a civilian airline terminal which catered to airline traffic. There was at least one instance where a Boeing 747 landed there. Air Force One also made a trip there, carrying President Nixon, shown by The History Guy in the previous Johnston Atoll video. Gymnasiums, recreation centers, many streets, a sailing and yacht club, and a 24-7 cafeteria which had a reputation for serving some of the best food you could buy anywhere, much less on a remote Pacific island. It even had its own self-contained power grid, water and sewer systems, radio/television and HAM radio service, and a gas station with all the various maintenance facilities one would expect to see in almost any town. In the early 2000s, as covered in detail by The History Guy's previous video, it was decided that Johnston AFB was to be decommissioned and closed by 2004. It was never made quite clear if the radioactive materials found in much of the island filler dredging had anything to do with the closing or if the base simply had outlived its usefulness, but the government proceeded to dismantle the entire base infrastructure and left nothing but the runway, the streets, and the base hospital standing above ground. Everything else was dismantled and hauled away. More of the surface material which may or may not have been hazardous was also scraped up and disposed, some of it aboard barges, to be "taken care of". Not clear just where the "taking care of" actions took place. Other areas were simply buried under several feet of material scraped up from other parts of the island. Today, the various grasses, shrubs, flowering plants and trees planted during the USAF occupation are slowly taking over the atoll, tuning it green. The only things left to suggest a town was ever there are the runway, aircraft parking areas, streets, and the empty hospital structure. They even took up the fire hydrants... now the only inhabitants are birds. And almost nobody except the people who spent time there knows the place ever existed. Considering everything that went on there, that is quite remarkable, not to mention the two nuclear accidents which happened in the early '60s.
Growing up in British Columbia, Canada I remember hearing a vague Old Wive's Tale about a nuclear weapon being dropped in a remote area of the province. We blew it off as anti-War hysteria. Little did we know.
Not an old wives tale. In 1950 a Peacemaker had 3 engines catch fire, they dropped their bomb into Canadian waters where it detonated, then the aircraft crashed into British Columbia's Mount Kologet. 5 of the aircrew were never found.
So far, I think that this is THE BEST episode you’ve done! But, I was an Air Force brat and my Dad was an AF pilot and this was so informative! Thank you!
That's how I heard it. I've also heard the just two turning and burning version as well, but that was Theoretical as there's no chance the universe would let everything work as intended without an argument
I grew up in western Iowa about 100 miles from SAC headquarters near Omaha. I used to watch large planes through binoculars leaving 6 contrails as they flew east. I figured they were B36 bombers out of SAC. This would have been in the ’50s. This video takes me back to that time. Very interesting.
You described the six turning, four burning. Due to carburetor icing, and other issues on the radials, that wound up being; two turning, two burning, two smoking, two choking, and two unaccounted for. Or so I've heard.
I always love your channel, for some unknown reason to me I lost your channel and I'm very happy to have come back across that I will do my diligence and subscribing thank you Jeff I'm an admirer. Plus I admire your your wife
In 1982 I received Air Force training to be an Environmental Health Nurse. One of the situations we studied was the Titan Missile explosion. I saw detailed pictures of the missile silo after the explosion. It was amazing and scary. We toured an active Titan missile silo in Kansas. It was fascinating.
While I was in TAC, I had many friends in the Army, stationed with Pershing missile units in Germany, and the line they didn't like to hear (it happened from time to time), was "A bird has fallen!". Apparently, that's when a Pershing fell off its transporter! One good thing: these incidents let you know that nukes are built pretty safe - they won't go off unless you want them to.
Oh, yes, that happened.....I grew up in Heilbronn, south-western germany....yes, birds did fall....I also remember a first stage exploding during unloading, sadly killing 3 personnel. There´s a memorial at the incident site.
@@paavobergmann4920 I only recently found that photo from the Heilbronn Fire Brigade. The investigation found that Kevlar will hold a static charge when it is cold and dry. Then it can discharge around a bubble in the propellant, then heat up causing an explosion.
