Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm the host Job and Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? So here on tech Stuff, we've actually
Speaker 1: covered the subject of nuclear weapons a few times. So
Speaker 1: way back on April fourth, twenty twelve, Chris Pollette, my
Speaker 1: original co host, and I we did an episode on
Speaker 1: how nuclear weapons work. I'm probably going to go over
Speaker 1: some of that same material again in this one, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's been more than a decade, so hopefully
Speaker 1: that's okay. In twenty seventeen, I did an episode titled
Speaker 1: Close but No Nuclear War about the handful of times
Speaker 1: circumstances could have precipitated into what we in the eighties
Speaker 1: would have referred to as the Big One. But thankfully,
Speaker 1: cooler heads prevailed we did not have a nuclear war,
Speaker 1: and I got to thinking about nuclear weapons again because I,
Speaker 1: like a lot of other people, watched the Fallout streaming series. Now,
Speaker 1: I've played a couple of the Fallout games, a few
Speaker 1: of them in fact, and I really enjoy them. There's
Speaker 1: some of my favorite games, particularly Fallout New Vegas, which
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people is the favorite.
Speaker 1: And then I was curious about the streaming series and
Speaker 1: no spoilers, But overall, I really enjoyed the adaptation. It's
Speaker 1: not a direct adaptation of any particular game, though it
Speaker 1: does contain elements that are found in several of the
Speaker 1: other games, and I thought that generally speaking, they did
Speaker 1: a really good job with it. I got a few quibbles,
Speaker 1: but you know, nothing major. Now. The entire setting for
Speaker 1: the Fallout series, it's a world that's trying to rebuild
Speaker 1: itself after a nuclear war that this nuclear war had
Speaker 1: happened like two hundred years in the past, and this
Speaker 1: is the fallout of that conflict that you are thrust into.
Speaker 1: And it got me thinking about nuclear weapons. So today
Speaker 1: I want to talk about lost nuclear weapons. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the half dozen times the United States,
Speaker 1: you know, misplaced a nuclear bomb and wasn't able to
Speaker 1: get it back, which you know, that's an awful lot
Speaker 1: of times when you're talking about weapons capable of truly
Speaker 1: massive amounts of destruction. And also, this would just be
Speaker 1: six incidents that we know about. In fact, I'll end
Speaker 1: the episode with one that is disputed as a potential seventh. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that there are a ton more than
Speaker 1: six incidents in which the United States lost a nuclear
Speaker 1: weapon and was unable to retrieve it. I have no
Speaker 1: way of knowing that it could be that there's more.
Speaker 1: It could be that six or seven is exactly how
Speaker 1: many there are. It is possible, though, I think that
Speaker 1: the public hasn't learned about certain cases that may have happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's turns out the United States military and
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense isn't super eager to spread information
Speaker 1: about lost nuclear weapons for reasons that are both I
Speaker 1: think totally legitimate and some that are probably not. Now,
Speaker 1: there have been way more than just six accidents with
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. If we're talking about, you know, big accidents,
Speaker 1: there have been at least thirty two. That's just the
Speaker 1: officially acknowledged ones. In the United States. We have this
Speaker 1: charming little name for incidents in which essentially the United
Speaker 1: States loses control of a nuclear weapon, and that nickname
Speaker 1: is called broken Arrow. That nickname insisted long before John
Speaker 1: Travolta and Christian Slater made a movie based on the
Speaker 1: premise of a thermonuclear weapon going walk about Hands up
Speaker 1: if you actually remember that film, it's one that I
Speaker 1: have seen. I would say that as action films go,
Speaker 1: it's not great. It's not terrible, but you know, not great. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get into the whip sees, let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how nuclear weapons actually work from a
Speaker 1: very high level, and in some ways, at least an
Speaker 1: initial part of a nuclear weapon detonation is has got
Speaker 1: some similarities to the way that nuclear fission power plants work. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously with a power plant, we want to have a
Speaker 1: nuclear reaction that is really well controlled. And in nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: the whole goal is to kind of get the sucker
Speaker 1: to go into a chain reaction that you know, goes well,
Speaker 1: not ballistic, that's the wrong the wrong word, but you know,
Speaker 1: out of control. Nuclear weapons, however, do not just use fission.
Speaker 1: That's just part of it, at least for modern thermonuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: That's not the whole entirety of the explosion. Detonating a
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon these days actually involves three explosive processes. So
Speaker 1: you got your bog standard chemical based explosives, just your
Speaker 1: regular non nuclear explosives. This is what kind of initiates
Speaker 1: the whole sequence of events and the purpose of these
Speaker 1: explosives is not to blow up the nuclear material. It's
Speaker 1: to compress it, to put intense pressure on that material
Speaker 1: and compact it down in order to get to what
Speaker 1: we call critical mass. So the nuclear material that is
Speaker 1: typically in nuclear weapons is either highly enriched uranium, like
Speaker 1: a more than ninety percent content of uranium two thirty five,
Speaker 1: for example, or plutonium more than ninety three percent plutonium
Speaker 1: two thirty nine. Now, the special thing about these particular atoms,
Speaker 1: you two thirty five andonium two thirty nine, is that
Speaker 1: they belong to a subset of atoms that will break
Speaker 1: apart under certain circumstances. Sometimes they decay on their own
Speaker 1: and they break apart, but they can also be induced
Speaker 1: to break apart. They are fissile, in other words, because
Speaker 1: they can undergo fission, they can split. Now, not all
Speaker 1: fissile atoms will cause a chain reaction, but uranium two
Speaker 1: five and plutonium two thirty nine totes can. And when
Speaker 1: they are induced to break apart, these atoms don't just
Speaker 1: split into smaller atoms. They also release a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of energy. You know, stuff like X rays and gamma rays.
