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Book bares US’ close H-bomb call
Print Edition
A UNITED States hydrogen bomb nearly detonated on the nation’s east coast, with a single switch averting a blast which would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that flattened Hiroshima, a newly published book says.
In a recently declassified document, reported in a new book by Eric Schlosser, a nuclear weapons supervisor at Sandia National Laboratories said that one simple, vulnerable switch prevented nuclear catastrophe.
Two hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina, on January 24, 1961, after a B-52 bomber broke up in flight. One of them went into “firing” mode.
Parker F Jones at Sandia analyzed the accident in a document headed “How I learned to mistrust the H-bomb.” It said the bomb had four safety mechanisms, one of which is useless in the air. When the jet broke up, two others were rendered ineffective. “One simple, low voltage switch stood between the US and a major catastrophe!” Jones wrote.
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