It was thought at the time that the recovery of the nuclear weapon would be swift, as it had been ditched in an area of shallow water which wasn't particularly secluded, yet this would not prove to be the case. Weapons Policy: No weapons are allowed on Ault Field or Seaplane Base. Whidbey wonderland. The dock landing ship Whidbey Island was decommissioned Friday after nearly 38 years of service. Poorly placed temperature sensors indicated the reactor was cooling rather than heating. An exothermic reaction in the vessel generated enough steam to burst the container. A B-50 jettisoned a Mark 4 bomb over the St. Lawrence River near Riviere-du-Loup, about 300 miles northeast of Montreal. While the extent of the damage will vary, the steps to protect yourself from . Strikes against major cities will not generate massive amounts of fallout like military targets do because air-burst warheads would be used. Unfortunately, the plane had also been carrying four nuclear warheads, at least one of which was never recovered and is thought to have been sealed in the ice after the explosion melted it and it subsequently refroze. In the resulting fire, the bomb's high-explosive material exploded, killing nineteen people from the crew and rescue personnel. And Qs post included the grammatically incorrect use of the word suppose, missing the letter d. Sure enough, Qs very next post drew attention to the missing d, inferring that the d stood for Donald., So was Air Force One near Whidbey Island at the time? In the aftermath, Department of Energy officials, and the Dow Chemical officials who ran the facility, did not admit the extent of the catastrophe, or the radiation danger, to local officials or the media. Unloaded weapons must be brought to the gate with a valid driver's license and military identification card. The fourth arming devicethe pilot's safe/arm switchwas not activated, preventing detonation. So sensitive was this incident that the military covered it up for decades. The bomber crashed 7 miles (11km) from the airbase, rupturing the bomber's bomb bay and causing the conventional explosives in the four B28FI thermonuclear bombs to detonate, fragmenting and spreading the radioactive primary and secondary components across a large area. A USAF B-52 bomber caught fire and exploded in midair due to a major leak in a wing fuel cell 12 miles (19km) north of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina. The War Zone studied data from flight tracking app FlightRadar24 and found just two objects flying near Skunk Bay at that timean Alaska Airlines flight descending from the northwest that would have been out of frame of the camera, and an air ambulance flying north that was exactly in the path of the camera at the exact time the picture was snapped. [6] The accident was categorized as a Broken Arrow, that is an accident involving a nuclear weapon but which does not present a risk of war. After six hours of flight, the bomber experienced mechanical problems and was forced to shut down three of its six engines at an altitude of 12,000 feet (3,700m). Certain events were not suppose [sic] to take place, it sent Q Anon followers into overdrive with theories and clues. Conspiracy theories like the Whidbey Island Missile work because the human brain is extremely susceptible to both confirmation bias and pareidolia, the phenomenon where we see patterns and shapes where none exist. The Navy and the Whidbey Island base bothconfirmed to local news that there were no submarines or Navy planes in the area, and that the base has no ability to fire a large missile. Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, home of Air Force Global Strike Command which is essentially the command and control of air and land leg of our nuclear forces. On May 22, 1968, the American nuclear submarine the USS Scorpion was on its way back to Norfolk, Virginia from a three month training exercise in the Mediterranean Sea and was 320 nautical miles south of the Azores when it suddenly vanished along with its two nuclear warheads. A large area was subjected to radioactive contamination and thousands of local inhabitants were evacuated. After sharing with Cliff Mass he did a blog on it. This all seems rather unbelievable, yet even in this day and age of enhanced security and nuclear awareness this can still happen. And how do they know this? A year later, on 25 Sep 1943, the land plane field was named Ault Field, in memory of CDR William B. Ault, missing in action in the Battle of the Coral Sea. The fire spread through the ventilation system as the containment ability of the facility became compromised, with plumes of radioactive smoke sent high into the outside