The 1958 Mars Bluff B-47 nuclear weapon loss incident was the inadvertent release of a nuclear weapon from a United States Air ForceB-47 bomber over Mars Bluff, South Carolina. The bomb, which did not have its fissilenuclear core installed at the time of the accident, impacted with the ground, and its conventional high explosives detonated. The explosion injured six people and caused damage to several buildings in the area. The Air Force was sued by the family of the victims, who received US$54,000, equivalent to $570,270in 2023.[1][2]
About 25 minutes after takeoff, Air Force Captain Bruce Kulka, who was the navigator and bombardier, was summoned to the bomb bay area after the captain of the aircraft, Captain Earl Koehler, had encountered a fault light in the cockpit indicating that the bomb harness locking pin did not engage. Kulka made his way to the weapon, which hung on a single shackle. While attempting to insert a steel pin through the shackle, which would prevent the weapon from falling should the electrical lock release, Kulka inadvertently caused the weapon to unhook, and the Mark 6 nuclear bomb fell onto the bomb bay doors of the B-47, forced the doors open, and fell out of the plane at 15,000ft (4,600m) of altitude. Kulka managed to not fall out of the open bomb bay. After the pilot heard a rumble, and the co-pilot saw a shock wave from the ground, the bomb bay-doors were closed, and the pilot informed his flight leader that he was aborting the mission and returning to base.[6][7]
The implosion bomb was "unarmed", in the sense that it did not have its nuclear core installed, and thus could not trigger a nuclear detonation. It still contained around two tons of high explosives, however, and these detonated upon impact with the ground, doing damage to six nearby houses and a church, while leaving a crater about 70 feet (21m) wide and 35 feet (11m) deep.[6]
The back of the Gregg house after the detonation.
The exact location of the bomb's impact was in the woods behind the house of a railroad conductor, Walter Gregg, who had served as a paratrooper during World War II. The bomb detonated about 50 yards (46m) from his garage, where Gregg was working, and about 100 yards (91m) from his house, where his wife, Effie, was working. In between the two buildings, the Greggs' three children and a niece were playing. Walter Gregg described the accident to The New York Times shortly afterwards:
About five seconds after I saw it go over, there was an explosion. It blew out the side and the top of the garage just as my boy ran inside with me. The timbers were falling around us. There was a green, foggy haze around us and then a big black cloud of smoke. It lasted about thirty seconds. When it cleared up, I looked at the house. The top was blown in, and a side was blown off. I saw the other children on the other side of the house — about 100 yards from where the bomb hit. It sounded just like a big artillery shell or a big conventional bomb. I feel real lucky, for me and my family.[8]
The garage and the house were heavily damaged by the detonation, collapsing around the Greggs. Walter Gregg suffered a deep cut in his right arm, and his wife suffered a cut on her head caused by a dislocated piece of plaster. The Gregg children were hit by flying debris, causing mostly superficial injuries. Their niece required surgery to repair internal bleeding.[1][8] The Gregg family had about a dozen hens, which were killed. Other children in the area collected "jagged chunks of shiny metal" (debris from the bomb), most of which was later retrieved by Air Force police. After the explosion, another B-47 surveyed the area from above, taking photographs and logging details, and observed ambulances converging on the scene. Air Force technicians cordoned off the area and checked for radioactive contamination from the unenriched uraniumtamper of the weapon. It was determined that the level of contamination was low-enough that simple washing could remediate the area. The final decontamination was carried out by representatives of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and Los Alamos National Laboratory.[6]
The incident made domestic and international headlines; a US government account called its coverage "extensive at time".[6][8][9]The New York Times reported at the time that "it was the first time that an atomic bomb was known to have been dropped in the United States outside nuclear testing grounds", however in fact an accident involving the jettison of a nuclear weapon had occurred only a few weeks earlier in Georgia, and it was at least the 13th serious accident involving an American nuclear weapon at that point. Much of the coverage emphasized the relative safety of U.S. nuclear weapons, explaining that an accidental nuclear explosion could not be easily triggered.[8][6]
The Gregg family sued the United States Air Force (USAF), and received $54,000 (equivalent to $570,270in 2023) some five months after the accident. According to Gregg, the crew of the B-47 was transferred overseas immediately after the accident, and he later received letters of apology from them.[1][3]
The historical marker erected near the site in 2008.
Following the accident, steps were taken to more securely fasten nuclear weapons while aboard US aircraft, so that it was more difficult to jettison them, accidentally or intentionally.[5] A historical marker was erected near the site of the impact by the Florence City and County Historical Society in 2008. Fragments of the bomb are on display at Florence County Museum.[10]
"Fat Man" was the codename for the type of nuclear weapon the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. The first one was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium manufactured at the Hanford Site and was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.
