A secret document, declassified by the Guardian, reveals that a U.S. atom bomb nearly exploded in 1961 over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima
The document, obtained by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the United States came close to a disaster when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, N.C., in January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and the parachutes on one of the devices opened and its trigger mechanisms engaged. The only thing that stopped the bomb from going off was one low-voltage switch being that three of four safety mechanisms designed to prevent unintended detonation failed to operate properly in the Faro bomb.
Fallout could have spread over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and even New York City, the paper said, threatening the lives of millions of people.
In the document, Parker Jones, a senior engineer in the Sandia National Laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons, concluded that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low-voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe."
Jones' report, titled "Goldsboro Revisited or: How I Learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb," was written eight years after the accident in which one hydrogen bomb fell into a field near Faro, N.C., and the other into a meadow.
- Contribute to this Story:
- Send us a tip
- Send us a photo or video
- Suggest a correction