air. Missile launch? NAVSHIPSO NAVSEA Shipbuilding Support Office Norfolk Naval Shipyard Code 284, Bldg 705 Portsmouth, VA 23709-1020 (757) 967-3484 (757) 967-2957 (FAX) Many cases of disappearing nukes happened over water. In some cases, the planes with their nuclear cargo never even made it into the air. This claim stands in stark contrast to a recently declassified 1966 congressional testimony of former assistant secretary of defense W.J. Nevada Test Site Oral History Project. It had a length of 10 ft 2 in (3.10 m), a diameter of 2 ft 7.5 in (0.80 m), and a weight of 1,243 lb (564 kg), and it carried a Mark 7 nuclear warhead with a yield of 32 kilotons. On September 21, 1942, Captain Cyril Thomas Simard stood on the steps of the brand-new Building 12 and read orders officially commissioning Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and, in Navy parlance, 'the watch was set'. It also bears witness to the consequences of the nuclear tests on the civil populations of Bikini and the Marshall Islands, in terms of population displacement and public-health issues. The flight navigator/bombardier was checking the locking harness on the massive (7,600 pounds (3,447kg)) Mark 6 nuclear bomb when he accidentally pushed the emergency release lever. However, to look at the picture and declare it has to be a missile because it looks like a missile is to ignore a great deal of other evidence that its not a missile. So if its not a missile, whats the object in the picture? The main island, Tahiti, more than 1,000km away, is also . "Two-Sixty Press. The nonnuclear materials, used to detonate a bomb's radioactive fuel, were from obsolete weapons being disassembled. The weapon's high explosives detonated upon impact with a bright flash visible. Richard L. Miller. The Mystery of New York's Renegade Subway Psychic, Forget About What We Know About Roswell: It's What's Missing About the Case That We Need to Look For, Archeologists Discover Another Secret Corridor Inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. The excess heat led to the failure of a nuclear cartridge, which in turn allowed uranium and irradiated graphite to react with air. Keep in mind that there are also secondary and tertiary target in every state that are too numerous to list. [48] Only the two pilots survived. To date, the US reportedly has lost 11 nuclear weapons, and there are around 50 nuclear devices unaccounted for worldwide. . Contaminated ice and debris were returned and buried in the United States. The U.S. Navy conducted a three-month search involving 12,000 men and successfully recovered the fourth bomb. To make matters scarier, experts at the time were concerned that the extreme depths involved might actually set off the bomb. A USAF B-47 bomber jettisoned a Mark 15 Mod 0 nuclear bomb over the Atlantic Ocean after a midair collision with a USAF F-86 Sabre during a simulated combat mission from Homestead Air Force Base, Florida. There is dispute over exactly where the incident took placethe U.S. Defense Department originally stated it took place 500 miles (800km) off the coast of Japan, but Navy documents later show it happened about 80 miles (130km) from the Ryukyu Islands and 200 miles (320km) from Okinawa. Missing nukes are often referred to as Broken Arrows, defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of the weapon which does not result in the threat of nuclear war. These broken arrows occurred much during the Cold War between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s, which was a tense time of unprecedented nuclear weapon stockpiling and transportation of such devices. Vanishing, unaccounted for nukes are still apparently very much a thing. Of course, Q Anon is all about special pleading and secret knowledge. More than 40 nuclear weapons tests took place on or near the Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific between 1946 and 1958, including a bomb test on Runit Island. The explosion occurred in an unvented vessel containing unreacted calcium, water and depleted uranium. USAF B-52 on airborne alert duty encountered a severe winter storm and extreme turbulence, ultimately disintegrating in midair over South Central Pennsylvania. The damage to Staten Island would be catastrophic. The plane, about halfway into the 50-minute flight, went down in Mutiny Bay off Whidbey Island, about 30 miles northwest of downtown Seattle and about. Any airport with a runway over 10,000 feet would also be targeted, as these airports could be used to disperse nuclear bomber aircraft such as B-52's, B-2's, and B1-B. Image courtesy of U.S. Navy photo, Nardel Gervacio. For other lists, see Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents. But