ABSTRACT
In 1961, a B-52 Stratofortress transporting two 4,500-kilogram Mark-39 thermonuclear bombs crashed in a tobacco field 20 kilometres outside Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Due to a catastrophic fuel leak, the aircraft commander ordered his crew to eject at an altitude of around 2,750 metres. Of eight crew members, five ejected successfully, one broke his neck in a failed parachute landing and two went down with the plane. A fire started in the aircraft at around 2,450 m and the two bombs were jettisoned when the aircraft broke apart at an altitude of 300–600 m. Upon release, one bomb plunged towards a nearby swamp at speeds of over 1,200 km per hour; the intact components were buried under 6 m of quicksand-like mud and groundwater. The second bomb gently parachuted down, hanging up in a tree. Parachute deployment, however, was one of the four steps in the bomb’s detonation sequence, of which three were initiated. The only thing that prevented the obliteration of everything within a 14-km radius was one redundant electrical switch that only the pilot could activate. 1