Speaker 1: You get a ton of light and heat. They also
Speaker 1: shoot out excess neutrons. Now, if you've got a mass
Speaker 1: of this stuff and those atoms are packed close enough together,
Speaker 1: then some of these escaping neutrons can collide with these
Speaker 1: other atoms and then induce the exact same reaction. Those
Speaker 1: atoms will then split apart, then they'll release neutrons. So again,
Speaker 1: if the material is packed closely enough, these neutrons can
Speaker 1: start this chain reaction, and that's what makes this escalate
Speaker 1: very quickly. If the material is not very close together,
Speaker 1: then the neutrons can miss the other atoms, and you know,
Speaker 1: you will get a release of energy, but it'll be
Speaker 1: a limited release. You won't get this chain reaction. That's
Speaker 1: really the devast aiding part of nuclear weapons. So it's
Speaker 1: a very specific approach to weaponizing this energy. You know,
Speaker 1: that chain reaction, that runaway reaction is really what you
Speaker 1: want to really cause massive destruction. Now, the very first
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, which really the atomic weapons is what we
Speaker 1: would really call them. They relied solely on fission to
Speaker 1: release destructive energy upon a target. You add Little Boy,
Speaker 1: which was the nickname for the first such atomic bomb,
Speaker 1: and Little Boy had a hollow cylinder made from uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty five that upon detonation of a charge explosive
Speaker 1: would then shoot toward a target plug of U two
Speaker 1: thirty five. So you can think of it like a
Speaker 1: target and a bullet. So this little bullet of you
Speaker 1: two thirty five gets shot to collide with a target
Speaker 1: of U two thirty five. Now, separately, these two masses
Speaker 1: of uranium two thirty five did not have enough mass
Speaker 1: to maintain fission, but upon on collision, the two would
Speaker 1: form critical mass that could maintain this fission reaction. Now,
Speaker 1: the second bomb, fat Man, did not use uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five. It used plutonium. The scientists who are working
Speaker 1: on fat Man could not get the gun type method
Speaker 1: that worked for uranium two thirty five based bombs to
Speaker 1: work with plutonium, so they had to come up with
Speaker 1: something else. In fact, originally the idea was that there
Speaker 1: was going to be a thin Man bomb because it
Speaker 1: would use this gun approach that the Little Boy did.
Speaker 1: But because they could not get that to work, they
Speaker 1: had to go with explosives, conventional explosives that would compress
Speaker 1: the plutonium in order to initiate the fission chain reaction.
Speaker 1: That implosion explosive charge meant that the bomb had to
Speaker 1: be much larger than was anticipated originally when they want
Speaker 1: to do the gun method. Thus you get fat Man
Speaker 1: because it's bigger around. The plutonium atoms would get squeezed
Speaker 1: together tightly enough to reach critical mass, and then you
Speaker 1: could get the same sort of fission reaction. However, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, modern nuclear weapons also have a fusion component
Speaker 1: to them. Fusion is the atomic process of two lighter
Speaker 1: atoms fusing together to make a heavier atom. This is
Speaker 1: what goes on in the Sun in which hydrogen is
Speaker 1: built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees.
Speaker 1: So the fission reaction in a modern thermonuclear weapon can
Speaker 1: also be called the primary blast or primary charge, and
Speaker 1: the fusion component is the secondary charge. So the lighter
Speaker 1: atoms used for fusion are typically hydrogen and hydrogen isotopes.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, the actual process inside and
Speaker 1: exploding thermonuclear device gets way more complicated than what I'm
Speaker 1: covering here. There are different elements in both the primary
Speaker 1: and secondary charges, but that would require a full episode
Speaker 1: by itself. In fact, we did one back in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: so we've spent enough time on the basics of how
Speaker 1: these bombs work. Now we do have to talk about
Speaker 1: what happens when these bombs detonate. Now, I mentioned that
Speaker 1: fission and fusion as well will release an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of energy. The energy takes lots of different forms. We're
Speaker 1: talking heat and light and radiation. And the blast creates
Speaker 1: an incredible shock wave, So you get this massive increase
Speaker 1: in air pressure that's like a wrecking ball slamming into
Speaker 1: everything outward. The explosion creates this enormous fireball, and that
Speaker 1: fireball is about as hot as the surface of the
Speaker 1: Sun is initially. Remember again, fusion is how the Sun shines,
Speaker 1: So this is like igniting a miniature sun in Earth's atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and that heat vaporizes everything within that fireball and pushes
Speaker 1: it upward into the atmosphere, and that stuff forms the
Speaker 1: iconic mushroom cloud that we associate with a nuclear explosion. Now,
Speaker 1: among all that stuff is radioactive material from the bomb itself,
Speaker 1: and this kind of mixes and bonds with other things
Speaker 1: that are vaporized in that explosion. These tiny particles condense
Speaker 1: and we end up with radioactive dust that eventually is
Speaker 1: heavy enough to start to fall back to earth. This
Speaker 1: is the so called fallout. It's the stuff that can
Speaker 1: contaminate things like soil and water and cause problems for ages. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously we're talking tremendous immediate destructive power, not to mention
Speaker 1: the problems of dealing with radioactive material that will remain dangerous.
