As I mentioned before, I have become captivated by the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash which resulted in two thermonuclear weapons being dropped in Faro, NC field. This Broken Arrow incident was in the news when a declassified document was released claiming one switch stopped an enormous nuclear detonation (is there any other kind?) from obliterating eastern North Carolina.
My concern when first learning about this incident was that just a flimsy switch protected the first bomb. After reading multiple interviews with Jack ReVelle, it seems the first bomb wasn’t the worry at all. The second bomb has been the one shrouded in mystery and ReVelle’s interviews seem to indicate that this bomb was always the concern.
Joel Dobson’s book on the Goldsboro Broken Arrow contains some startling revelations. The parachute lanyard on bomb #2 was torn as the bomb left the disintegrating aircraft. The bomb apparently was three seconds short of detonating. What’s more, though ReVelle and his crew insist the bomb’s safe/arm switch was found in the ARM position, a later AEC report stated that only the switch’s external indicator was in the ARM position. The AEC report claimed that somehow the switch’s indicator and the internal wiring did not agree.
What position the switch was actually in we may never be able to say with certainty. ReVelle is convinced it was in ARM, and as the on-site expert trained extensively in the defusing of Broken Arrow nuclear weapons I’m inclined to believe him. I have some doubts that the follow-on AEC report stating only the indicator was broken might just be a whitewash by the government designed to allay concerns that it nearly nuked the East Coast. It is possible, though, that the indicator was damaged by the same forces that caused the bomb to break apart upon ground contact.
I will try to read the same declassified reports Dobson cited in his book to see if they shed any light on this. At the moment, however, I’ve got a sickening hunch that in 1961 North Carolina was three seconds and one torn parachute lanyard from a mammoth nuclear disaster.