The Time America Accidentally Dropped a Nuclear Bomb on a Family's Backyard

On March 11, 1958, a simple mistake aboard a B-47 bomber sent a 7,600-pound atomic bomb plummeting into a South Carolina family's garden, leaving a chilling, crater-sized reminder of the Cold War's ever-present, and sometimes clumsy, peril.

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A Light in the Cockpit

For the crew of the B-47 Stratojet bomber, it began as just another mission. On March 11, 1958, they were one of four bombers taking off from Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah, Georgia, destined for an overseas deployment in England. It was a routine flight profile for the Cold War, a constant, high-stakes shuffle of men and machinery across the globe. Tucked into the belly of their aircraft was a piece of that machinery: a Mark 6 atomic bomb, weighing over 7,600 pounds and carrying the destructive potential of the weapon dropped on Nagasaki. The bomb's nuclear core, its fissile plutonium pit, was not installed for the transport flight. Its conventional trigger, however, packed with thousands of pounds of high explosives, was very much live.

As the bomber climbed to 15,000 feet over rural South Carolina, a single fault light illuminated the cockpit. It indicated a problem with the bomb harness locking pin, the mechanism holding the massive weapon in place. The aircraft's navigator and bombardier, Captain Bruce Kulka, descended into the bomb bay to investigate. In the cramped space, unable to get a clear view of the pin, he reached for something to pull himself up. His hand found the emergency release pin. With a sudden, sickening lurch, the bomb detached and fell, punching through the thin aluminum bomb bay doors and silently arcing toward the unsuspecting landscape below.

The House on Mars Bluff

On the ground, in the small, unincorporated community of Mars Bluff, South Carolina, life was proceeding at a far quieter pace. In a small clearing behind the home of railroad conductor Walter Gregg, his six- and nine-year-old daughters, Helen and Frances, were playing with their nine-year-old cousin, Ella Davies. They were in a sturdy wooden playhouse their father had built for them. Suddenly, a deafening roar and a cataclysmic explosion tore the world apart. The bomb had landed in their vegetable garden, just yards from the playhouse.

The conventional TNT trigger detonated on impact. It was not a nuclear explosion, but it was immense. The blast obliterated the playhouse, heavily damaged the Gregg family home, and tore a crater into the earth 75 feet wide and 35 feet deep. Miraculously, no one was killed. Walter Gregg and his family sustained injuries from the flying debris and collapsing structures, but they all survived the impossible. When the dust settled, they were left staring at a perfectly circular chasm where their garden used to be. The U.S. Air Force had just bombed their backyard.

An Official 'Broken Arrow'

Air Force officials swarmed the quiet community, quickly cordoning off the area. Their primary concern was radiological contamination, but they soon confirmed the bomb's nuclear core was safely stored elsewhere. The incident was officially designated a “Broken Arrow,” the Pentagon’s surprisingly poetic term for an accident involving a nuclear weapon that does not create a risk of nuclear war. The Mars Bluff incident is one of 32 such accidents the United States has publicly acknowledged.

The Gregg family, left with a destroyed home and a massive hole in their property, eventually reached a settlement with the Air Force for $54,000. For a time, the crater became a minor tourist attraction. Visitors would come to gaze into the earthen scar, a bizarre monument to a moment when geopolitical terror became hyper-local. In 2008, fifty years after the blast, a historical marker was erected nearby. It stands as a quiet, official acknowledgment of the day the Cold War fell out of the sky and landed, with terrifying absurdity, right next to a child's playhouse.

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