Speaker 1: Most of it actually kind of degrades fairly rapidly, like
Speaker 1: within a couple of weeks you get down to survivable conditions.
Speaker 1: There's this thing called the seven ten rule that means
Speaker 1: the amount of radiation reduces tenfold for every sevenfold increase
Speaker 1: in time. So the really dangerous stuff that can be
Speaker 1: decreased dramatically within a few hours to a day, like
Speaker 1: within a day, fallout is going to give off more
Speaker 1: than eighty percent of its inner energy, and within again
Speaker 1: two weeks you're down to you know, survivable ambient radiation. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, radioactive contamination is not immediately life threatening too.
Speaker 1: Like again we have this perception that this is all
Speaker 1: a death sentence immediately. That's not necessarily the case. One
Speaker 1: thing that can you can do if you were, you know,
Speaker 1: near a nuclear blast, not obviously outside of the blast
Speaker 1: zone itself, because if you're near that then that's that's
Speaker 1: game over, right. If you're a few miles out, however, well,
Speaker 1: you can decontaminate yourself. You can strip off the you know,
Speaker 1: whatever clothing you were wearing when you were exposed to
Speaker 1: the nuclear dust, and you can take a shower with
Speaker 1: mild soap and and you can decontaminate yourself. Of course,
Speaker 1: it is hard to figure out a way to do
Speaker 1: all this without tracking a radiated dust into the area
Speaker 1: where you're taking your shower, but that actually could be
Speaker 1: a pretty effective way to get rid of any radioactive
Speaker 1: material that has settled on you, which gives a bit
Speaker 1: of a different picture than what we get with fallout, right,
Speaker 1: in which the world remains this radioactive wasteland two hundred
Speaker 1: years after the conflict. And you know, radiation is this
Speaker 1: invisible thing, this destructive, invisible thing, and it's really scary.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the really big challenges that
Speaker 1: experts have identified as far as nuclear weapons go is
Speaker 1: how do you communicate to the public what to do
Speaker 1: in the wake of a nuclear event, whether it's an
Speaker 1: accident or an attack or whatever, so that folks don't
Speaker 1: go and make the problem even worse. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: a nuclear blast is truly terrifying. It's awful. And again,
Speaker 1: if you are closer, like within a few miles of
Speaker 1: the blast zone, your chances of survival are incredibly small.
Speaker 1: But on the flip side, it is different from the
Speaker 1: way it's depicted in shows and games like Fallout. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to start talking about the actual Broken Arrow
Speaker 1: events and why these remain these kind of scary incidents
Speaker 1: that can every few years come back and fire up
Speaker 1: imaginations and make people really anxious. That's not my goal,
Speaker 1: but we are going to talk about these things. First though,
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors. All Right,
Speaker 1: We're going to now talk about the broken Arrow events
Speaker 1: in which some sort of misha involving at least one
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon have happened, or, as defined by the Department
Speaker 1: of Defense, an incident in which at least one of
Speaker 1: the following things occurred. And I'm quoting from a declassified
Speaker 1: document from nineteen eighty one here, So here are the
Speaker 1: parameters for a broken Arrow event. Accidental or unauthorized launching, firing,
Speaker 1: or use by US forces or supported allied forces of
Speaker 1: a nuclear capable weapon system which could create the risk
Speaker 1: of an outbreak or war. Nuclear detonation, that one seems
Speaker 1: like it's no brainer, right, Non nuclear detonation or burning
Speaker 1: of a nuclear weapon or radioactive weapon component, including a
Speaker 1: fully assembled nuclear weapon, an unassembled nuclear weapon or radioactive
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon component, radioactive contamination, seizure, theft or loss of
Speaker 1: a nuclear weapon or radioactive nuclear weapon component, including jettisoning,
Speaker 1: public hazard actual or implied. Those are the parameters. Now,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, there have been thirty two of
Speaker 1: these on record, with six incidents in which the US
Speaker 1: of A has been unable to retrieve the loss nuclear weapon.
Speaker 1: And again, this is the Pentagon's official tally. I have
Speaker 1: no way of knowing if that number is actually accurate.
