February 14, 1950. A United States Air Force Convair B-36 bomber is flying over the Pacific
Ocean on a simulated bomb run. The plane starts losing altitude somewhere close to Canada’s
Princess Royal Island. Captain Harold Barry sounds the alarm. The crew has no choice but to parachute
out. The problem is their aircraft is carrying a 30-kiloton Mark 4 nuclear warhead. Oops…
Drastic actions had to be taken that day. Not everyone survived. But let’s begin with the most
recent tale of America’s atomic slip-ups. 6.
December 19, 1959, was a proud moment for the American military. It was a
good time for the many people concerned with atomic weapons. That’s because on this day,
the nuclear submarine, the USS Scorpion (SSN-589), was launched for the first time.
This was an era fraught with tension. The Russians
had tested their first nuclear bomb a decade before this launch.
After the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, had seen what the US had done in Japan with its
two nuclear bombs, he was upset and enraged. He was envious more than anything. Subsequently,
the Soviet nuclear weapons program went into overdrive. The race was on. In the 1960s, both
countries were concerned about the other side’s nuclear attack submarines. Part of the Scorpion’s
job was to observe Soviet naval activities. That’s what it was doing late in May of 1968
when things went awry for her and her crew. This is what we know.
On May 27 that year, Barbara Karmasek was waiting for her husband, Donald, at a pier in Norfolk,
Virginia. She stood there with her two young boys, both of them wearing their brand-new sailor suits.
They were proud of what their daddy did for a job, although they didn’t know
exactly what he got up to with weapons of mass destruction. They had no idea he’d just spent
the last three months looking for Soviet nuclear submarines in the Atlantic Ocean.
The boys missed their pop. So, the longer they waited at the pier, they started to become upset,
asking their mom repeatedly, “Where’s daddy…Why’s daddy not here yet?”
Unfortunately for them, daddy was gone, gone for good. The family waited at the pier for hours,
and at some point, Barbara tried to find out what was taking her husband and crew so long.
The thing was when it came to atomic weapons back then, everything was shrouded in secrecy.
Barbara was knocking on closed doors. She and the kids heard later in court,
“The certain cause of the loss of the Scorpion cannot be ascertained from
evidence now available.” There were 99 other crew members on the Scorpion. 99 men with families of
their own. This wasn’t good enough, but what was known remained classified for a long time.
Donald’s sister later said, “The Navy didn't even notify the families first. We've always
gotten our information through the news media.” Imagine that. They were kept in the dark as ships
and planes searched for the Scorpion. In October of that year, the wreckage was found 11,100 feet
below the water's surface, about 400 miles southwest of the Azores islands off Portugal.
All the files about the accident remained classified for years, although when the
navy did finally explain what happened, all the families heard was that an “unexplained
catastrophic event” had happened. To this day, we don’t know exactly what happened, but there are
many theories trying to explain thi tragic event. This sub was carrying nuclear-tipped weapons,
which had yields of collectively close to 250 kilotons. Did one of the weapons detonate by
accident? Did one of the torpedoes explode? Was there structural damage to the sub? Did
the Soviets attack it? One theory even said that this all happened because a
trash disposal unit malfunctioned. The people who’ve written about it cling to their theories,
but we can’t tell you exactly what went down… except for the sub itself. Ok, Infographics
Creative team, this is no time for puns. We can tell you that before the accident, this
submarine experienced many instances of things going technically wrong. According to some people
who served on it, it was a veritable death trap. One of them, an electrician mate named Dan Rogers,
later said, “I didn't know it was going to sink. But I was absolutely uptight
after having been on there and seeing the things I had seen. I was just unable to deal
with going to sea, again on the Scorpion.” His decision to not go aboard the Scorpion
after that certainly worked out for him. This next story is equally as shocking.