I remember all of these incidents. As part of my Army reserve duties, I handle yearly editions of electronic communications protocols. Around 6 pages of the inch and a half thick pocket size manual had all the codes and descriptions of required conditions for each broken arrow code to be used along with hundreds of similar codes and conditions.
"I didn't touch anything!" Hahaha.... Reminds me of a shipmate onboard my Navy ship. One night we heard an odd sound on the deck above our Electronic Tech shop just outside our door. There was a one-holer toilet up there, with the ladder next to it. He comes rushing down the steps, pants still around his ankles, saying "I didn't do it! I didn't do it!" And a thick brown liquid was dripping down the steps! He'd backed up the toilet. 😆
The amazing bit is on the second one some guy with a fancy important title persuades the pin with a HAMMER,And now in flight it won't re engage,We need the HAMMER GUY,Probably a plummer previously
The Damascus incident is my favorite "Broken Arrow" story. As I recall the PTS crew was on the way back from another site when they were called to Damascus for a "quick fix" They hung the crew out to dry after the incident. Seems protocol changed to requiring a torque wrench to use with a socket rather than a ratchet. After the crew suited up in their propellant transfer suits and were under ground, the one crew member realized he had the ratchet and not the torque wrench. They done this operation "a million" times with these tools. The socket popped off the ratchet and well the rest is just history. PBS done quite an in depth documentary on this incident.
My on-hands experience with both ratchet wrenches and torque wrenches is that the socket-to-wrench connection, if not identical, is extremely similar. Sounds like a typical "fix" to the wrong problem.
Absolute class to list those who died in “Operation Chrome Dome.” Our existence on the planet as humanity, may owe them debt we may never fully know or understand.
Great video, THG! Couple of interesting books about two of the incidents you described. Command and Control by Eric Schlosser covers the Damascus AR silo explosion, and The Day We Lost the H-Bomb by Barbara Moran relates the events before, during, and after the Palomares disaster. Oddly, I clearly remembered the Palomares event, though I was only 10 years told, but had no recollection of the Damascus explosion until I saw a PBS program about it, which was based on Schlosser's book. Thanks for a fascinating recounting of some very disturbing mishaps (to put it delicately).
-I was a member of the High Wire team on board our ship 30 years ago. Anytime "Special Weapons" were out of the magazines, a fire team was required to be on standby to keep the ordinance cool if there is a fire, or to respond to an incident of the ordinance broke apart, AKA a "Broken Arrow". We did High Wire drills several times a year maintain proficiency. Then, one day President Bush, the elder signed a nuclear reduction treaty. Since our ship was about to be forward-deployed in Yokosuka, we were one of the first ships to be disarmed. We went to sea for operations off the West Coast. Of course, we didn't know any of this was about to go down, we just knew they called high wire, we mustered in hanger bay one and suited out. This time, they handed canisters for our OBAs and the marines were very, very twitchy. They even had one in a sniper position up on the mezzanine. We could hear helos orbiting around the ship. Then the ordinance began to emerge from below. Instead of the one cart we drilled with, there were many, many more. They chocked and chained them in the hanger bay. Some of them were loaded onto the aircraft elevator and taken topside. After a while, some of the helos headed east, back to land with large rectangular containers slowly twisting below them. After that, we didn't have HIgh Wire drills anymore. I can't find much on the internet about highwire teams. Before to long, any reference to them will be lost to history, I suppose. I'll never forget though. Sitting on a piece of yellow gear in full battle dress in a hanger bay with dozens of nuclear bombs lashed to the deck as half jacked-off jarheads walking around armed to the teeth trying to hard-eye you for several hours is a pretty memorable experience. USS Independence, CV-62, 1989-1992.
Thanks for the Broken Arrow history video. As I recall the exhibit with the bomb cases said that incident was the reason they developed "insensitive" explosives for nukes. It's a neat museum.
