How the United States Narrowly Avoided "Nuclear Mishap"
A historic marker titled "Nuclear Mishap" welcomes visitors to Eureka, North Carolina, population 200. The text reads: "B-52 transporting two nuclear bombs crashed. Jan. 1961. Widespread disaster averted; three crewmen died 3 mi.
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A historic marker titled "Nuclear Mishap" welcomes visitors to Eureka, North Carolina, population 200. The text reads: "B-52 transporting two nuclear bombs crashed. Jan. 1961. Widespread disaster averted; three crewmen died 3 mi. S."
"Widespread disaster" is, if anything, an understated description of the event to which the sign refers: the accidental detonation of nuclear bombs in the United States.
In a recently declassified 1969 document titled "How I Learned to Mistrust the H Bomb," Parker F. Jones---the supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia national laboratories---describes just how close we came to that apocalyptic event. The answer is very close.
In 1961, a B-52 carrying two Mark 39 H-Bombs disintegrated in midair over Greensboro, North Carolina. The 24-megaton bombs---hundreds of times more powerful than those released over Hiroshima---released from the plane, and would have annihilated a large swath of the Eastern Seaboard but for one safety switch.
The most fascinating revelation from the document is the systemic fragility of the redundant safety apparatuses: the bombs only had four mechanisms to prevent accidental deployment, two of which Jones claims were "not effective in the air." A third failed during the fall. As a result, "[o]ne simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe!"
The ineluctable conclusion, according to Jones, is that "The Mk 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52."
The document itself was acquired through a FOIA request by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser for his new book, Command and Control.
Lauren Bateman is a student at Harvard Law School, where she is an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She previously worked as a National Security Legislative Correspondent for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and she takes a special interest in legislative procedure. She also interned for the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada, and was a Research Fellow for the Project on National Security Reform. She graduated with a B.A., magna cum laude, in History and Government from The College of William & Mary in 2009.