Little Boy is the name of the type of atomic bomb used in the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. The bomb was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group, and Captain Robert A. Lewis. It exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ) and had an explosion radius of approximately 1.3 kilometers which caused widespread death across the city. The Hiroshima bombing was the second nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test.
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion reactions, producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.
Blue Danube was the first operational British nuclear weapon. It also went by a variety of other names, including Smallboy, the Mk.1 Atom Bomb, Special Bomb and OR.1001, a reference to the Operational Requirement it was built to fill.
Ivy King was the largest pure-fission nuclear bomb ever tested by the United States. The bomb was tested during the Truman administration as part of Operation Ivy. This series of tests involved the development of very powerful nuclear weapons in response to the nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union.
The Tybee Island mid-air collision was an incident on February 5, 1958, in which the United States Air Force lost a 7,600-pound (3,400 kg) Mark 15 nuclear bomb in the waters off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia, United States. During a night practice exercise, an F-86 fighter plane collided with the B-47 bomber carrying the large weapon.
Sometime after midnight on 14 February 1950, a Convair B-36B, United States Air Force Serial Number 44-92075 assigned to the US 7th Bombardment Wing, Heavy at Carswell Air Force Base in Texas, crashed in northwestern British Columbia on Mount Kologet after jettisoning a Mark 4 nuclear bomb. This was the first such nuclear weapon loss in history. The B-36B had been en route from Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska, to Carswell AFB, more than 3,000 miles southeast, on a mission that included a simulated nuclear attack on San Francisco.
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits. Characteristics of nuclear fusion reactions make possible the use of non-fissile depleted uranium as the weapon's main fuel, thus allowing more efficient use of scarce fissile material such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239. The first full-scale thermonuclear test was carried out by the United States in 1952, and the concept has since been employed by most of the world's nuclear powers in the design of their weapons.
Wassaw Sound is a bay of the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of Georgia, United States near Savannah at the mouth of the Wilmington River.
The Mark 39 nuclear bomb and W39 nuclear warhead were versions of an American thermonuclear weapon, which were in service from 1957 to 1966.
The Mark 6 nuclear bomb was an American nuclear bomb based on the earlier Mark 4 nuclear bomb and its predecessor, the Mark 3 Fat Man nuclear bomb design.
The United States Armed Forces uses a number of terms to define the magnitude and extent of nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents in order to reduce the time taken to report the type of incident, thus streamlining the radio communications in the wake of the event.
Mars Bluff is an unincorporated community in Florence County, South Carolina, United States that bears the distinction of having been inadvertently bombed with a nuclear weapon by the United States Air Force.
On 21 January 1968, an aircraft accident, sometimes known as the Thule affair or Thule accident, involving a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52 bomber occurred near Thule Air Base in the Danish territory of Greenland. The aircraft was carrying four B28FI thermonuclear bombs on a Cold War "Chrome Dome" alert mission over Baffin Bay when a cabin fire forced the crew to abandon the aircraft before they could carry out an emergency landing at Thule Air Base. Six crew members ejected safely, but one who did not have an ejection seat was killed while trying to bail out. The bomber crashed onto sea ice in North Star Bay, Greenland, causing the conventional explosives aboard to detonate and the nuclear payload to rupture and disperse, resulting in radioactive contamination of the area.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to nuclear technology:
The 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash was an accident that occurred near Goldsboro, North Carolina, United States, on 24 January 1961. A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress carrying two 3.8-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs broke up in mid-air, dropping its nuclear payload in the process. The pilot in command, Walter Scott Tulloch, ordered the crew to eject at 9,000 ft (2,700 m). Five crewmen successfully ejected or bailed out of the aircraft and landed safely; another ejected, but did not survive the landing, and two died in the crash. Information declassified since 2013 has shown that one of the bombs was judged by nuclear weapons engineers at the time to have been only one safety switch away from detonation, and that it was "credible" to imagine conditions under which it could have detonated.
The 1950 Rivière-du-Loup B-50 nuclear weapon loss incident refers to loss of a nuclear weapon near Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec, Canada, during the fall of 1950. The bomb was released due to engine troubles, and then was destroyed in a non-nuclear detonation before it hit the ground.
Operation Snow Flurry was an operation by the United States Air Force that consisted of B-47 Stratojet bombers flying from South Carolina to England to perform mock bomb drops. Data would be received on the ground from the planes, and this would later be used to track the accuracy of the mock drops. Aircraft involved would then fly to Strategic Air Command airfields in North Africa. In 1958, a B-47 en route from Hunter Air Force Base accidentally dropped a Mark 6 nuclear bomb over Mars Bluff, South Carolina, which was not nuclear-armed but there was a conventional explosives detonation which damaged nearby buildings. Live bombs were carried on board in case the planes had to activate for a wartime situation, but had their fissile nuclear cores removed and could not cause a nuclear detonation.
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