Speaker 1: In fact, a letter from the Defense Atomic Support Agency,
Speaker 1: which has since evolved into the Defence Threat Reduction Agency,
Speaker 1: and both of these are part of the overall Department
Speaker 1: of Defense, it lists more than two hundred and ten
Speaker 1: pages worth of accidents and incidents between the years nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven and nineteen sixty seven alone, just a little
Speaker 1: more than a decade here. But to be clear, some
Speaker 1: of these cases are fairly minor in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things. Incidents involving improper handling or transportation are on there,
Speaker 1: for example, So I guess it really comes down to
Speaker 1: how you define a big problem. Also, these thirty two
Speaker 1: incidents that are detailed in this Department of Defense document
Speaker 1: happened between nineteen fifty and nineteen eighty, and again that
Speaker 1: makes you wonder have there been any more that have
Speaker 1: happened in the forty plus years since. However, we also
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge that there has been a massive change
Speaker 1: in the technology around nuclear weapons in that time because
Speaker 1: in the old days, you know, when we talked about
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, we were talking about bomb that would be
Speaker 1: delivered by an aircraft or maybe a little later by
Speaker 1: a submarine. These days, we have intercontinental ballistic missiles and such,
Speaker 1: so it's a different story and there are fewer opportunities
Speaker 1: to misplace a bomb, although a nuclear armed submarine could
Speaker 1: still be such an incident. So we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the six times America lost a nuclear weapon and
Speaker 1: couldn't get it back. And first up is the very
Speaker 1: first of the incidents listed in that declassified letter. So
Speaker 1: the letter starts with an incident in which the bomb
Speaker 1: was not recoverable. It happened on February thirteenth, nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: so a day before Valentine's Day. Talk about a bummer.
Speaker 1: A crew was piloting a B thirty six bomber as
Speaker 1: part of a simulated combat mission. They were flying from
Speaker 1: an Air Force base in North Starborough, Alaska. They were
Speaker 1: headed all the way to Carswell Air Force Base in
Speaker 1: Fort Worth, Texas, which is a journey that's like three
Speaker 1: thousand miles more than that. So, according to the the
Speaker 1: weapon carried by the crew had a quote unquote dummy
Speaker 1: capsule in it, so, in other words, it lacked the
Speaker 1: actual nuclear core needed to make it a viable thermonuclear weapon.
Speaker 1: It did still have at least some radioactive material inside it,
Speaker 1: just not like the two charges needed to create the
Speaker 1: big fusion boom. Six hours into the flight, the aircraft
Speaker 1: started to have some pretty serious problems, big enough to
Speaker 1: force the crew to shut down three of the B
Speaker 1: thirty six's engines. Now, the B thirty six had a
Speaker 1: ton of engines, Like initially the earliest B thirty six
Speaker 1: models had just six piston engines driving propellers, right, but
Speaker 1: you had six of them, so shutting down three you
Speaker 1: still have half of your engines left. Later on, they
Speaker 1: had four jet engines added to it as well, so
Speaker 1: like the later B thirty six aircraft were ten engine planes.
Speaker 1: That's kind of incredible. Now, on top of these engine problems,
Speaker 1: the aircraft also had issues with ice building up on
Speaker 1: the plane's wings, and the aircraft was at twelve thousand
Speaker 1: feet altitude, and the military determined that the conditions were
Speaker 1: beyond risky considering the presence of a nuclear weapon on
Speaker 1: board the aircraft, So the call was made for the
Speaker 1: aircraft to deviate from its flight path, to fly out
Speaker 1: over the Pacific Ocean and to drop the bomb with
Speaker 1: the dummy capsule at eight thousand feet. Now, according to
Speaker 1: the declassified letter quote, a bright flash occurred on impact,
Speaker 1: followed by a sound and shockwave. Only the weapons high
Speaker 1: explosive material detonated the crew aboard. The aircraft bailed out
Speaker 1: over Princess Royal Island, and the aircraft itself crashed on
Speaker 1: Vancouver Island. And that is our first lost bomb out
Speaker 1: of the way. The second time America lost a nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb was on March tenth, nineteen fifty six. That we
Speaker 1: apparently went six whole years without another totally lost bomb
Speaker 1: is nice because, as we will soon see, sometimes we
Speaker 1: were looking at incidents that were happening a year or
Speaker 1: two apart, or sometimes in the same year. Anyway, a
Speaker 1: group of four aircraft, including a B forty seven Stratojet,
Speaker 1: were en route from McDill Air Force Base in Florida
Speaker 1: to quote and overseas air base end quote which overseas airbase,
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know. It's not mentioned in the Department
Speaker 1: of Defense document. Anyway. The B forty seven carried quote
Speaker 1: two nuclear capsules in carrying cases in the quote, and
Speaker 1: that sounds a lot like a suitcase bomb, right, But
Speaker 1: according to the DoD, a nuclear detonation of this stuff
Speaker 1: was impossible, like it did not have the initial charges
Speaker 1: that would work in order to actually create a nuclear bomb,
Speaker 1: but it was the material that could be used inside
Speaker 1: a nuclear weapon. So I guess it's a good thing
Speaker 1: that it wasn't like a bomb raay to explode or anything.