5. On December 5,
1965, a US A-4E Skyhawk attack aircraft carrying a one-megaton thermonuclear weapon fell into the
sea. We kid you not. One minute it was on the deck of the USS Ticonderoga, and the next minute it
was in the sea. In no time, the pilot, the plane, and the bomb were lying about 16,000 feet below.
So, this story isn’t really that confusing. There aren’t umpteen theories and conspiracy
theories about it. The plane and its bomb simply slipped off the deck of the
ship not long after it had sailed from U.S. Naval Base in Subic Bay in the Philippines.
For all you treasure hunters out there, that powerful bomb still lies somewhere
at the bottom of the Philippine Sea to this day. The pilot of the plane,
Lieutenant Douglas M. Webster, will have been eaten by the fishies by now, but some
parts of the bomb and the plane will be there. Obviously, the US kept the event under wraps at
the time. That wasn’t so much because the navy was trying to save face, but the fact the US
didn’t want other countries to know it had lost a very destructive weapon. It wasn’t until 1989
that the United States Department of Defense said where the accident had actually happened.
If you want to know how such a thing could happen, here’s what the ship’s log said:
“ENTRY:- 14:50 WHILE BEING ROLLED FROM NO. 2 HANGER BAY TO NO. 2 ELEVATOR, A4E AIRCRAFT BU
NO. 151022 OF VA-56, WITH PILOT LTJG D. M. WEBSTER USN, 668086 ABOARD, ROLLED OFF THE ELEVATOR AND
SANK IN 2700 FATHOMS OF WATER AT 27*-33.2’N, 131*-19.3E. signed by: J. S. McCABE LTJG USN.”
This next one is insanity on steroids. 4.
On January 23, 1961, a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress was in the middle of aerial refueling when the
commander, Major Walter Scott Tulloch, was informed that his plane had a fuel leak in
the right wing. Ground control told him to fly to a certain area off the coast, whereupon he
should fly in a holding pattern, which just means flying around in a designated pattern in the sky.
Tulloch tried to do that but soon reported he was losing a dangerous amount of fuel. He
reckoned that something like 37,000 pounds (17,000 kg) of fuel had leaked out in just
three minutes. This was serious, very serious, and more so because the plane was carrying two
3–4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs. Ground control said to return immediately to Seymour Johnson
Air Force Base. This United States Air Force base is located in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
The incident would later be referred to in a secret document as a “caper.”
We’re not sure if this was a good choice of words. As the plane flew to the airfield at about
10,000 feet (3,000 meters), it was evident the pilot had lost control. There was no way
he could land the thing. The 8 crew were then told to eject. That’s what six of them did.
Five of them survived, and one didn’t quite make it safely down to the ground.
The two men that didn’t eject died in the crash. Moments later, a young man named Billy Reeves was
getting ready for bed when he saw his bedroom walls glow red. The 17-year-old ran outside of
his family’s farmhouse to see a B52 bomber, now with only one wing, plunge from the sky
like a fireball. What was left of it landed in a barley field about a quarter mile away from
where Billy was standing, now wondering about all those aliens he’d read about in magazines.
He ran over to the wreckage only for it to explode, so he then ran the other way,
almost like something you’d see in a cartoon. There was nothing funny about this, though.
Two of the crew who hadn’t managed to eject had burned to death in that plane. Billy later said,
“The grass was burning. Big Daddy’s Road over there was melting. My mother was
praying. She thought it was the End of Times.” Not long after, it really did feel like the
world was ending, or as if some alien lifeform had invaded this little North Carolina town.
A military helicopter flew in the sky, telling everyone, “Evacuate...Evacuate
now. This is an order from the United States government. Leave your houses immediately.”
“We didn’t know why,” Billy said many years later. “We didn’t ask why. We just got out of there.”
What Billy and his family didn’t know is that this was far from just an ordinary plane crash.
