A BRUSH WITH NUCLEAR DISASTER

According to Daniel Ellsberg, the weapon could have accidentally fired because "five of the six safety devices had failed." Nuclear physicist Ralph E. Lapp supported this assertion, saying that "only a single switch" had "prevented the bomb from detonating and spreading fire and destruction over a wide area."
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It (a B-52 bomber) was carrying two nuclear weapons, each 1,000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. One of the bombs dropped on the countryside and didn't explode. It had six safety locks on, and when it was found, five of them had flipped. It would have destroyed all housing within a circle of 25 miles and ignited all things burnable within a 75-mile radius. --Lloyd J. Dumas, author of Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous



This fascinating incident is one of the reasons I wrote this book. When first reading about it, I was surprised that the story of this brush with potential nuclear disaster had never been widely publicized. Even today, most people to whom I’ve told the story had never heard it before.

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At about 12:30 a.m., on Tuesday, January 24, 1961, a B-52G Strato-fortress bomber stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, in Goldsboro, North Carolina, broke up in mid-air and crashed 12 miles north of the base near the crossroads of Faro, N.C. The aircraft ejected two hydrogen bombs as it fell. The two model MARK 39 bombs fell to earth near the tiny farming village of Faro, as well. The B-52 bomber in which they were riding suffered structural damage of the right wing resulting in the two weapons separating from the aircraft during aircraft breakup at 2,000 - 10,000 feet altitude. . The plane exploded as it fell. Five crewmen parachuted safely to earth . Three died -- two who went down with the doomed bomber, and one who was found two miles from the crash site hanging by his parachute in a tree, his neck broken.
One bomb parachuted to earth intact, the other struck a farmer's field at high speed-- "probably mach 1" (about 760 miles per hour). Five of six safety switches failed on one of the twenty-four megaton nuclear bombs; consequently, one switch was all that prevented a nuclear blast that would have devastated much of North Carolina. Subsequently, Pentagon documents revealed that a portion of the other bomb in the accident “containing uranium” was never recovered from the North Carolina farmland, despite excavation in the waterlogged farmland, to a depth of 50 feet. Quicksand-like conditions made deep excavation impossible. The Air Force subsequently purchased an easement requiring permission for anyone to dig there. There is no detectable radiation and “no hazard” in the area.
North Carolina was spared a devastation of such enormous proportions that, had it occurred, the world would still be mourning the loss of life from the catastrophe.

--From Carolina, My Sweet Home, by ALLEN BALL
Copyright © Allen Ball Enterprises (1990)