Goldsboro Plane Crash

The crash near Goldsboro occurred on January 24, 1961, when the US Air Force B-52G strategic bomber with two Mark 39 nuclear bombs on board crashed in the air over North Carolina .

Goldsboro Plane Crash
One of two nuclear bombs aboard an aircraft after landing
General information
date
Character	destruction in the air
Cause	extreme wing loads
A place	20 km north of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, Wayne County , North Carolina , USA
Coordinates
Dead
Aircraft
Similar aircraft B-52G
Model	B-52g
Affiliation	US Air Force Strategic Command
Board number	58-0187
Crew	eight
Survivors

The flight was carried out as part of the operation " Caroll " ^{[ specify ]} , the aircraft carried two Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs . At around midnight on January 23, the bomber arrived at the meeting point with the air tanker for refueling in the air , but when approaching, the refueling operator informed the B-52 crew that it was observing a fuel leak from the right wing. Refueling was canceled, and the aircraft was ordered to leave in the waiting area off the coast of the ocean to generate surplus fuel before an emergency landing. After entering the zone, the pilot reported that the leak intensified and the aircraft lost 17,000 kg (37,000 pounds ) of fuel within three minutes. Ground control ordered an immediate landing approach at Seymour-Johnson airbase, but the destruction of aircraft structures continued, and pilots lost control at an altitude of 10,000 feet (about 3300 m). The crew began to leave the aircraft at an altitude of 9000 feet (2700 m), four crew members successfully ejected , the third reserve pilot, who did not have an ejected seat, managed to safely leave the aircraft through the top hatch, one of the crew members ejected, but died on landing, two more did not were able to leave the board and died in a plane crash.

The wreckage of the bomber was scattered in the fields near the town of Goldsboro on an area of ​​two square miles (5.2 km²).

Thermonuclear bombs separated from a collapsing aircraft at altitudes between 10,000 and 2,000 feet (3,000 and 610 m), one of the bombs opened a parachute and landed almost intact (from declassified documents in the 1990s it became known that, in addition to triggering the parachute system, also three of the four safety devices, putting the bomb on alert). The second bomb fell into the swamp and collapsed, the wreckage went into the ground to a considerable depth. During the search, a number of parts were found, including the tritium reservoir and the plutonium charge of the first stage, but the excavation had to be stopped due to flooding of the place of work with groundwater . The uranium core and other details of the second, thermonuclear stage remained at the bottom of the swamp, US engineering forces subsequently bought a 400-foot radius around their alleged location.

In 1969, a secret document was prepared regarding this incident. In it, an employee of the Sandia National Nuclear Laboratory, Parker F. Jones, who headed the nuclear weapons operational safety department, argued that America was on the verge of a “catastrophic scale.” The power of each of the two bombs is 260 times greater than that of a bomb dropped on Hiroshima . If the combat device detonated, millions of US residents would be at risk. A number of large cities on the East Coast , such as Washington , Baltimore and Philadelphia, could be in the affected area. Only thanks to the last of the four safety mechanisms of the bomb - the low-voltage switch - the catastrophe was avoided ^{[1] [2]} .