As a note, the bomb that blew up near Florence SC, one of the kids snagged a chunk of the bomb body and kept it until collage then decided to sell it online. Was on only a short time when G-men showed up wanting their property back. Story was in a copy of GQ mag
3/11/58 Mars Bluff B-47 incident. Happened at ( 34 12 03.3N , 79 39 25.6W ) . But has the historical sign at ( 34 11 47.8N , 79 39 47.0W ) [ Wikipedia ] ( why that one area is cleared out , but a new house was built near the site recently i will never understand.)
Love your videos and watch them all the time. After realizing my feed was not subscribed, I quickly smashed that button! Thank you for all the great content!
as a sea going Marine in the early 70's we were tasked with the security of the Nukes aboard our ship. Broken Arrow was a scary thing. I had left the service and returned to my home state of Arkansas when the Damascas incedent happened. I was a route driver for a ice cream company at the time, and I was driving near Damascas. The higway was blocked by the national guard and I had to turn around and leave the area. I asked the guardsman what had happened. He repeated his order to me. I told him I had had a top secret security clearance to work in defense of nuclear weapons. That did not impress him at all. I knew what they had at Damascas. As I drove away I was really worried.
Great video. One comment on the Titan 2 section. You mention that fuel vapor is brownish in color. That is true with the oxidizer when exposed to air. Fuel vapor is colorless / white when exposed. I was a former Titan 2 combat crew member from 1977 to 1982 and was on alert at another facility when the accident occurred. Just a small detail. Again, great job.
The complex door was modified in the early 1980's and weighted 756 tons. It blew the door into the air higher than a telephone pole and landed over 200 yards from the silo.
Well 200 yards is a little bit more then a telephone pole, what I mean to say is it probably went atleast double the height of a telephone pole to be moved that distance.
I spent over ten years pulling alert duty on the KC-135a model aircraft. Making certain my aircraft was always ready to fly within three minutes, 24 hours a day was challenging, especially in the winter.
I wonder how many times this has happened with other nuclear nations. “We'll meet again Don't know where Don't know when But I know we'll meet again some sunny day” - Vera Lynn
@@jgstargazer Both we’re great movies. Maybe equals, but I find Dr. Strangelove to be more rewatchable because of the humor. Failsafe was a little depressing. Apparently, there was a lawsuit because both movies had nearly identical plots. One was a black comedy and the other a thriller, but the basic premise was the same. I forget the details, but I think they resolved to release one before the other. When I first saw Dr. Strangelove as a teenager, I liked it, but I wasn’t instantly taken by it. My appreciation for it grew as I got older. It’s one of my favorite films now.
I grew up in Lincoln NE, just a couple of miles from the south end of the runway of Lincoln Air Force Base, where a B-47 wing was stationed. During my childhood, there were around a half dozen B-47 crashes, most of them, either while landing or taking off. Finding out that, if any of them were actually carrying an atomic weapon (there were nukes at the base), the safety pin preventing the bomb from being dropped would not be in place, is disturbing. It would be terrifying if it was still currently being used. While the base was decommissioned in 1960, the northwest quarter of LAFB is still being used by the Air Force for unknown purposes. While 'broken arrows' have become rare, remember that an Air Force B-52(?) recently flew across the central US, landed, and was discovered to be carrying a nuke that was unaccounted for - no one knew it was on that aircraft. Does that make it a 'lost arrow'? (note - this incident caused a major shake up in the Air Force - new rules and early retirements)
Fermi once said something to the effect that "if it's not forbidden, it will happen". Meaning in this case, if an accidental discharge of a nuke is not forbidden by physics, it will happen at some time. The various safety features are safe enough until they're not.
When I joined this channel, there were 3000 people subscribed you sure have grown. I got fired from my job at CBS for suggesting You should take over Andy Rooney’s five minutes. Live and learn. Still enjoy the channel. I guess I was right you were the right choice for CBS .They just didn’t realize that.
I remember watching a B-47 landing at McClellan AFB near Sacramento as a child. My grand mother had taken me out to visit my grandfather who was a heavy equipment operator working for a contractor on a project at the base. B-36's also flew over our house, rattling everything.