Speaker 1: And tragically the aircraft and its crew were lost above
Speaker 1: the terranean c The accident happened as the aircraft were
Speaker 1: all changing altitude because they had to go through a
Speaker 1: mid air refueling operation, so they had been at a
Speaker 1: cruising altitude much higher up, but in order to refuel,
Speaker 1: they needed to descend to fourteen thousand feet between them,
Speaker 1: and fourteen thousand feet was a solid cloud formation, according
Speaker 1: to the document, so descending through this meant that your
Speaker 1: visibility was obviously really limited. The base of the clouds
Speaker 1: was somewhere at the altitude of fourteen thousand, five hundred feet.
Speaker 1: The B forty seven, carrying this case filled with nuclear capsules,
Speaker 1: never made contact with the refueling tanker, and despite extensive searches,
Speaker 1: the military was not able to locate the vehicle or
Speaker 1: the crew piloting it, or, for that matter, the carrying
Speaker 1: case with the nuclear capsules inside of it. So that's lost.
Speaker 1: Bomb number two. Next up, we have an incident that's
Speaker 1: very close to home for me, well sort of close
Speaker 1: to home for me. It is the so called Tybee bomb,
Speaker 1: which happened two years after the incident we just talked about.
Speaker 1: On February fifth, nineteen fifty eight, a B forty seven
Speaker 1: took off from Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, and
Speaker 1: it was on a simulated combat mission. The B forty
Speaker 1: seven carried a nuclear weapon that, according to the DoD
Speaker 1: did not contain a nuclear capsule inside of it, which
Speaker 1: you know, that's a good thing, but the weapon still
Speaker 1: had plenty of conventional explosives which would have caused an
Speaker 1: issue right like cause again you've got the chemical based
Speaker 1: explosives in there too. And as it turned out, the
Speaker 1: story that the bomb only carried a dummy trigger would
Speaker 1: later be disputed, and it was said that in fact,
Speaker 1: the bomb aboard the B forty seven was, as Emperor
Speaker 1: Palpatine of Star Wars Fame would say, fully operational. So
Speaker 1: around three point thirty in the morning, while flying over
Speaker 1: coastal Georgia, calamity struck. A pilot flying an F eighty
Speaker 1: six Saber Jet fighter was descending from a higher altitude
Speaker 1: and did not see the B forty seven flying beneath him,
Speaker 1: Like he wasn't showing up on his radar. He didn't
Speaker 1: notice it, and so he descends and collides with the
Speaker 1: B forty seven. This is like one of those crazy accidents,
Speaker 1: like it really required a wild coincidence for this to happen.
Speaker 1: But these two aircraft did collide, and Lieutenant Clarence Stewart,
Speaker 1: who was the pilot of the Saber Jet, was able
Speaker 1: to eject from his vehicle and he safely landed in
Speaker 1: a swamp, which, you know, not the best place to
Speaker 1: land if you're not really a big fan of leeches
Speaker 1: and snapping turtles and snakes and the occasional alligator, all
Speaker 1: of which are native to this part of Georgia, but
Speaker 1: still is a good ending for him considering that one
Speaker 1: of the wings of his saber Jet got completely ripped off,
Speaker 1: so the fact that he was able to eject and
Speaker 1: land safely was a pretty phenomenal thing. The B forty
Speaker 1: seven was in slightly better shape than the saber Jet,
Speaker 1: but it was still very damaged. So the pilot attempted
Speaker 1: to make an emergency landing at Hunter Air Force Base
Speaker 1: in Georgia, but he was not able to get the
Speaker 1: air speed of the aircraft down enough to make us
Speaker 1: safe landing, so the call was made to jettison the
Speaker 1: bomb before attempting a landing in order to avoid having
Speaker 1: a high explosive going off in an American Air Force base.
Speaker 1: So the pilot was able to jettison the bomb off
Speaker 1: the coast of Tybee Island, which again is off coastal Georgia,
Speaker 1: And I've been to Tybee Island several times in fact.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they dropped the bomb not too far from
Speaker 1: where the Savannah River lets out, and the bomb sank
Speaker 1: it to the ocean, and the Department of Defense wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly sure where it landed. And fortunately the bomb did
Speaker 1: not detonate. And that really is fortunate because in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, a nearly thirty year old document that was
Speaker 1: submitted to Congress's Joint Committee on Atomic Energy was declassified.
Speaker 1: So it was declassified in ninety four. The actual document
Speaker 1: dated from nineteen sixty six, and in this nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six letter, the claim was that the bomb that was
Speaker 1: dropped off Tybee in fact did have a nuclear capsule
Speaker 1: inside of it, that the DoD was not being truthful
Speaker 1: when it said that there was no nuclear capability of
Speaker 1: the weapon, that in fact, it had contained plutonium and
Speaker 1: was capable of full detonation. So there's this dispute here
Speaker 1: between that nineteen sixty six letter from the Secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense that was sent to the Joint Committee on Atomic
Speaker 1: Energy and the official documentation from the Department of Defense
Speaker 1: about the thirty two Broken Arrow incidents. So the military
Speaker 1: searched the area for the bomb for a couple of months,
Speaker 1: but they weren't able to track down this missing nuclear weapon.