virtually nothing is known about whether such bombs can explode spontaneously. Generally speaking, major cities are not considered primary targets. The nuclear weapon was not recovered. The biggest targets by far are Malmstrom, Minot, and Warren Air Force Bases which are home to our land-based nuclear deterrant - the Minuteman ICBM's. These three bases and the surrounding missile fields which are spread out up to 30 miles from the bases will sustain hundreds of ground burst nuclear blasts. The plane would go on to sink five kilometers (16,400 feet) into the ocean depths and would resist all efforts to locate it. It would later be revealed that the weapon had had a high probability of accidentally detonating, as five of the six onboard safety devices had failed, leaving only a single switch that had saved the entire area from being consumed in a devastating nuclear explosion. The weapon's HE [high explosive] detonated on impact. The bomb contains many dangerous elements, including the highly unstable lithium deuteride, as well as the over 400 pounds of TNT designed to act as a catalyst for the plutonium trigger to implode and thus create a nuclear explosion, and these have been slowly degenerating from being submerged for so many years. 16-29 October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis occurs A tense stand-off begins when the United States discovers Soviet missiles in Cuba. Fearing that severe weather and icing would jeopardize a safe emergency landing, the weapon was jettisoned over the Pacific Ocean from a height of 8,000ft (2,400m). Atoms are tiny units that make up all matter in the universe, and energy is what holds the nucleus together. It wasnt even close. It would be somewhat comforting for Americans to think that these are incidents which have only occurred in the middle of the ocean or in faraway lands, but the alarming fact is this is not the case, with 7 of the 11 missing nukes disappearing on U.S. soil. Loss of two nuclear reactors and either 32 or 48 warheads. If the missile went up, it must have come down, or at least parts of it must have come down. These projects have contributed to a robust nuclear presence in. Peterson AFB/NORAD/Cheyenne Mountain Complex are also a major target. Naval Radio Station Cutler **MAJOR TARGET**, -Los Alamos National Lab **MAJOR TARGET**, -Brookhaven National Lab **MAJOR TARGET**, -Piketon Uranium Enrichment Facility or Portsmouth Facility, -Over the horizon radar, Christmas valley, -Raven Rock Mountain Complex and Fort Ritchie **MAJOR TARGETS**, -No significant targets though Massachusets and nearby New London,CT have targets, -No major targets, though nearby New Hampshire has one, -Bangor Submarine Base and Brementon Naval Base **MAJOR TARGET**, -Jim creek Naval Station **MAJOR TARGET**. Could it have been a submarine? UFO? Or there could just be an explosion that scattered uranium and plutonium all over hell. ", "Mystery explosion at Nenoksa test site: it's probably not Burevestnik", "US intel report says mysterious Russian explosion was triggered by recovery mission of nuclear-powered missile, not a test", Annotated bibliography from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear related Issues and Incidents, Russian Northern Fleet: Sources of Radioactive Contamination, Bibliography of military nuclear accidents from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues, Official List of accidents involving nuclear weapons from the UK Ministry of Defence, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) website, International Atomic Energy Agency website, Canadian Centre for Occupational Health & Safety, 20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War, Trinity Atomic Bomb by U.S. National Atomic Museum, Nuclear and radioactive disasters, former facilities, tests and test sites, Nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents, Nuclear and radiation accidents by death toll, Nuclear and radiation fatalities by country, 1996 San Juan de Dios radiotherapy accident, 1990 Clinic of Zaragoza radiotherapy accident, Three Mile Island accident health effects, Thor missile launch failures at Johnston Atoll, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, International Association of Emergency Managers, International Disaster and Risk Conference, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_military_nuclear_accidents&oldid=1136762258, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from June 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2018, Articles with French-language sources (fr), Articles with dead external links from January 2017, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0.