Broken Arrow

Adam Moore describes how he suffered a serious brain injury and recovered with medical help and family support.

Unclassified accounts of known nuclear weapons accidents.

On the eve of Valentine's Day, 1950, an American Strategic Air Command B-36 bomber-loaded with an atomic bomb-flew into the frozen night on a simulated bombing run from Alaska to San Francisco. The engines suddenly failed on this notoriously unreliable aircraft and the crew, before parachuting into the rugged terrain of northern British Columbia, set the autopilot to take the aircraft far out to sea. Years later the wreckage of the bomber was accidentally discovered on a remote northern British Columbia mountaintop hundreds of miles from its presumed location deep beneath the Pacific Ocean. Did an atomic bomb lie undetected for a number of years in coastal northern British Columbia? Or was the nuclear weapon jettisoned and destroyed only miles from Canadian shores, becoming the world's first dirty bomb? Was this America's first lost nuclear weapon? Finally, and most baffling, did one of the missing crewmembers, the last man aboard, attempt to pilot the doomed aircraft back to its Alaskan base? A Discovery Channel special on this topic aired in November 2006 with strong media coverage. The special is expected to air several more times in 2007 and 2008. This compelling true-life mystery will resonate with readers in a world in which a new nuclear arms race is shaping the geopolitical climate.

This “unnerving exposé” of a lost American nuclear bomb “is a valuable contribution to the history of the navy, the cold war, and nuclear weapons” (Booklist). On December 5th, 1965, the USS Ticonderoga was on its way from Vietnam to Japan, practicing nuclear combat procedures along the way. A young pilot from Ohio strapped into an A-4 Skyhawk bomber for a routine simulated mission. But after mishandling the maneuver, the plane and its pilot sunk to the bottom of the South China sea, along with a live B43 one-megaton thermonuclear bomb. A cover-up mission began as rumors of sabotage began to circulate. The incident, known as a ‘Broken Arrow’, was kept under wraps for twenty-five years. The details that emerged caused a diplomatic incident, revealing that the U.S. had violated agreements not to bring nuclear weapons into Japan. Broken Arrow tells the story of Ticonderoga’s sailors and airmen, the dangers of combat missions and shipboard life, and the accident that threatened to wipe her off the map and blow US-Japanese relations apart. For the first time, through previously classified documents, never before published photos of the accident aircraft and the recollections of those who were there, the story of carrier aviation’s only ‘Broken Arrow’ is told in full.

Broken Arrow was established in 1902 as a railroad terminal on the Missouri, Kansas, & Texas Railroad. It became a trade center for cattle, cotton and corn. In the early days, roses were planted in homes and along streets, and the use of a local spring for city water gave Broken Arrow the title of "City of Roses and Pure Water." The population was stable until 1950, when the rapid growth of the city made it the fifth largest in Oklahoma. Broken Arrow: City of Roses and Pure Water is a collection of vintage images that illustrates the development of the town from an agricultural trade center to a prosperous city of diversified, light industry and a center of education. Featured in this book are the busy streets, parades and festivals, softball tournaments, tourist attractions, and recent civic improvements that make Broken Arrow unique. Historic photographs of downtown stores and residential homes depict the earliest growth patterns of the city and show the development of Broken Arrow as a community.

In 1961, a Strategic Air Command bomber, a B-52, disintegrated in mid-air near Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina. Two H-bombs, each hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, were thrown out, and started the arming process. This is the true story of that mission and the aftermath that could have been the worst man-made disaster in history. Eye-witnesses to the crash have unique stories to tell, as well as the last surviving crew member who made a miraculous escape, without an ejection seat. Also included is the story of the man who deactivated both 3.8 megaton bombs. And part of one of the bombs is still buried there, in a field near Faro, North Carolina.

The Apache chief, Cochise, and Tom Jeffords, government scout, succeed in achieving peace after the army fails

When a B-3 stealth bomber goes down, only the pilots know for sure what happened. Both ejected. Both survived. And now both will do anything to recover the "broken arrows"--the military code name for a lost nuclear weapon--even kill each other. Because one broken arrow is a nightmare. Two is doomsday. Based on the feature film starring John Travolta and Christian Slater.