Speaker 1: So the question is there a functional well probably not
Speaker 1: functional now, but was there a functional nuclear weapon buried
Speaker 1: in the silt off the coast of Tybee Island, complete
Speaker 1: with a plutonium capsule? And I don't know the answer
Speaker 1: to that, but, boy, Hettie, that is scary. The Navy
Speaker 1: did do several surveys to make sure that there wasn't
Speaker 1: any signs of plutonium leaking out of this bomb, and
Speaker 1: they didn't find anything. There was one point where they
Speaker 1: found an area of higher radiation than expected, and at
Speaker 1: first the thought was they had detected the actual location
Speaker 1: of the bomb itself, but upon further investigation, they found
Speaker 1: that the radiation was actually naturally occurring. It was from
Speaker 1: minerals that were on the ocean bed, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: byproducts of a thermonuclear device itself. So it still remains
Speaker 1: a mystery as to exactly where that bomb is. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got three of those bombs covered already. We've got
Speaker 1: three more plus a bonus to go. So before we
Speaker 1: get to that, let's take another quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsors. Okay, So next up, we have an accident
Speaker 1: that happened three years after the Tybee bomb incident. So
Speaker 1: this one happened in nineteen sixty one. On January twenty
Speaker 1: fourth of nineteen sixty one, a B fifty two aircraft
Speaker 1: was on an airborne alert mission. And you might owe
Speaker 1: my drugiz one da what that means. Well, back in
Speaker 1: the day, and by that I mean most of the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, America had this practice of having nuclear armed
Speaker 1: B fifty two bombers in the air above North America
Speaker 1: at all times. So there were always a squadron of
Speaker 1: these aircraft flying routes over North America. The idea was
Speaker 1: that these aircraft could be sent to drop bombs on
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, you know, if things kind of took
Speaker 1: a turn for the worst. So the Cold War sure
Speaker 1: was fun to lift through, y'all. No, granted, I was.
Speaker 1: I was born after the era of the B fifty twos.
Speaker 1: For me, it was all intercondinental ballistic missiles. Anyway. Crews
Speaker 1: would operate these B fifty two aircraft as part of
Speaker 1: a project. They got the super fun nickname Operation Chrome
Speaker 1: Dome because it's a lot easier to deal with the
Speaker 1: possibility of existential destruction if you've got a fun nickname
Speaker 1: for it. So the operation always makes me think of
Speaker 1: the Stanley Kubrick film Doctor Strangelove aka How I Learned
Speaker 1: to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. That film came
Speaker 1: out nineteen sixty four, so when Chrome Dome was in
Speaker 1: full effect, and it features pilots who are ordered by
Speaker 1: a psychotic officer to launch an attack on the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: And this is all done without the realization that the
Speaker 1: USSR had recently created a doomsday device designed to automatically
Speaker 1: deploy in the event of a nuclear conflict. The film
Speaker 1: is a great satire, well worth watching if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen it. But let's get back to the actual incident.
Speaker 1: So on January twenty fourth, nineteen sixty one, this crew
Speaker 1: were flying their nuclear armed B fifty two over North
Speaker 1: Carolina when the aircraft experienced a structural failure of the
Speaker 1: right wing, which quote resulted in two weapons separating from
Speaker 1: the aircraft during aircraft breakup at two thousand to ten
Speaker 1: thousand feet altitude end quote. One of those two weapons
Speaker 1: deployed a parachute and apart from some minor damage, descended
Speaker 1: without further incident. The other one plummeted to the earth
Speaker 1: and broke apart upon hitting the ground. It did not, however, explode,
Speaker 1: which is good because this happened over a farm in Goldsboro,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. The accident was a major one. Three of
Speaker 1: the eight person crew died in this accident. The military
Speaker 1: swept in did a thorough search for the weapon, specifically
Speaker 1: for the uranium core of the weapon, but despite a
Speaker 1: long search, they could not find it. According to the
Speaker 1: DoD quote, the Air Force subsequently purchased an easement requiring
Speaker 1: permission for anyone to dig there end quote. This is
Speaker 1: to help prevent someone from just unearthing a nuclear bomb,
Speaker 1: which seems like a reasonable precaution to me. According to
Speaker 1: the News Observer, which was a North Carolina paper, quote,
Speaker 1: seven of the eight arming, fusing and firing switches and
Speaker 1: devices in one bomb automatically activated. Only a crew controlled
Speaker 1: switch prevented a nuclear detonation end quote. Which is a
Speaker 1: big old woolf All right, So we are nearly done,
Speaker 1: and this time four whole years would pass before the
Speaker 1: next incident of a lost bomb, almost five years. In fact,
Speaker 1: this next incident happened on December fifth, nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: The DoD entry on this one is pretty brief, and
Speaker 1: in fact, i'll just read it out verbatim because it's
Speaker 1: very short. Quote. An A four aircraft loaded with one
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon rolled off the elevator of a US aircraft
Speaker 1: carrier and fell into the sea. The pilot, aircraft, and
Speaker 1: weapon were lost. The incident occurred more than five hundred
Speaker 1: miles from land end quote. Now, the A four in
Speaker 1: this case refers to a Douglas A four E Skyhawk.