Those two 3.8-megaton thermonuclear atomic bombs had gone down, too. They could have potentially
killed a lot of people in that town. In fact, in 2013, when the US finally declassified the
documents about this disaster, the folks of that town and the American public at large
discovered that in one of the bombs, three out of four of the triggering mechanisms had been
activated. The US had very nearly nuked itself. Adam Mattocks, who was the third pilot that day,
survived. This 27-year-old African-American man was a very religious guy. Just before
he jumped with another of the crew, he said to himself, “Well,
God, if it’s my time, so be it. But here goes.” He jumped from the plane with as much strength as
he could muster, and while his chute didn’t deploy the first time, it did after a while. He shouted
into the air, “Thank God!” only for the plane to explode above him and the pressure to collapse his
chute. He then started falling with the debris, thinking he was definitely going to die. Was
this some kind of joke? Just then, a stream of wind re-inflated his chute. It was a miracle.
Yet again, he said to himself, “Thank God.” What’s shocking about this story other than
the fact the US almost bombed itself is what happened next. Mattocks, absolutely overwhelmed
with joy when he landed with a bump not far from the crash site, ran to the nearest farmhouse.
Dressed in his flight suit and still carrying his parachute, he knocked on the door and told
the house’s occupants he’d just jumped from a B-52 that was now lying in a field smoldering.
It would be an understatement to say back in 1961, rural North Carolina was home to a fair
bit of racism. No one believed Mattock’s story. Black guys, they said, didn’t fly B-52s. Not
many did at the time, but Mattocks certainly did. Still, he was told he was a great big
liar and arrested for stealing a parachute. Young Billy, meanwhile, was out in his truck
when he saw the grisly sight of one of the crew dangling from a tree by his parachute. The guy was
already dead. Billy then came across one of the nuclear bombs, which had also landed attached to
a parachute. It goes without saying that Billy had no idea what he was looking at. The good news for
him was that the bomb was safe from detonating. The other bomb had plunged to the Earth at such a
velocity that it buried itself deep in the ground. This was not something the government could hide.
Trust us, if they could have, they would have. The military had to say something about the matter.
The people were told no one was ever in any danger. The United States Department
of Defense told the town and the rest of the US that the nuclear bombs hadn’t even been
armed and so could never have exploded. The evacuation, they were told, had
just been a precaution. That was total hogwash. Even though the declassified documents released in
2013 revealed what had really happened, in 1983, Robert McNamara, who’d been Secretary of Defense
at the time of the crash, said, “The bomb’s arming mechanism had six or seven steps to go through
to detonate, and it went through all but one.” He was wrong, it went through three out of four,
which was just as bad. One of the guys who first found the buried bomb later said he almost pooped
his pants. He said he looked at the bomb and realized it had been very close to detonating.
The people of Goldsboro were rightly furious about the government’s lies. One of them later said,
“You nearly blew us all up!” Actually, back then, planes armed with nuclear weapons often flew
above the US mainland. You’d think the US would have flown over Canada instead…That’s a joke,
but as you’ll see soon, it’s also a reality. This next story wasn’t quite so hairy in
terms of danger to humans, although we’re surprised how things turned out.
3. On February 5,
1958, an Air Force B-47 bomber was doing a simulation exercise over Savannah, Georgia,
when it collided mid-air with an F-86. In terms of size, these planes are David and Goliath.
On board the bomber was Maj. Richardson, Co-Pilot 1st Lt. Robert Lagerstrom, and Radar-Navigator
Capt. Leland Woolard. Their plane was carrying a 7,000 lb. Mk-15 nuclear bomb. That wasn’t great,
considering they were now flying in a damaged plane over the American mainland.
The accident didn’t come out of the blue since the exercise involved the F-86s tailing the bomber,
and one of them got too close. The pilots tried to land the plane but couldn’t. The damage made
things difficult, so they asked to lighten their load and jettison the nuclear bomb.
They did, but where it went, no one has ever been sure since it was never found. Yep,
you heard that right. It’s suspected that it buried itself somewhere off
the coast of Tybee Island, close to Savannah. This next story is another that is just plain
weird. 2.
