US East Coast Nuclear disaster averted…. in 1961 under JFKs new presidency. (Significant, also, because story was obscured in the media frenzy regarding Benghazi deception still raging when this declassified story was released 12 months later)
theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bomb-north-carolina-1961
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LONDON — A U.S. hydrogen bomb nearly detonated on the nation’s east coast, with a single switch averting a blast that 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, the supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia national laboratories said that one simple, vulnerable switch prevented nuclear catastrophe.
Two hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on Jan. 24, 1961 after a B-52 bomber broke up in flight. One of the bombs apparently acted as if it was being armed and fired – its parachute opened and trigger mechanisms engaged.
“One simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe!” Jones wrote, adding that it could have been “bad news – in spades” if the switch had shorted.
It is featured in his new book on nuclear arms, “Command and Control,” which reports that through FOI he discovered that at least 700 “significant” accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968.
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