Broken Arrows are real and have been the stuff of John Woo movies and Tom Clancy novels, but these arrows are those of Indians and the like. They’re nuclear weapons involved in an accident or incident of some sort. And the United States has seen its share of them.
Broken arrows come in a wide variety of degrees and types. The United States Department of Defense Directive 5230.16, a primer for military Public Affairs officers, lists many. They are:
Bent Spear – Incidents involving nuclear weapons that are of significant interest but are not as serious as a broken arrow event.
Broken Arrow – An accident involving nuclear weapons or nuclear components but does not create the risk of nuclear war.
Nicflash – The actual or possible detonation of a nuclear weapon which risks the outbreak of nuclear war.
Emergency Disablement – An accident or operations involving the command disablement or nonviolent disablement of a nuclear weapon.
Emergency Evacuation – The evacuation of nuclear weapons from their usual place of storage.
Empty Quiver – The seizure, theft, or loss of a nuclear weapon or nuclear component.
Faded Giant – A “nuclear reactor and or radiological accident and incident” not involving nuclear weapons.
Dull Sword – An Air Force term for a minor incident involving nuclear weapons, components or systems that would require them to be out of service for a time.
Major American Nuclear Weapons Accidents.
February 13, 1950 – A B-36 bomber experiencing engine problems jettisoned a MK 4 Fat Man bomb off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, and detonated it with conventional explosives before the plane itself crashed. The bomb did not contain the plutonium core needed for an atomic explosion. This was the first time nuclear weapon to be lost in an accident.
April 11, 1950, – A B-29 bomber carrying a nuclear weapon, four spare detonators, and a crew of thirteen crashed into a mountain near Manzano Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The crash resulted in a major fire which was reported as being visible from “fifteen miles.” The bomb’s casing was completely demolished and its high explosives ignited upon contact with the plane’s burning fuel. The four spare detonators and all nuclear components were recovered. A nuclear detonation was not possible because the weapon’s core was not placed in the weapon for safety reasons. All thirteen crew members were killed.
November 10, 1950 – A B-50 returning one of several US Mark 4 bombs secretly deployed in Canada had engine trouble and jettisoned the weapon at 10,500 feet. The bomb, carrying the depleted uranium tamper but not its plutonium core, was set to self-destruct at 2500′ and dropped over the St. Lawrence River off Rivière du Loup, Quebec. The explosion shook area residents and scattered nearly 100 pounds of depleted uranium.
July 27, 1956- On a routine training mission, a B-47 bomber crashed into a storage igloo containing three MK 6 nuclear weapons at the Lakenheath Royal Air Force Station killing the crew of four. Although the bombs involved in the accident did not have their fissile cores installed, each carried about 8,000 pounds of high explosives as part of their trigger mechanism. A retired Air Force general said later that if the explosives had detonated, releasing radioactive material, “it is possible that a part of Eastern England would have become a desert.
May 22, 1957 – A B-36 flying to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, accidentally released a MK 17 thermonuclear bomb while on approach. The bomb did not contain the core needed for a nuclear explosion, but upon impact the conventional explosives detonated, making a crater 25 feet wide and 12 feet deep and dispersed fragments and debris.
January 31, 1958 – Morocco – During a simulated takeoff a U.S. Air Force B-47 carrying an armed nuclear weapon caught fire when a wheel failure lead to its tail hitting the runway and a fuel tank ruptured.
February 28, 1958 – At the US-leased RAF airbase at Greenham Common, England, a B-47E developed problems shortly after takeoff and jettisoned its two 1,700 gallon external fuel tanks. The tanks missed the designated safe impact area and one hit a hangar while the other struck the ground behind a parked B-47E. The parked B-47E, which was fuelled with a pilot onboard and carrying a 1.1 megaton B28 thermonuclear free fall bomb, was engulfed by flames.
June 7, 1960 – At McGuire Air Force Base in New Egypt, New Jersey, a helium tank exploded and ruptured the tanks of a BOMARC-A cruise missile. The fire destroyed the missile and caused a degree of contamination.
January 24, 1961 – A B-52 bomber suffered a fire caused by a major leak in a wing fuel cell and exploded in mid-air 12 miles north of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, Goldsboro, North Carolina. The incident released the bomber’s two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs. Five crewmen parachuted to safety, but three died-two in the aircraft and one on landing. Three of the four arming devices on one of the bombs activated, causing it to carry out many of the steps needed to arm itself, such as the charging of the firing capacitors and the deployment of a 100-foot diameter retardation parachute allowing the bomb to hit the ground with little damage. The fourth arming device, the pilot’s safe/arm switch, was not activated and so the weapon did not detonate. The other bomb plunged into a muddy field at around 700 miles per hour and disintegrated. Its tail was discovered about 20 feet down and much of the bomb was recovered, including the tritium bottle and the plutonium. The excavation and recovery had to be abandoned because of uncontrollable flooding by ground water. Most of the thermonuclear stage, containing uranium, was left deep in the ground in an unknown condition at what was estimated to be around 180 feet underground. The Air Force purchased the land and fenced it off to prevent its disturbance
December 5, 1964 – A Minuteman 1B missile was on strategic alert at Launch Facility L-02, Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota when one retrorocket below the Reentry Vehicle fired, causing the RV/nuclear warhead to fall about 75 feet to the floor of the silo. The RV/nuclear warhead struck the bottom of the silo receiving considerable damage. However, all safety devices operated properly in that they did not sense the proper sequence of events to allow arming the warhead so there was no detonation.
December 5, 1965 – An A-4E Skyhawk airplane with one B43 nuclear bomb onboard falls off the USS Ticonderoga into 16,200 feet of water off the coast of Japan. The plane, pilot, and weapon were never recovered.
January 17, 1966 – Near Palomares, Spain, during over-ocean in-flight refueling, a B-52 carrying four nuclear weapons collides with a United States Air Force KC-135 jet tanker. Eight of the eleven crew members are killed. Two hydrogen bombs rupture, dispersing radioactive particles over nearby farms. One bomb lands near Palomares. The fourth bomb was lost at sea, 12 miles off the coast. A search involving three months and 12,000 men eventually recover it using the deep-diving research submarine DSV Alvin. On land, 1,500 metric tons of radioactive soil and tomato plants were collected and shipped to a nuclear dump in Aiken, South Carolina. The U.S. settled claims by 522 Palomares residents for $600,000. The town also received a $200,000 desalinization plant. The motion picture Men of Honor, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Robert De Niro touched on this incident.
January 22, 1968 – 7 miles south of Thule Air Force Base, Greenland, a fire breaks out in the navigator’s compartment of a B-52 which crashes, scattering three hydrogen bombs on land and dropping one into the sea One is immediately recovered with some of the components disposed of on site. Another warhead was recovered in 1979. An August 2000 report suggests that the other bomb remains at the bottom of Baffin Bay.
Two US Navy nuclear submarines were lost in the sixties. The USS Thresher in 1963 and USS Scorpion in 1968. Both vessels were lost in deep water with all hands.
September 19, 1980 – An United States Air Force repairman doing routine maintenance in a Titan II ICBM silo in Arkansas drops a wrench socket which rolls off a work platform and falls to the bottom of the silo. The socket strikes the missile, causing a leak from a pressurized fuel tank. The missile complex and surrounding area is evacuated and eight and a half hours later, vapors within the silo ignite and explode with enough force to blow off the two 740-short ton silo doors and hurl the two megaton W53 warhead 600 feet. The explosion kills an Air Force specialist and injures twenty-one other USAF personnel.