I would have loved to see the B-36's fly overhead and hear it's power. I have a model of a B-36 with a 36" wingspan hanging from my spare room ceiling and a model of a B-47 waiting to be assembled.
As a side note the Project Gnome accident raised quite a mess when it happened. One of the results of it was the location of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
Thank you for reminding us how lucky we have been in the past ... accidents are unplanned disasters so cannot really be totally prevented......... Think I will watch Dr. Strangelove this weekend.......Wonder what accidents occure these days that only future generations will learn about.......
Would loved to have him as a history teacher.I live about ten miles east of Faro NC where in January of 1961 a B52 bomber from Seymour Johnson broke apart in flight when it turned on final approach to Seymour Johnson. One thermonuclear bombfell into a tree after a parachute slowed its descent .The other bomb parachute was torn away and the bomb fell several feet into the ground. They recovered most of the bomb. It was said that the bomb needed one more sequence before detonation. What saved it was the pilots safety switch was off. I have a book about the incident which is known as The Goldsboro Broken Arrow
Thank You for the great video. I was about 3 years old at the time this happened. And I never heard of this until watching your video. Another great job.
Hey History Guy, I haven't a question at the moment but I will say thanks for this compilation especially the last part that happened in 1980. I would have been 17yrs of age and depending on the month, I would have been in rehab for a 2yr long addiction to cocaine. Thankfully, the warhead on that infamous missile didn't explode and the rehab was successful. I watch your videos often as I am now retired and there's only so much I'm interested in reading or watching on TV. Thanks again, keep 'em coming, may God bless you!
Bugs Bunny was way ahead of this, as pointed out in the 1943 classic, 'Falling Hare' GREMLIN (while trying to set off a 1,000 pond bomb by hitting it with a sledgehammer): ‘These blockbuster bombs don’t go off unless you hit them just right’
I remember in the mid 60's seeing jets refueling while we played in the playground once. amazing to see. "The Bomb" was always in the back of my mind since the news were always talking about the cold war.
There were titan missile silos surrounding Plattsburgh Air Force Base in northern New York. One of them has a house built over it and the control center has been made habitable. The house is 2000 square feet, with another 2000 square feet of control center underground. The house also has a taxiway to the airport next to it.
I remember top loading VCRs, but didn't know my dad's company made part of the launch systems for Titan missiles. QED. On a less depressing note- some astronauts went into commercisl aerospace after they retired. Dad, being a clueless engineer, didn't realize his daughter would rather like to meet the FIRST SPACE SHUTTLE PILOT, so i only got to meet his boss Bob "Crip" Crippen once, and didn't want to be a fan and pester him for too many stories. But one he did tell me is that the launch abort switch was on the ceiling, and he couldn't reach it in the stiff pressurized suits they wore for liftoff in case off accidents. So he'd tied a long string around it which he'd draped down next to his seat. He realized in the final minute of countdown the string had gotten caught on his boot. He didn't know what would happen if you hit the abort launch seitch AFTER liftoff, but probably not anything good (did it cut out the shuttle's engines? I don't know, but the solid rocket boosters are sticks of dynamite in a can: once you light them, they burn until they run out of fuel. But they don't carry the shuttle all the way into space nor steer it; they just give it enough of a boost to overcome Earth's gravity.) So he had to veeeeeery slowly and deliberately untangle himself wearing stiff gloves during the final countdown.
I’m over 60 years old and definitely was alive when that last one exploded, but I was today years old when I found out about it. I can’t imagine how that happened…😳
In Georgia we have a "broken arrow" as well. We know roughly where it is, but it's impossible to recover. Back in the late 50's an Air Force plane carrying a bomb had a mid-air malfunction while flying from Florida to NC. The crew ended up dropping the bomb they were carrying into the ocean in Ossabaw Sound, not far from Savannah. The bomb remains there to this day, sitting under some 30 feet of mud in the sound and getting deeper every day as more sediment is deposited into the sound.
