B-52 Breakup in '61 over North Carolina - Atom bomb almost detonates

I've never heard this before... wonder what caused the B-52 to 'break up'...

I HAVE heard about the bomb that 'fell' out of a plane near Albuquerque; I lived there at the time.

Anyone know more about the NC incident?


LONDON (AFP) - The US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating a huge atomic bomb over North Carolina in 1961, according to a newly declassified document published by Britain's Guardian newspaper on Saturday.Two hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over the city of Goldsboro, North Carolina on January 23, 1961 when the B-52 plane carrying them broke up in mid-air, according to the file.One of the bombs began to detonate -- a single switch was all that stopped it from doing so. The three other safety mechanisms designed to prevent an unintended detonation failed.The US government has acknowledged the accident before, but the 1969 document is the first confirmation of how close the United States came to nuclear catastrophe on that day."It would have been bad news in spades," wrote its author, US government scientist Parker F. Jones.The bomb was 260 times more powerful than the one that devastated Hiroshima in 1945, according to the Guardian.The accident happened at the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.The declassified report was obtained by US investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under freedom of information legislation."The US government has consistently tried to withhold information from the American people in order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear weapons policy," said Schlosser."We were told there was no possibility of these weapons accidentally detonating, yet here's one that very nearly did."

 

1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Here's a link to the now declassified document:
Goldsboro revisited: account of hydrogen bomb near-disaster over North Carolina ? declassified document | World news | theguardian.com

Quite the interesting story. They talk about four safety mechanisms, with only the last one (the pilot's switch for arming the bombs) keeping the bombs from exploding. Does anyone know what the other three were?

 

Thank you... I was also interested in what happened to the B-52 that caused it to break up.



The one that fell near Albuquerque accidently fell from a landing B-36 off the end of a runway at Kirtland/Sandia Base. It was an enormous Hydrogen bomb (more than 20 feet long) and the trigger did detonate. Fairly good sized crater but radioactivity was pretty localized, they said.

 

We got rid of all those early weapons with substandard saftey systems. The last were the W53 on the Titan II and the similar B53 for the B-52, which were still safer than the leviathan that was dropped in NC. Any of the current weapons would not cause a problem, but we no longer carry live nuclear weapons on operational fighter and bomber aircraft. They are only airborne on transport aircraft.

The ones we dropped in Spain caused a much bigger stink and resulted in the end of airborne alert.

 

Makes you wonder about the accidents our comrades had had during those years......

 

Interesting...

Spain accidents (2, I think) ... HUGE, HUGE deals...

Goldsboro and Albuquerque... no big deal... hide it...

 

Right.

Sounds to me like the COG was out of range. A quick Google search says the B52 can transfer 6400 lbs of fuel per minute (although that may be the H model). So even if the crew realized immediately, they would still be only able to replace half of the weight lost in the leaky wing.

*If anyone sees a fault in my logic, please let me know. I'm still a student at this point.

 

I talk to a few retired pilots. Enclosed is an e-mail I just obtained:


Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2013 11:11 AM
Subject: [NormsPub] Atom Bomb Almost Exploded Over North Carolina In 1961, The Guardian Reports

While I am not intimately familiar with this particular weapon I was standing on nukes in 1961 and later studied them in the USAF Fighter Weapons School in 1964. Knowing what I was taught about the operation of such weapons I have a great deal of trouble believing that this event was as dangerous as indicated here.


To arm and deliver a nuclear bomb requires that electrical power be applied to it prior to release and that all armament circuits operate prior to the impact or radar/timer detonation signal being sent.

On the weapons with which I dealt in this time frame (the Mark 28, primarily) it would have been unbelievably difficult to accidentally detonate one with a nuclear yield. The safety devices required mechanical, pyrotechnic and environmental arming systems to operate before the bomb could be detonated.

There had to be a sequence resulting in the charging of the capacitor banks required to actually detonate the bomb. That occurred after release and after the completion of circuits closed by pyrotechnic timers and separate mechanical timers. The arming circuits required to start the sequence had to be activated prior to release.

To believe this could all occur in an accident strains credulity to quote a politician recently.

In short, I believe this is alarmist bull****.
Norm
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Are you saying that the your Mark 28 is the same system(s) as the Mark 39 at from the Goldsboro crash?????

