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Mars Bluff SC atomic bomb incident....
Mars Bluff SC atomic bomb incident....
Item # 581514
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March 12, 1958
LEOMINSTER DAILY ENTERPRISE, Massachusetts, March 12, 1958 This 20 page newspaper has two column headline on page 4: "BOMB IS ACCIDENTALLY DROPPED FROM PLANE". This tells of the B-47 Stratojet mishap over Mars Bluff, South Carolina.
Other news, sports and advertisements of the day. Nice condition.
wikipedia notes: Mars Bluff is an unincorporated community in Florence County, South Carolina, United States that bears the dubious distinction of having been inadvertently bombed with a nuclear weapon by the United States Air Force.
On March 11, 1958 a U.S. Air Force B-47 Stratojet from the Hunter Air Force Base's 308th Bombardment Wing in Savannah, Georgia took off around 4:34 p.m. It was scheduled to fly to the United Kingdom for Operation Snow Flurry. The plane was required to carry nuclear weapons in the event of war breaking out with the Soviet Union. Air Force Captain Bruce Kulka was the navigator and was summoned to the bomb bay area after the captain of the plane had encountered a fault light in the cockpit indicating that the bomb harness locking pin for the transatlantic flight did not engage. As Kulka was reaching around the bomb to pull himself up, he mistakenly grabbed the emergency release pin. The Mark 6 bomb dropped to the floor of the B-47 and the weight forced the bomb bay doors open sending the bomb 15,000 feet (4,572 m) down to the ground below.
Although the bomb did not contain the removable core of fissionable uranium and plutonium (the core was securely stored in a containment area onboard the plane), it did contain 7,600 pounds (3,447 kg) of conventional explosives. The resulting explosion created a mushroom cloud and crater estimated to be 75 feet (23 m) wide and 25–35 feet (7.6–10.7 m) deep. It destroyed a local home, the residence of Walter Gregg, and leveled nearby trees. Nobody was directly killed from the blast but several people in Gregg's family were injured from the explosion.
Category: The 20th Century
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