Speaker 1: It's a light attack aircraft that obviously can carry various weapons,
Speaker 1: including nuclear armed weapons. Now we do have a few
Speaker 1: more details that emerged subsequently. The same nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: letter that mentioned the Tybee bomb to the Joint Committee
Speaker 1: on Atomic Energy in Congress also mentioned this incident. For
Speaker 1: one thing, that letter names the aircraft carrier as the
Speaker 1: USS Taekwonderoga and that the incident happened in quote two
Speaker 1: thy seven hundred fathoms of water end quote. A fathom
Speaker 1: is equal to two yards, so this means the seafloor
Speaker 1: was some three miles below. Further later details would reveal
Speaker 1: the location was in the Philippine Sea and the pilot
Speaker 1: who was lost was one Lieutenant junior grade Douglas Webster
Speaker 1: of the US Navy. Chief Petty Officer Delbert Mitchell detailed
Speaker 1: exactly what happened that day from his perspective in a
Speaker 1: blog post for the Naval History Magazine in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Mitchell relates that he, as part of a guided missile crew,
Speaker 1: took part in an exercise to load and then the
Speaker 1: plan was unload a nuclear weapon onto this A four aircraft,
Speaker 1: and he wrote that it was a weapon with one
Speaker 1: megaton yield. That means this particular bomb had an explosive
Speaker 1: force equal to a million tons of TNT. So Webster
Speaker 1: entered the cockpit after they had loaded the bomb onto
Speaker 1: the aircraft, and the aircraft was pushed toward the aircraft elevator. Now,
Speaker 1: what happened next was the actual disaster. Plane directors were
Speaker 1: signaling for the pilot to set the brakes on the plane.
Speaker 1: It was rolling toward the elevator and it needed to stop.
Speaker 1: But apparently Webster was looking down and he didn't see
Speaker 1: them or hear them whistling to indicate that there was
Speaker 1: an emergency. So the plane kept rolling toward the elevator
Speaker 1: and crews attempted to set chocks on the wheels of
Speaker 1: the aircraft who were to force it to stop, but
Speaker 1: only one person was able to do it, so instead
Speaker 1: the plane pivoted, it turned, it hit the netting on
Speaker 1: the aircraft elevator and broke through, and then it toppled
Speaker 1: over head, over heels essentially and into the ocean. It
Speaker 1: landed on its top onto the ocean. In nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: when that letter was sent to Congress, this incident was
Speaker 1: not yet public because quote this subject is considered sensitive
Speaker 1: because of its potential impact upon visits of the Taekwonderoga
Speaker 1: and other warships to foreign ports end quote, and I
Speaker 1: can definitely see how the tragic loss of a pilot
Speaker 1: and an aircraft and a nuclear weapon might make the
Speaker 1: Taekwonderoga a little bit unwelcome in some parts of the world.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Navy did not acknowledge this accident until
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, and at that point Japan had a
Speaker 1: pretty dramatic response, understandably so, to learning about the loss
Speaker 1: of this nuclear weapon, and they launched their own diplomatic
Speaker 1: inquiry into the incident. Now, the final Broken Arrow incident,
Speaker 1: in which the US military was unable to retrieve the
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon involved and put an asterisk behind final here. Actually,
Speaker 1: technically I guess this would be final because this does
Speaker 1: happen after the penultimate one. Anyway, this happened in the
Speaker 1: spring of nineteen sixty eight. This one's very tricky to
Speaker 1: cover compared to the other ones because the Department of
Speaker 1: Defense document that I keep referencing, the one that lists
Speaker 1: the thirty two incidents that happened between nineteen fifty and
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty. Remember, only six of those actually include incidents
Speaker 1: where the weapon was unrecoverable. Well, that documents entry on
Speaker 1: this particular incident says, quote Spring nineteen sixty eight at
Speaker 1: sea Atlantic details remain classified end quote. And that's it.
Speaker 1: But do a little digging, and that reveals that the
Speaker 1: incident likely refers to the sinking of the USS Scorpion,
Speaker 1: a nuclear powered submarine. So this was a submarine that
Speaker 1: also carried two new nuclear weapons. In late May of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, the Scorpion was lost. The crew aboard
Speaker 1: the Scorpion were assigned the duty of observing Soviet naval
Speaker 1: activities around the Azores region, and the last message from
Speaker 1: the Scorpion before tragedy struck indicated that the submarine was
Speaker 1: gaining on a Soviet submarine. The Scorpion was due to
Speaker 1: return to its home port in Virginia on May twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: but it did not arrive, and the Navy launched an
Speaker 1: investigation and a search, and eventually in October of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, remember it was lost in May, but October
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, the Navy was able to locate part
Speaker 1: of the Scorpion's hull several hundred miles off the southwest
Speaker 1: of the Azores. And what exactly caused the Scorpion's destruction
Speaker 1: was unknown. What was known was that the loss meant
Speaker 1: that all hands on board a total of ninety nine
Speaker 1: crew members were also lost, and there were several hypotheses
Speaker 1: as to what could have caused the sinking. The prevailing
Speaker 1: theory was that a torpedo explosion inside the sub itself
Speaker 1: was the cause. That was a torpedo within the Scorpion
Speaker 1: that detonated for a reason that was undetermined. Whether it
Speaker 1: was an accident and malfunction, that was unknown, but that
Speaker 1: was the going hypothesis and it's truly truly awful, terrible loss.
