After the last serious post on lost nuclear weapons, you might wish to see a less serious take on warfare and espionage. Check out Lucas Martell’s brief video, “Pigeon Impossible,” to see how one determined bird helps prevent catastrophe. You’ve got to love the scene with the Washington Monument.
Shawn Smallman, Portland State University
Within the U.S. military, the code term for a lost nuclear weapon is “Broken Arrow.” There have been many such incidents, from the dangerous accident in Savannah, Georgia, to the four nuclear weapons lost near Palomares, Spain. But what many people may not know was that the first nuclear weapons were lost in Canada. On February 13, 1950 a U.S. B-36 bomber, Flight 075, traveling from Alaska to Fort Worth Texas, had three engines catch fire, from what was later discovered to be a design flaw. The plane carried a Mark Four nuclear weapon, which was made with uranium but had a core of lead. The captain made the decision to jettison the bomb off the Canadian coast, after setting the weapon to airburst at 3000 feet. The bomb vanished in a conventional explosion, which rained uranium down onto the coast. The pilot then changed course back over land, where 16 crew members bailed out around midnight near Princess Royale Island. The plane itself flew on into the dark using auto-pilot. The bomber ultimately crashed into a mountainside in Northern BC. By this point, Strategic Command knew that they had lost a plane and a nuclear weapon, and the search was on. Twelve of the bomber’s crew were found alive. The bomber itself was only found in 1953 on the slopes of Mount Kologet. To this day, how the plane was found 200 miles from where the crew jumped, at a higher elevation, and in the opposite direction to that set on autopilot, remains a mystery.
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On September 22, 1979 an aging American spy satellite detected a powerful flash of light that was so deep in the southern oceans that it was unclear if the flash was in the South Atlantic or the Indian ocean. National Security authorities soon notified President Jimmy Carter that there had been a nuclear test. But had there really been one? The issue mattered because at the heart of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treat of 1963 was the belief that the United States (and the Soviet Union) could detect clandestine explosions. The President convened a special task force to determine what the satellite had observed. In the end, the committee decided that the flash most likely resulted from a micro-meteorite hitting the satellite, rather than an event on earth. Many defense observers with considerable expertise held a different view. The debate has continued over three decades, with the consensus shifting as first one piece of new evidence comes forward, only to be countered by the next revelation. So what exactly happened deep over the southern oceans? …
