Question:
If anyone has heard about the peacemaker (B-36B 44-92075) that had engine fires and everyone bailed out and it mysteriously went back and crashed in mountains in British Columbia, could you please tell me what bomb group or squadron or whatever it was? I already looked it up on Wikipedia and it doesn't say. If you want to read up on it here's the link- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/b-36b_44-92... It really is an interesting story.
Answers:
Would these scummers in Devon nick stuff from a crashed aircraft or lorry as well?
Further to the continuing story of the USAF SAC B-36 bomber which lost an atomic bomb beyond British Columbia, I should like to add some pertinant information, and bring the matter to a close. Although this was the first recorded loss of an atomic bomb by the United States, and certainly a serious accident, it was not as bad as has been made out in the press by a few interested individuals over the past few years.
USAF SAC bomber B-36B, s/n 44-92075, with only 185 flying hours on the airframe, belonged to the 436th Bomb Squadron of the 7th Bomb Wing at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas. It had been sent to Alaska as part of an exercise to test the readiness of USAF bomber teams to drop nuclear weapons.
This was at a time when the Air Force still did not have custody of nuclear weapons. This is an important fact, as it shows that it is almost totally impossible for there to have been a nuclear capsule (the core of missile material) on board the aircraft at the time of the crash. The MkIII bomb, identical to that dropped on Nagasaki, took many technicians a couple of days to assemble into strike configuration, thus further mitigating against an assembled bomb being present.
Captain Barry (29), the pilot, testified in secret that the bomb bay doors and salvo drop mechanism did not work the first time, but that the co-pilot was able to drop the load on the second try. The aircraft was some 3000m high, and the bomb was observed to have detonated at about 1200m. Barry then rang the alarm bell and everyone bailed out. The bomb type had a tamper of depleted uranium, and this was scattered over the Pacific in the storm. A radiological survey of the crash site in the bried summer of 1997 by the National Defence Directorate of Nuclear Safety found no sign of radiation other than the radium paint on the instrument panels.
US secrecy about the site itself was not due to the presence of an atomic bomb, it was due to the fact that the aircraft itself contained many secrets of the early nuclear age. The bomb sight and various nuclear weapons' tools for the bomb-armourer were considered far too sensitive to leave for anyone to find. The USAF also feared that certain records of the training operation itself would have survived, and this would reveal US nuclear war plans.
The records of the crash and the USAF investigation have been declassified and are now available for public inspection at the USAF Historical Agency on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. The records are sorted by date, so this item is found on the file for 14 February 1950.
As an aside, this and several other accidents involving US bombers over Canada will be covered in a chapter on accidents in my upcoming book: "U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN CANADA".
Looking for framed picture of Concorde plane for a Xmas present?
there was a piece about this on the history channel last week , it was near smithers and was the us's first "broken arrow" incidentExplain Dissymetry of Lift in a helicopter. How does this apply to Retreating Blade Stall?
Good topic to research. We got a nuclear warhead sitting off the coast of Tybee Island GA. There is also the story of the A-10 that crashed in the colorado rockies with nuclear war heads. ofcoarse the experts say that there is no real danger.What is the website that shows all current airplanes in the sky.?
To Mr.Turkey-The A-10 was not likely carrying "nuclear war heads", but 30mm ammunition made of depleted uranium for it's GAU-8 gatling gun, this material is extremely dense and cuts through tank armor easily.More Questions & Answers ...
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