 

Israel- Afraid it is not BS. We learned a lot about nuclear weapon safety since the 1950s when those weapons were designed and built. They were more concerned about making sure you got a nuclear event than preventing one accidentally. Of course there were safety systems, but they were nowhere near infallible because electronic and mechanical design was nowhere as sophisticated as it now is. I was ACC's voting member on the Nuclear Weapon System Safety Group, also went to Fighter Weapon School in 1979, and taught nuclear weapons for years. Q clearance from DOE, the whole bit, and attended Sandia and Livermore schools. Plus conducted numerous NSIs for the NWSSG.

We were so relieved to finally retire the B53 (happened on my watch) because its safety systems just did not measure up to modern weapons like the B61 and B83. Before its retirement, the B53 was restricted to low altitude, retarded deliveries only because we suspected the safety systems and component reliability for an airburst. Plus you can burn a modern warhead and the explosives may go off, but no nuclear event. Could not say that about the early weapons. The latest weapons' mods have insensitive explosives, which are very resistant to both shock and fire.

Amazing how crude the weapons were, and how large, but we did not have precision delivery systems then, and you needed a huge warhead for probability of kill assurance. We were very lucky we never had an accidental nuclear explosion.

 

I did not write any of this.

All I did was cut and paste.



The closest I have been around these, was viewing some tin fish with red rings at Cannon AFB. I imagine if an accident happened, it would lead to another USS Maine incident. 24 megs is not exactly a Black Cat firecracker.

 

I confused this with the lost Tybee bomb. I believe that bomb (a Mark 15) is still missing.

For 50 Years, Nuclear Bomb Lost in Watery Grave : NPR

It makes you wonder how many are lost in total? There seem to be quite a few...

Lost Nuclear Bombs | Gene Curtis

CW

 

Terry, you seem to be the most competent person on the subject one can hope to come across on the internet - FChat never ceases to amaze! Can you comment on my question from above, or is it one of those "I could tell, but had to kill you afterwards" things?

 

Maybe something like this happened and the plane went our of control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WJuEAQbxWRo

 

No mention of that... fuel leak, probably resulting CG issues, lost control. I saw a mention somewhere that the leaking wing had structural issues.


Although numerous B-52's did lose their vertical stabilizers; was not uncommon. All others crashed with fatalities. The 'Barksdale' plane was the only one that landed safely.

I've always assumed that the serial loss of vertical stabilizers was at least one of the reasons that the updated later B-52's have much smaller and shorter vertical stabilizers.

 

Florian- No, I am afraid that design is way too far in the past and that level of detail is probably still classified. The challenge has always been designing warheads that go off when you want them to, but are completely safe unless intentionally armed. We did not have the technology to ensure the latter in the 1950s in the days of tube electronics.

 

No problem, Terry - thanks anyway

 

Just generally we've also gotten a lot better at nuclear materials handling; reading about some of the early criticality accidents is truly hair-raising. For example: Louis Slotin had a device go critical after the screwdriver used to separate two reflector cups slipped. Otto Frisch turned his torso into a reflector for a brief moment while leaning over another device (narrowly escaping a fatal radiation dose, Slotin wasn't so lucky)

 

Chris- I am amazed there were not more incidents. When I looked at how close some of the observers were for the Trinity test, it really scared me. I had good access to the site when we were doing penetrator testing on the northern part of WSMR.

They wanted to save one of the old buildings at Los Alamos for a museum type exhibit, but when they checked with a geiger counter, the building was so hot with plutonium remnants, the only option was to destroy it. People worked in that building for years with limited protection.

The first people to die from radiation poisoning were German clockmakers in the 19th century. They used radium to make the dial numbers visible at night. When they wanted to put a point on their paint brushes, they used their tongues. Not conducive to good health, but nobody had a clue.

 

My father worked on the guidance systems for the atomic bombs during WW2 and after. He was at his share of tests. He died 35 years later from Leukemia - Christmas day 1985.

When I asked the doctor how he contracted Leukemia the Dr. said his type was caused only by high doses of a certain dry cleaning chemical or radiation exposure. During the years that he was alive I remember him talking about how a lot of his coworkers were dying from cancer etc...

