How a Single Switch Prevented an American Hiroshima

When a B-52 carrying two hydrogen bombs broke up over North Carolina in 1961, three of four safety mechanisms on one bomb failed. The detonation of a weapon 250 times stronger than Hiroshima was ultimately prevented by a single, simple, low-voltage switch.

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The Longest Night Over Goldsboro

On January 24, 1961, the eight-man crew of a B-52G Stratofortress, call sign Gomorrah 1, settled in for another monotonous airborne alert mission. It was the height of the Cold War, and their job was to circle endlessly, a flying arsenal ready for a war they hoped would never come. In their bomb bay sat two Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs, each packing a destructive force over 250 times that of the device dropped on Hiroshima. Their vigil was a routine part of a massive deterrent strategy, but on this night, the routine would shatter, and the deterrent would nearly become the disaster.

While refueling mid-air, a crewman on the KC-135 tanker noticed a stream of fuel gushing from the B-52’s right wing. The pilots of Gomorrah 1 immediately disengaged and altered course for Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina. But the leak was catastrophic. The bomber rapidly lost 37,000 pounds of fuel in just a few minutes, severely compromising the wing's structural integrity. At an altitude of 10,000 feet, the aircraft entered an uncontrollable spin as the right wing tore away from the fuselage. The order was given: bail out.

A Cascade of Failures

As the massive plane disintegrated in the night sky, its deadly cargo was released. The two hydrogen bombs, each weighing over 10,000 pounds, began their separate, terrifying descents toward American soil. Five of the eight crewmen would successfully eject and survive; three would not. Below them, a quiet, rural landscape was about to become the site of one of history’s closest nuclear calls.

The Bomb That Followed Its Orders

For the first bomb, designated Bomb 1, the violent separation from its mothership was interpreted as a deliberate drop over an enemy target. As it tumbled through the air, its carefully designed arming sequence began. Its parachute deployed perfectly, slowing its descent and giving its internal mechanisms the time they needed to prepare for detonation. A barometric switch activated, timers began their countdowns, and charging circuits hummed to life. The bomb was methodically stepping through the checklist for Armageddon, a process designed to be unstoppable. The only things standing in its way were four safety mechanisms. Three of them failed.

The Bomb That Dug Its Own Grave

The second bomb’s journey was shorter and far more brutish. Its parachute failed to deploy, and it slammed into a muddy tobacco field at an estimated 700 miles per hour. The impact was so immense that the bomb disintegrated, scattering components across the field. The main thermonuclear stage, containing most of the uranium, buried itself so deep in the waterlogged soil that it was impossible to recover. To this day, it remains there. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers eventually purchased a permanent easement over the land, turning a North Carolina field into a de facto, unmarked nuclear tomb.

One Switch From Oblivion

While search crews grappled with the crater left by Bomb 2, the real crisis was unfolding where Bomb 1 had landed, its parachute tangled in the branches of a tree. An Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, led by Lieutenant Jack ReVelle, was dispatched to disarm it. What they found would remain classified for decades. The bomb was almost fully armed. One final step, the closing of a circuit to trigger the conventional explosives and start the nuclear chain reaction, had been prevented by a single component: a simple, low-voltage, ready-safe switch.

Years later, a 1969 report by Sandia National Laboratories physicist Parker F. Jones, declassified in 2013, laid the terrifying truth bare. He concluded the B-52 was not designed to carry the Mark 39s safely and that the bomb’s safety features were critically inadequate. His report contained a chilling summary:

It would have been bad news in spades. One simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe.

Had that one switch failed, the resulting explosion would have created a 100% kill zone for eight miles in every direction. Lethal radioactive fallout would have been carried by the jet stream up the Eastern Seaboard, blanketing Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. The event would have changed the course of American history.

A Secret Buried in a Field

The Goldsboro incident wasn't an anomaly; it was one of dozens of “Broken Arrow” events—accidents involving nuclear weapons—during the Cold War. But it stands as perhaps the most harrowing example of how close the world came to disaster, not from enemy action, but from a mechanical failure on a routine flight. The story reveals the immense trust placed in complex systems and the unnerving reality that sometimes, survival hinges on the simplest, most overlooked component. The bomb buried in the North Carolina mud is a permanent monument to that fact, a silent reminder that the difference between a quiet night and a nuclear dawn can sometimes be nothing more than the flip of a single, tiny switch.

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