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| located at the intersection of HWY 222 and N Church Street |
note: My wife, who is Japanese, make the comment that Karma is a bitch.
A U.S. hydrogen bomb nearly detonated on the nation's east
coast, with a single switch averting a blast which would have been 260 times
more powerful than the device that flattened Hiroshima, a newly published book
says.
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| Eureka, North Carolina |
The Guardian newspaper published the document on Saturday.
Two hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro
on Jan. 24, 1961, after a B-52 bomber broke up in flight. One of the bombs
apparently acted as if it was being armed and fired — its parachute opened and
trigger mechanisms engaged.
Parker F. Jones at the Sandia National Laboratories analyzed
the accident in a document headed "How I learned to mistrust the
H-Bomb."
"The MK39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety
for the airborne-alert role in the B-52," he wrote. When the B-52
disintegrates in the air it is likely to release the bombs in "a near
normal fashion," he wrote, calling the safety mechanisms to prevent
accidental arming "not complex enough."
The document said the bomb had four safety mechanisms, one
of which is not effective in the air. When the aircraft broke up, two others
were rendered ineffective.
"What prevented the detonation was one switch, one
safety switch, and a fair amount of good luck, because that safety switch was
later found, in some cases. to be defective," Schlosser told CBS News.
He discovered the document, written in 1969, through the
Freedom of Information Act.
It is featured in his new book on nuclear arms,
"Command and Control," which reports that through FOI he discovered
that at least 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving
1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968.