He worked for a private company and not for the government. He was never allowed to enlist during WW2 because of his security clearance.

I am very proud of what he did for the country but not so happy as to what happened to him and his coworkers. Hopefully they really had no clue about radiation exposure. If they did then it would make what happened to my father a real crime.

 

Fred- They really had only a limited idea of what radiation poisoning was and had none of the film badge type precautions now used to spotlight overdoses.

Not an isolated incident. Another example is rocket propellants, specifically hypergols like hydrazine. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, nobody had a clue they were carcinogens and excess propellant was often just dumped on the ground to evaporate. Even the Germans thought hydrazine based propellants for the Me-163 were harmless, but had a lot of trouble with hydrogen peroxide, which is a green, non-toxic propellant, but has a tendency to explode if brought into contact with a wide range of catalysts.

Remember, all this was happening when penecillin was just coming into widespread use. We have learned a lot since then.

 

To follow-up on Taz' comment, looking at standards in 1941, they were essentially unchanged from the 1920s, which evolved from a few observations in the late 19th/early 20th century of "which x-ray techs / docs don't have any observable symptoms" and "how much radiation did they encounter". Researchers took those observations, then divided the radiation dose by 10 for safety. (Seriously, that's how they came up with the dose)

As the Manhattan Project picked up steam, they revised dosages a bit, but concentrated mostly on the question "how much uranium/plutonium" can be safely inside the human body? A 1949 conference revised dosages based on all available research in the US/UK/Canada, but, basically, scientists were still looking at a handful of experiments, and standards didn't change much.

In the 1950s folks concentrated on the supposed mutagenic properties of radiation -- the question that spawned a thousand bad SCI-FI movies with giant grasshoppers -- with mixed results. There was research, but it likely overstated the mutagenic impacts, and wasn't directed at the more mundane question of "what is the 'right' dosage" and "what long-term consequences will it have"

As the body of evidence grew (and increasing numbers of scientists studied the question), the limits would be revised downward, and they have been continuously ever since

In your dad's case : you have to combine the limited knowledge of dosing with the fact that scientists had a relatlively limited understanding of the immune system. The end result was a question that people just didn't have much insight into. Their long-term fear was DNA damage. The short-term fears were what folks knew of high dose exposures (and it wasn't pretty). Anything else was an open question, and, in the case of the immune system, one that was difficult to study due to limited knowledge and the (often) delayed onset of symptoms.

All that said, weighing the responsibility of the past is a difficult job. It is very hard to "go backwards" in knowledge. It seems to us that they missed clear patterns. It may not have seen so to them, but it also may have seemed to them that the sacrifice was worth it. Of that, I can't be the judge.

There is a story about an early dinner of radiologists at which more than half couldn't enjoy their meals. Turns out that many of them were missing fingers. In the years leading up to the loss of their fingers, many of them repeatedly went through a cycle in which they'd have radiation burns, salve and heal their hands for a week, and then go back to putting their hands (and bodies) in front of x-ray machines in order to show the patients it was painless and harmless. The end result was that a large number of them died early, or lost parts of themselves. They clearly helped a large number of people, and, unintentionally, served as a warning to their colleagues about the dangers of repeated, high-dose exposure. They certainly helped, but those of us looking back can't escape the conclusion that they paid a very high price for the good they did.

 

Just wonder how many people spent too much time looking at the bones in their feet with foot fluoroscopes? These could be found in many shoe stores back in the day...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbMN6jueU1A]X-ray Shoe Fit Check 1920s - YouTube[/ame]

 

A family friend was a POW in a camp just outside Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped. The survivors were brought home for study as much as anything else. They were not expected to survive. They were known to be there because our people were there to evacuate them ASAP when we got people on the ground there. I remember him telling some of the other dads stories about it when I was a kid. I recall he was told he had a record breaking white blood cell count. It was not believed possible prior. They were pretty compromised even prior to the exposure. He was a big guy and I remember him saying he was below 100 lbs already.


He lived a long life but did suffer a variety of medical maladies in his later years that could have been related to his exposure.

I had another friend my age whose father was involved in the early above ground testing. He remembered being told not to "play outside today because they are testing". Both his parents died early of ailments that could have been from radiation exposure.