Speaker 1: And it also meant that the two nuclear weapons that
Speaker 1: were aboard the Scorpion, now rested at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. The Navy has since conducted several surveys to
Speaker 1: monitor the area for signs of radioactive material over the
Speaker 1: many years that have passed, but it appears the weapons
Speaker 1: remained safely housed en dormant, and they're so far down
Speaker 1: that there's no easy or or practical way to retrieve them,
Speaker 1: so they've just stayed down there now. From what I
Speaker 1: can tell, that is that for the six incidents of
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons that were lost by the United States, however,
Speaker 1: there is another one that also happened in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: In fact, it happened in January nineteen sixty eight, so
Speaker 1: before the loss of the Scorpion. Now, the official record
Speaker 1: states that the four nuclear weapons involved in this incident
Speaker 1: were all destroyed. But let's go over what happened with detail.
Speaker 1: So we're talking January nineteen sixty eight, and a B
Speaker 1: fifty two from Plattsburg Air Force Base was flying near
Speaker 1: Thule Air Base in Greenland as part of the aforementioned
Speaker 1: Chrome Dome operation. So on January twenty first, nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: a fire broke out inside this aircraft. Apparently caused by
Speaker 1: some stowed cushions catching fire after the crew had tried
Speaker 1: to put the aircraft's heater into overdrive to battle the
Speaker 1: frigid operating temperatures inside. Six of the seven crew members
Speaker 1: were able to eject to safety as the aircraft caught fire.
Speaker 1: One hand aboard did not make it. The aircraft, like
Speaker 1: I said, was carrying four nuclear weapons. Now, the Department
Speaker 1: of the Fence, in that document of the thirty two
Speaker 1: insidants says that all four weapons were destroyed in the fire,
Speaker 1: so that this does not count toward that six tally
Speaker 1: because the bombs, at least, according to the official account,
Speaker 1: were destroyed. Now, these weapons caused radioactive contamination within that
Speaker 1: area off the coast of Greenland, and the US, in
Speaker 1: partnership with Denmark, launched a cleanup operation that removed literally
Speaker 1: tons of contaminated materials and then transported those to the
Speaker 1: United States for disposal. For years, the United States maintained
Speaker 1: that all four of those weapons were destroyed, but Danish
Speaker 1: newspapers began to publish articles that said one of the
Speaker 1: four weapons was unaccounted for that the cleanup effort indicated
Speaker 1: that you know, just based upon the amount that they
Speaker 1: were encountering, and how much uranium versus plutonium they were encountering,
Speaker 1: that only three of the weapons had been destroyed, and
Speaker 1: that the secondary charge of the fourth weapon had not
Speaker 1: and was missing. So, like I said, going by the
Speaker 1: official count isn't necessarily the most accurate approach, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty hard to get firm information on this stuff
Speaker 1: for understandable reasons. I also think it's a good idea
Speaker 1: to point out that other nations have also lost nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons in various incidents over the years. The United States
Speaker 1: is not alone in this. The Soviet Union in particular
Speaker 1: has lost a few, mostly due to the loss of
Speaker 1: nuclear armed submarines in various places around the world. Other
Speaker 1: nations have surely lost some as well, though we don't
Speaker 1: exactly have readily available documentation for them. Again, no one
Speaker 1: super eager to talk about this stuff because obviously there's
Speaker 1: potential for things like international incidents and stuff and panic.
Speaker 1: It is part and parcel with the nuclear age. So yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the ones that we in the United States
Speaker 1: know about due to the fact that certain documents have
Speaker 1: been declassified and the Freedom of Information Act has allowed
Speaker 1: access to certain documents. Again that mention these incidents. Otherwise
Speaker 1: we likely wouldn't know about this either. Scary stuff. No
Speaker 1: telling what we don't know. I mean, some people surely
Speaker 1: know it, but I don't. But yeah, I thought it
Speaker 1: would be good to kind of revisit this again, inspired
Speaker 1: by the Fallout series. I guess the silver lining for
Speaker 1: all this is that, as devastating as nuclear weapons are,
Speaker 1: if you are not like, within a few miles of
Speaker 1: the blast zone and you're very careful, then you're not
Speaker 1: gonna end up being turned into a ghoul or a
Speaker 1: super mutant. You're not gonna end up being, you know,
Speaker 1: wandering a barren wasteland and constructing buildings out of scrap material.
Speaker 1: That appears to just be the realm of post apocalyptic
Speaker 1: science fiction films, but it's not great anyway. That's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of tech Stuff. I hope you're all well.
Speaker 1: I hope you are reasonably avoiding radioactive areas. You know
Speaker 1: that's important, And I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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