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WASHINGTON D.C. — On Jan. 23, 1961, a United States Air Force B-52 bomber went into a tailspin above Faro, NC, losing its volatile cargo: two, 4-megaton atom bombs, according to a report by the Guardian of newly declassified documents.
The bombs — each 260 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, which killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese people — landed in North Carolina, failing to detonate upon arrival, according to the declassified document.
Three out of four of the safety mechanisms failed during the fall.
“One ‘set off’ by the fall. Two rendered ineffective by aircraft breakup,” wrote Sandia Laboratories senior engineer at the Parker F Jones in the document.
The only safety measure that did not fail, a simple dynamo switch, saved North Carolina from destruction and cities as far as Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City from fallout.
According to The Guardian, a firing signal was sent to the device’s core, though the switch kept it from detonating. The switch, however, Jones said, could easily have activated the device had an electrical jolt occurred.
"The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones said.
Eric Schlosser, the journalist who requested the declassified document, discovered more than 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons between 1950 and 1968.
