If you or your parents or grandparents lived near the U.S. East Coast within hundreds of miles of North Carolina in January 1961, you may be able to thank a single low-voltage switch for the fact that you are reading this right now.
It has been long known that a B-52 bomber accidentally spilled two nuclear bombs on that state...but a new book suggests one of them came oh-so-close to actually detonating in a field in Faro North Carolina.
But word of the single-switch salvation was published much earlier, in a 2011 story in the Goldsboro News-Argus Newspaper.
One of the bombs floated to earth by parachute, but the second crashed into a field in Faro at 700mph. Parts of it are still buried there.
Had the bombs exploded, the radiation would have contaminated an large area along the East Coast. And it happened just three days after John Kennedy was inaugurated.
Radiation could have hit an area from Washington to New York City.
It has been long known that a B-52 bomber accidentally spilled two nuclear bombs on that state...but a new book suggests one of them came oh-so-close to actually detonating in a field in Faro North Carolina.
But word of the single-switch salvation was published much earlier, in a 2011 story in the Goldsboro News-Argus Newspaper.
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| One bomb floated to earth. as planned. |
Had the bombs exploded, the radiation would have contaminated an large area along the East Coast. And it happened just three days after John Kennedy was inaugurated.
Radiation could have hit an area from Washington to New York City.
All of my family were still living west of Pittsburgh in January 1961 so I suppose we would have been safe? I don't recall ever hearing of this incident? Thanks for posting it.
ReplyDeleteCertainly radiation would have affected NC and Virginia, as well as the DC-NYC corridor.
ReplyDelete