US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina

[NickStone]

A Guardian journalist has used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover a secret US document about a near distaster in 1961.

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws.

Full article here http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...-carolina-1961

[Buddlespit]

Using freedom of information, he discovered that at least 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone.

I don't know how to look at this. We (the US) either have pretty badly made bombs that could have been fatal accidents or we have pretty well made bombs that prevented fatal accidents.

Personally, I think the Guardian is just glory hunting.

[woodsmoke]

Methinks that the pregnant sentence is:

and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Ummm a switch which must be engaged manually, two of them at the same time from different areas of the plane.

woodsmoke