The Cold War Accidents That Could Have Ended Cities
In May 1957, a B-36 bomber approached Kirtland Air Force Base outside Albuquerque carrying a Mark 17 hydrogen bomb, the largest nuclear weapon America ever built. The bomb was more than 1,000 times more powerful than Hiroshima. As the navigator removed a routine safety pin before landing, something went wrong. The 42,000-pound weapon fell through the closed bomb bay doors and plummeted into a cow pasture five miles south of the base. The conventional explosives detonated on impact, blasting a crater 12 feet deep and 25 feet wide. The only casualty was a grazing cow. The Air Force classified the incident for nearly 30 years, and the people of Albuquerque never knew how close they came to nuclear disaster.
This episode explores the world of Broken Arrows, the military’s term for nuclear weapons accidents. The Pentagon admits to 32 such incidents between 1950 and 1980, with six nuclear weapons still missing today. We trace how Cold War deterrence strategy required constant movement of nuclear weapons across American skies, making accidents inevitable. From the single safety switch that prevented a 20-megaton detonation in North Carolina to the hydrogen bomb still buried in the mud off Tybee Island, Georgia, we examine what happens when you normalize flying city-killers over populated areas. The Albuquerque cow was the lucky one. She died quickly. The rest of us are still living with the Broken Arrows that never got found.
Let’s listen in as Nathaniel Sheppard narrates this tale on my behalf, shall we?
-Daniel P. Douglas
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