Torpedo fired by Royal Navy into Plymouth dockyard

"One simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe."

That is the blunt 1969 assessment of Parker F. Jones, the then supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia National Laboratories, in a newly declassified document that sheds light on a 1961 accident in which the United States almost nuked North Carolina.

The document was given to The Guardian today by author Eric Schlosser, who came upon the document doing research for a new book.

The story of Goldsboro, N.C. is well known. It was the Cold War and the U.S. had B-52 bombers in the air as a precaution, ready to strike if the Soviet Union made a move. As Rudolph Herzog explained it in his book A Short History of Nuclear Folly, one of the B-52s was carrying two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs, which are many times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Like the others, the B-52 flew huge circles around the U.S. and the Atlantic, needing to be refueled along the way.

The plane had reported an oil leak in its left motor.

"The third time [it was filled up], a filler neck broke off the plane ... and kerosene began pouring from its right wing," Herzog writes.

To make a long story short, the plane disintegrated and the two bombs fell from the sky onto American soil.

As The Guardian reports in its piece about the document that the "U.S. government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws."

But this document says that in the Goldsboro incident, the U.S. was one step away from a massive nuclear disaster.

To be fair, as Herzog notes in his book, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara did say in 1983 that the bomb had gone through six of the seven steps needed for detonation.

Ben_Reilly wrote:Hell, in the U.S. we nearly nuked ourselves one time!

"One simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe."

That is the blunt 1969 assessment of Parker F. Jones, the then supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia National Laboratories, in a newly declassified document that sheds light on a 1961 accident in which the United States almost nuked North Carolina.

The document was given to The Guardian today by author Eric Schlosser, who came upon the document doing research for a new book.

The story of Goldsboro, N.C. is well known. It was the Cold War and the U.S. had B-52 bombers in the air as a precaution, ready to strike if the Soviet Union made a move. As Rudolph Herzog explained it in his book A Short History of Nuclear Folly, one of the B-52s was carrying two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs, which are many times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Like the others, the B-52 flew huge circles around the U.S. and the Atlantic, needing to be refueled along the way.

The plane had reported an oil leak in its left motor.

"The third time [it was filled up], a filler neck broke off the plane ... and kerosene began pouring from its right wing," Herzog writes.

To make a long story short, the plane disintegrated and the two bombs fell from the sky onto American soil.

As The Guardian reports in its piece about the document that the "U.S. government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws."

But this document says that in the Goldsboro incident, the U.S. was one step away from a massive nuclear disaster.

To be fair, as Herzog notes in his book, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara did say in 1983 that the bomb had gone through six of the seven steps needed for detonation.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/09/20/224514980/doc-sheds-new-light-on-the-time-the-u-s-almost-nuked-itself

gerber wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:Hell, in the U.S. we nearly nuked ourselves one time!

"One simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe."

That is the blunt 1969 assessment of Parker F. Jones, the then supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia National Laboratories, in a newly declassified document that sheds light on a 1961 accident in which the United States almost nuked North Carolina.

The document was given to The Guardian today by author Eric Schlosser, who came upon the document doing research for a new book.

The story of Goldsboro, N.C. is well known. It was the Cold War and the U.S. had B-52 bombers in the air as a precaution, ready to strike if the Soviet Union made a move. As Rudolph Herzog explained it in his book A Short History of Nuclear Folly, one of the B-52s was carrying two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs, which are many times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Like the others, the B-52 flew huge circles around the U.S. and the Atlantic, needing to be refueled along the way.

The plane had reported an oil leak in its left motor.

"The third time [it was filled up], a filler neck broke off the plane ... and kerosene began pouring from its right wing," Herzog writes.

To make a long story short, the plane disintegrated and the two bombs fell from the sky onto American soil.

As The Guardian reports in its piece about the document that the "U.S. government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws."

But this document says that in the Goldsboro incident, the U.S. was one step away from a massive nuclear disaster.

To be fair, as Herzog notes in his book, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara did say in 1983 that the bomb had gone through six of the seven steps needed for detonation.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/09/20/224514980/doc-sheds-new-light-on-the-time-the-u-s-almost-nuked-itself

Ben

Didn't they make a film of something very similar......  Charlton Heston springs to mind.....  they were deep in the desert in bunkers many levels below ground.....

Sassy wrote:OMG!!!!!   What with that and Three Mile Island, it's a wonder you are still here!

As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Secrets of the Dead chronicles how the actions of one man, during arguably the most dangerous moment of the Cold War, averted nuclear war.

The Man Who Saved the World, premiering Tuesday, October 23 at 9 pm ET on PBS (check local listings), tells the unsung story of Soviet naval officer Vasili Arkhipov, the Brigade Chief of Staff on submarine B-59, who refused to fire a nuclear missile and saved the world from World War III and nuclear disaster.

kevins58 wrote:It was a training torpedo, a dud, no warhead it went dink! Hello it was bad the electronics or persons controlling them made a mistake but it was essentially a dink.

victorismyhero wrote:

kevins58 wrote:It was a training torpedo, a dud, no warhead it went dink! Hello it was bad the electronics or persons controlling them made a mistake but it was essentially a dink.

yup, but, dont you think that mistakes like that should NOT happen. i mean ...the wrong place the wrong time and the real torpedo and you could accidently start a war FGS