Jan 23 or 24 1961 : Nuclear disaster avoided in NC

970 Views | 7 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by dogplasma
waynecountywolf
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A one or two days late depending on timing of the bomb drop around midnight.
WCW would not have even been a mere thought. My Dad was a volunteer firefighter and said he thought the world was coming to an end-the sky and surrounding were as bright as the day.
Grew up about 1 mile from sites where not one but two, nuclear bombs dropped from a B-52. One nuclear core was never recovered.
Book by Joel Dobson "The Goldsboro Broken Arrow"
Movie upcoming by producer of Hacksaw Ridge
https://variety.com/2018/film/news/nuclear-bomb-movie-hacksaw-ridge-producer-1202985476/

https://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-bomb-accident-goldsboro-nc-swamp-2017-5

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2021/01/remembering-night-two-atomic-bombs-dropped-on-north-carolina/


https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb475/

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/command-and-control-goldsboro-1961/






waynecountywolf
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"One night, I get a phone call from my squadron commander. And instead of using all the code words that we had rehearsed, he says, 'Jack, I got a real one for you.' You don't often have two hydrogen bombs falling out of aircraft onto U.S. property."

"And as we started digging down, trying to find the second bomb, one of my sergeants says, "hey, Lieutenant, I found the arm safe switch." And I said, "great." He says, "no, not great. It's on arm." But we all knew what we were there for and the hazards that we were facing. So, we pulled it up out of the mud and brought it up over this wooden rickety ladder that we had, to the surface of the ground, in a safe condition."

Jack Revelle
waynecountywolf
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Had one or both of the bombs detonated it could have changed the state's landscape and ReVelle says that it could have been misinterpreted by the U.S. military as an act of aggression from the Soviets.

"You would've created a bay of North Carolina, completely changing the configuration of the East Coast of the United States, and the radiation could have been felt as far north as New York City," he says. "At the time, nobody knew it, but it could have easily been the start of another world war."
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/25/688223286/8-days-2-h-bombs-and-1-team-that-stopped-a-catastrophe


waynecountywolf
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https://www.ourstate.com/1960s-atomic-bomb-goldsboro/
https://www.ourstate.com/hydrogen-bombs-north-carolina/
"Newspapers interview witnesses who say the explosion looked like daylight, while others liken the spinning aircraft to a Roman candle. A farmer runs to his window and sees his field light up in fireballs. A woman drops to her knees and prays, certain Armageddon arrived. Another man thinks a plane crashed into his parents' house. All he can see is fire..........Earl Lancaster, the assistant fire chief for the Faro Volunteer Fire Department, rushes to the scene in his fire truck. Everything burns. Within an hour, helicopters swarm the area, and Air Force officials urge everyone to evacuate. "They told us to git, and we got," Lancaster tells the local paper."


waynecountywolf
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Video of author Joel Dobson speaking in Wayne County

https://www.c-span.org/video/?311277-1/the-goldsboro-broken-arrow
ciscopack
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Humans
cowboypack02
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From what I had read of this previously it was just pure luck that we weren't all blown sky high. Apparently every safety function on the bomb didn't work and the thing still didn't go boom.....

Sometimes its better to be lucky than good
mdreid
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ciscopack said:

Humans
the worst parasite on this wonderful planet.
dogplasma
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I knew this had happened but I didn't realized just how close the one bomb came to detonating. Incredible. That's like in the movies when the good guy stops the bomb timer with one or two seconds left. (Or 007 seconds if you're James Bond.) I guess the engineers who designed the safety systems could say they got it exactly right! Five of six safety switches/functions had tripped.
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