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Nov 22, 2023 · In 1950, a USAF bomber lost a nuclear bomb over Canada during a test flight; it was the first "broken arrow" incident in history. The Convair B-36 Peacemaker aircraft was able to carry an atomic bomb without modifications, and its mission was simulating a nuclear attack.
- Journalist
May 10, 2017 · A mysterious fuel leak, which the crew found out as a refuelling plane approached, led to the broken arrow incident over North Carolina in 1961.
- A Test Bombing Run Goes Awry
- As The Plane Fails, The Crew Bails
- The Weaponeer and Bomb Were Never Found
- Theories Proliferate About The Lost Nuke
- A Curious Find
After months of lobbying, SAC leaders were able to convince the Atomic Energy Commission to lend them a Mark IV atomic bomb without its plutonium core. The bomb still contained large amounts of uranium and conventional explosives—but it couldn’t trigger a devastating nuclear blast. On February 13, 1950, a B-36 known as Flight 2075 took off from Eie...
Captain Harold Barry and his crew acted quickly. Their first order was to ditch the atomic bomb following military protocol to keep nuclear weapons or their components out of enemy hands. But when Barry’s copilot hit the “salvo” button to release the bomb, nothing happened. He then hit it a second time, releasing the bomb bay doors and dropping the...
Immediately, a combined force of the U.S. and Canadian military launched a massive search-and-rescue mission involving 40 aircraft scouring the frozen coastline. Thanks to their efforts, 12 of the 17 crew members were recovered alive, including one man found dangling upside-down from his parachute in a tree with a broken ankle. But five crewmen, in...
Since the demolition crew’s report was top secret, no word emerged about the whereabouts of the missing atomic bomb. Were there clues in the wreckage that the bomb had in fact been released prior to impact? In the absence of definitive proof, rumors began to swirl about the true fate of the lost nuke. At the epicenter of these rumors was Captain Sc...
In 2003, an investigative team led by John Clearwater, an expert on Canada’s nuclear weapons program and the history of lost nukes, journeyed to the crash site to make its own assessment. At first, it appeared that most of the plane had been destroyed by the 1954 demolition crew or stolen by generations of adventurous looters. Then they found somet...
- Dave Roos
Seven hours into the flight, three of the six piston engines began shooting flames and were shut down, and the other three piston engines proved incapable of delivering full power. The subsequent investigation blamed ice buildup in the carburetor air intakes.
USAF Major Howard Robinson, the pilot of the B-47, lost control of the aircraft after the collision and it lost roughly 18,000 feet of altitude before control was regained. The bomber sustained heavy damage to its right wing and right outboard engine.
The fuel tanker detached its line from the B-25 and Tulloch banked the plane and turned the nose toward the coastline and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina. An eerie silence haunted the crew as their wounded ship droned over the North Carolinian countryside.
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Jul 11, 2024 · Air Force veteran Joel Dobson spent years researching an incident in which a pair of nuclear warheads came down, but did not detonate, over the town of Faro in Eastern North Carolina. WOODY ...