On March 10, 1956, a hulking B-47 bomber carrying a nuclear weapon went missing
somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea. It did one aerial refueling, but no one
heard from it afterward. That’s right. It just disappeared. We don’t even know what kind of
bombs it was carrying, only that there were two of them and that, according to the US government,
they couldn’t have detonated by themselves. The Department of Defense later
wrote in a classified document: “Since the location of a nuclear
weapon is classified defense information, it is Department of Defense policy normally neither to
confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at any specific place. In the case of an accident
involving nuclear weapons, their presence may or may not be divulged at the time depending
upon the possibility of public hazard or alarm.” The story goes, and it sounds like one of those
tall stories the government is fond of telling, that the plane and its contents just vanished
into thin air. Although it’s never been said publicly, the plane was likely carrying two
Mark 15 thermonuclear bombs, which would have had a combined yield of 3.4 megatons.
Three men went missing with the plane, aged 22, 31, and 32. To this day, their
relatives have no idea what happened to them. Now for the most messed up story in this series
of historical military tragedies. 1.
As we mentioned before, it involved a B-36 bomber that ran into trouble on February 13,
1950. It was carrying a 30-kiloton Mark 4 bomb. It’s said the crew was doing one of those
simulation exercises when the plane suffered not one but three catastrophic engine failures.
The US Air Force understood the gravity of the situation if this plane should go down,
and somehow, someone else recovered the bomb - an enemy perhaps. As we said, this was the time
when the Soviets were busily trying to catch up to the USA in terms of nuclear weapons.
Captain Harold Barry was told in no uncertain terms that he had to dump the bomb in the
ocean. Under no circumstances could that plane hit the ground. That’s what he did,
only the plane was never going to land in one piece. The time was about five minutes past
midnight on February 14 when a bunch of the crew jumped out into the darkness above a mountainous
area of Canada’s Princess Royal Island. The plane, now set to autopilot,
traveled about 217 miles (350 km) and finally crashed into the side of Canada’s Mount Kologet.
17 crew had parachuted in the freezing cold, eventually landing in the cold wilderness
presented by Canadian winter. Even if they could land safely,
they had little control over where they would end up. Rescue parties had no chance at night,
but would the men even survive the night when the temperature outside was −40 °F/−40 °C.
Five men didn’t make it. It’s now thought four of those five had bailed out earlier
and so had landed in the ocean, subsequently dying pretty fast from hyperthermia or drowning. Their
bodies have never been recovered. One of the dead guys was found four years later on land.
The search was hard in such bad weather, but in time, 12 men were picked up, shivering,
close to death. The last guy to be found was Lt. C. G. Pooler. He was first seen at a distance,
hanging by his parachute upside down in a tree. His ankle was broken, so the rescuers
had to help walk him out of the mountains. It took seven hours to go the 2km through
the deep snow to get him to relative safety. So, this one ended up being a kind of survival
movie, and it might have remained looking that way as the US didn’t tell Canada about the addition
of it losing a nuclear bomb. The story stayed top secret. When information did become available,
the US said the bomb had been released without its nuclear core. That may or may not be true.
It certainly sounded like something Canada might have wanted to hear since getting
nuked by a neighbor is really not cool. We still can’t be sure what happened to
the bomb or if anything dangerous was left behind. We don’t even know if that bomb was
dropped into the ocean. That’s why the Canadian authorities have gone back to the crash site,
looking for high radiation levels. They haven’t found any yet. We hope a Canadian hiker doesn’t
accidentally trigger the bomb and start a world war one day. The Mark IV bomb might still be out
there, waiting to teach the USA that it should be much more careful with its destroyers of worlds.
Now you need to watch “How World War 2 Would Have Ended if Atomic Bombs Were Never Dropped.” Or,
have a look at “How a Russian Tactical Nuke on Ukraine Will Destroy Europe.”