North Carolina Nearly Nuked By Our Own Air Force
Newly declassified documents reveal how close North Carolina came to being an inadvertent nuclear test site.
This story gives new meaning to "Missed it by that much!"
CNN:
On a January night in 1961, a U.S. Air Force bomber broke in half while flying over eastern North Carolina. From the belly of the B-52 fell two bombs -- two nuclear bombs that hit the ground near the city of Goldsboro.
A disaster worse than the devastation wrought in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have befallen the United States that night. But it didn't, thanks to a series of fortunate missteps.
Declassified documents that the National Security Archive released this week offered new details about the incident. The blaring headline read: "Multi-Megaton Bomb Was Virtually 'Armed' When It Crashed to Earth."
Or, as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it in back then, "By the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted."
With all the paranoia in the air at that time, it could have meant the end of the world if those bombs had detonated. Instead we built more.