BACKROADS • JUNE 2022
Page 10
Morton’s BMW Motorcycles presents Dr. Seymour O’Life’s
MYSTERIOUS AMERICA
BROKEN ARROWS - ATOMIC FUN IN A COLD WAR WORLD WHY DID THE US GOVERNMENT KEEP LOSING ATOMIC WEAPONS? You would think that the one thing that the United States and other nuclear powers would have on a short leash would be their Atomic Weapons. And, in truth, they do – but as we know kaka happens and when it does things can go sideways very quickly. In the small town of Eureka, North Carolina, at the crossroads of the main streets running through town is a small historical marker. It simply and rather nonchalantly says… NUCLEAR MISHAP and that widespread disaster was avoided. This was not a simple mishap – but something that would have changed the face of America forever. On January 24, 1961, a B-52 bomber was en route to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base (Love the name!), and the pilot decided to keep flying in an attempt to burn off some gas – an action he likely hoped would help prevent the plane from exploding if the risky landing should go wrong. However, the leak unexpectedly and rapidly worsened. Immediately, the crew turned around and began their approach towards Seymour Johnson. Without warning the huge plane began to shudder and shake – a mas-
sive structural failure was occurring and the bomber began to break apart. It’s entire right wing failed and the plane began falling towards earth. The order was given to abandon the plane, and eight crewmembers attempted to escape. Five survived. But two other objects joined the crew in the air with parachutes. Two Mark 39 nuclear bombs, one with a successfully deployed parachute and one with a failed chute, fell from the sky. The chuteless bomb hit the ground at 700+ mph and buried itself so deeply into a tobacco field that some of its parts were never found. The other floated down on a parachute, planting its nose in the ground beside a tree. The parachute bomb came startlingly close to detonating. A secret government document said three of its four safety mechanisms failed, and only a simple electrical switch prevented a catastrophe. It was 260 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and could have instantly killed thousands of people. The Air Force sent a team out relatively quietly to find and defuse the nukes. Jack ReVelle told his daughter about getting the mission: “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.” The first bomb was quickly found hanging from a tree. The parachute had kept its descent reasonable, and it had stuck vertically in the ground, buried only partially in the dirt. The team found that three of its four safeguards had either failed or triggered. Only one safety, the actual safe/ arm switch, had prevented a nuclear explosion. Another famous quote from Lt. Jack Revelle, the bomb disposal expert responsible for disarming the device, reveals just how close we came
