Oops, US Government Nuked North Carolina.




The scene near Mars Bluff, S.C. after a B-47 bomber
accidentally dropped an unarmed nuclear bomb.

On January 24, 1961, something not at all funny happened in the skies over Goldsboro, N.C. The wing of a B-52G bomber began to leak fuel and exploded, destroying the plane and releasing its payload of two thermonuclear bombs. (One usually does the trick, but the plane carried two on board "just in case.") The first drifted to earth beneath a parachute. Its twin, however, crash-landed in a swamp. Thankfully, neither exploded - which is lucky, considering the bombs had gone through three of the four steps toward activation.

Of course, there were complications. The bomb that crashed proved to difficult to recover. Workers could only drag part of it out of the mud, leaving a chuck containing nuclear material buried 150 feet down. It’s still there today, and so is the government. U.S. officials bought the patch of swamp and continue to regularly check the radiation levels. As of now, it doesn’t look like locals will be catching three-eyed fish anytime soon.

As it turns out, though, the Tarheels were just keeping up with their neighbors to the south. In February 1958, two Air Force bombers collided in the air over Savannah, Ga., forcing one of the planes (carrying a nuclear-capable bomb) to crash into the Atlantic. Only a month later, a B-47 bomber accidentally dropped an unarmed nuclear bomb near Mars Bluff, S.C. Frighteningly, such "broken arrow" events were all too common in that era. Five of them occurred in 1958.

[From July-Aug 2005 issue of mental_floss magazine, featured in Neatorama with permission] - for more mind-boggling trivia and fun facts, visit mental_floss website and blog.

Previous Post
Get Neatorama by RSS or email
 Next Post
this post? Please email to a friend  +reddit  +del.icio.us  +SU
Posted on September 9, 2006 at 3:35 pm by Alex
Category: Mentalfloss, Weapons & War



11 comments to "Oops, US Government Nuked North Carolina."

  • megmeg
    September 9th, 2006 at 9:37 pm

    wow that’s interesting! I live about an hour away from Goldsboro…glad it didn’t go off!

  • mold
    September 12th, 2006 at 11:17 pm

    um, tell the north the civil war is over (for like 145 years)

  • Bahaman Abu Bakar
    December 20th, 2006 at 1:59 am

    Hmmm… with all this acidental drops, perhaps the US should not worry too much about Iran, India, Pakistan and North Korea huh?

    Just watch your own will do…

  • Ervin A. Cogdell
    April 16th, 2007 at 6:41 pm

    Greetings,
    I was a B-52 Pilot at Seymour Johnson AFB, NC when this happened and have flown many of those Airborne Alert missions. I had also flown the mission a few days before another one of our B-52s colliede with the KC-135 Tanker over Spain and the Navy and it’s little sub had to locate one of the bombs in the ocean near the Spanish coast.

  • Ervin A. Cogdell
    April 16th, 2007 at 6:45 pm

    Wish there was a Spell Checker to correct “collided” before I hit the submit key without proofing it :-)

  • Renee T. Jernigan
    April 26th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    Our Family farm was close to that area. Can anyone tell me or Mr. Gogdell help me with some questions concerning the incident? We think something might have landed on our family farm,(Tart) 6 miles from Newton Grove. We all have thyroid disease and/or thyroid cancer, adenomas. Duke came out and did tissue typing on us in 1972. No one is talking. We know there is a hidden secret. What is it. Farm located in what is referred to as Easy Street area off Hwy 96 and 55 out from Dunn NC- Tart Road

  • ggdd
    April 30th, 2007 at 11:41 am

    wow

  • jij
    April 30th, 2007 at 11:42 am

    wow !!!!

  • Stealth Fire
    June 14th, 2007 at 12:53 pm

    I live in North Carolina…. it’s amazing those bombs didn’t go off!

  • Renee T. Jernigan
    July 22nd, 2007 at 12:58 pm

    In addition to the above article I wrote back in April of this year, my father had a long drawn out lawsuit with the US Government over a tobacco alotment issue which started in the late 50’s prior to me being born in 62. He had already cost the Dept. of Agriculture and the US Government over a million dollars by documents uncovered. Would this had warranted a bomb drop on our family farm thus exposing innocent children to years of hell? They didn’t issue my dad an allotment card for the years of ‘61 and ‘62. Why, To cover up what they had aready done. He ended up dumping the tobacco at the ASCS office in Smithfield, N.C. There were civil trials and federal trials US vs Roy Franklin Tart and Roy Franklin Tart vs. US Case 9231 and civil case 1414. There are even cases where my dads attorney was disbarred and sent to jail. There has been murders and attempted murders in the family. The Justice system has stood by and let this happen. Were we used for guinea pigs by the DOE? Someone needs to come forward and take responsibility for what they did to us. I think Duke and Betsy Johnson hospital discovered the radiation when I was admitted in 1964 and 1969, and was put under a oxygen tent. I even came down with trench mouth and anemia.

  • Renee T. Jernigan
    April 22nd, 2008 at 8:28 am

    I have done some serious investigation over the past several months concerning the tissue typing from Duke on us children. The Immunology Dept at Duke at that time was headed up by D. Bernard Amos, Fran Ward, EJ Yunis and several others. Dr. Amos passed away in 2003. Per conversation by email with EJ Yunis at the Dana Farber Cancer Center at Harvard, these test were done low resolution. Per Janet Plate at Rush Medical these tests were used to track haplotypes from our mother and father. Her example was kidney donor and recipient-work done by Dr. Amos….So my question is why did Duke come knocking on our door? I was only 9 years old at the time. We were used as guinea pigs and someone has profited off from us, family included.
    Duke knew we were irrated and wanted to experiment on us. The bomb core from the MK39 Fatman was never found, why because it landed on our farm. Now I know why Dr. Corbett didn’t want to deliver me at Betsy Johnson, he was downstairs drinking coffee and I came out and wasn’t breathing. I was a blue baby….I guess they thought I was going to look like a freak. Another thing, everytime I was admitted to the hospital in 1964 and 1969 for breathing problems, my father was placed at Dorothea Dix Hospital. In 1972 when Duke did the testing on us, the same week May 24th my dad was placed at Dorothea Dix Hospital. They had to get him out of the way to do the testing on us. These people will stop at nothing. It is time for the truth to come out..My father went thru hell trying to protect us. When is the coverup going to be revealed? Maybe the C.T.Davis farm was a throw off to cover up where the real explosion was. I guess history would have to be rewritten. Somehow we managed to get another pond at the same time….Two on the farm. Daddy always said the government owned the farm, but it was not because of the tobacco lawsuit. Per daddy’s record’s at Dix he saw planes flying over in 62 and 63. So that is why they didn’t issue a tobacco card for those years. They couldn’t sell radioactive tobacco to the public, but it was alright for us to die. Now we know why the neighbors were dying from cancers and one had to have his thymus removed. Maybe someone will come forward and tell the truth. All of us are suffering from Thyroiditis, Thyroid Cancers, Brain Tumors..The DHHS, DOE and US Government haven’t offered to pay one penny on our medical bills. Three words RADIOACTIVE IODINE 131

Want your own avatar? Get one for free at Gravatar!


Neatorama Comment Policy
You don't have to register or login to comment, but it's easier if you do so. We don't censor comment based on your point of view but comments that are abusive, use excessive profanity, or contain off-topic links may get edited or deleted. On some posts, it may take up several minutes for you comment to show up.


Stay updated on the comments in this post with Comment RSS