Secret government report reveals when the United States nearly detonated a hydrogen bomb on itself

The United States was one spark away from the detonation of a four-megaton hydrogen bomb over North Carolina when a B-52 bomber broke-up mid air in 1961.

IT'S the nuclear nightmare that actually happened: A 1960s US bomber broke up in mid air, a warhead dropped - and automatically armed itself. And this was over North Carolina.

A declassified document, part of a new book titled Atomic Gaffes by Eric Schlosser, reveals how a defective hydrogen bomb, some 260 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, came dramatically close to flattening a large swathe of the US county of Goldsboro on January 23, 1961.

This was just three days after President John F Kennedy had made his inaugural address as President.

The radioactive fallout could have affected millions as it drifted over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and even New York.

Two Mark 39 four-megaton hydrogen bombs were aboard a B-52 bomber which encountered difficulties shortly after taking off from the Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro.

The heavy, multi-engine jet went into a tail-spin and broke up in mid-air during a live Cold War deployment.

An early model Boeing B-52 in flight. (U.S. Air Force photo)

The two bombs broke free.

One of the free-falling weapons automatically deployed its parachute and armed its trigger mechanism. There were four "fail-safe" mechanisms built into the bomb. Three of them failed.

All that prevented the plummeting super-weapon from going off was a single electronic switch.

Both hydrogen bombs ended up burying themselves deep in fields in the North Carolina countryside.

The document, obtained through a freedom of information investigation, reveals the lie behind persistent US Government denials that American lives have ever been put at risk through safety flaws with its nuclear arsenal.

A senior engineer responsible for the safety of nuclear weapons conceded in a secret 1970s study into the accident: "One simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".

This final line of defence could easily have been shorted by a simple electrical spark, he wrote.

The engineer, Parker F Jones, wrote his secret report "Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb" some eight years after the accident.

The title was a reference to Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

From the movie Dr Strangelove

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The USA has enough nuclear weapons to destory the entire world 1,000 over!

Personally I would call that a rogue State!

do you think we should have an investigation to see who stuffed up?

and then jail him for life,for missing the chance to rid the planet of a few gun totting born agains

do you think we should have an investigation to see who stuffed up?

and then jail him for life,for missing the chance to rid the planet of a few gun totting born agains

Its the USA so it would have been because they got the cheapest quote for the electric switch device.

I seem to remember reading they dropped a couple just off the coast of Spain when a plane went down and they may still be there, on the ocean floor?

Its the USA so it would have been because they got the cheapest quote for the electric switch device.

do you mean they have some millionare richard smith counting his dollars

and some fat Texan with a 10 gallon hat saying glory to god ,pass me my rifle and who the bloody hell designed this piece of krap bomb

and they still cant blow themselves up

the Taliban must be so frustrated

do you mean they have some millionare richard smith counting his dollars

and some fat Texan with a 10 gallon hat saying glory to god ,pass me my rifle and who the bloody hell designed this piece of krap bomb

and they still cant blow themselves up

the Taliban must be so frustrated

Allah be praised

I'm just so more relaxed that we've got Clyde Palma looking over our welfare