Lost Nuke

"A story seemingly drawn out of a Hollywood action script...Gripping stuff."--Canada's History Just before midnight on February 13, 1950, three engines of a US Air Force B-36 intercontinental bomber caught fire over Canada's northwest coast. The crew jumped, and the plane ditched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Almost four years later, the wreck of the bomber was found accidentally in a remote location in the coastal mountains of British Columbia, three hours' flying time in the opposite direction of where it was supposed to have crashed. After years of silence, the United States finally admitted to losing its very first nuclear bomb; the incident was its first Broken Arrow, the code name for accidents involving nuclear weapons. But was the bomb dropped and exploded over the Inside Passage, or was it blown up at the aircraft's resting place in the mountains? This Cold War-era tale follows the last flight of bomber 075 and attempts to unravel the real story behind more than fifty years of secrecy, misdirection, and misinformation.

This book tells the true story of nuclear weapons and nuclear components that have been lost or distroyed by U.S. and Soviet sources. Many of the myths surrounding these lost/destroyed nuclear weapons are dispelled by the contents of this book.

Just before midnight on February 13, 1950, three engines of a US Air Force B-36 intercontinental bomber caught fire over Canada's northwest coast. The crew jumped, and the plane ditched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The fact that the huge aircraft had been carrying a Mark IV nuclear bomb was kept carefully hidden. Three years later, the wreck of the bomber was found by accident in a remote location in the coastal mountains of British Columbia, three hours' flying time in the opposite direction of where it was supposed to have crashed. How did it get there? Did somebody remain on board and fly it there? Only after years of silence did the United States finally admit to losing a nuclear bomb; the incident was the first ever "Broken Arrow," as accidents involving nuclear weapons have come to be known. But was the bomb dropped and exploded over the Inside Passage or was it blown up at the aircraft's resting place in the mountains? This Cold War-era tale borders on fantasy as Dirk Septer follows the last flight of Bomber 075 and attempts to unravel the real story behind more than 50 years of secrecy, misdirection and misinformation.

I have written a 93,000-word manuscript that has two principle characters and both are historically accurate people. I have taken some liberties in their individual experiences but only for the sake of the story. It is a story I have shared only with my family because of certain restrictions that no longer apply. It is an historical fiction piece of work that will generate an eye-opening experience for the reader. My editor feels it is a story that must be told. It exposes the lies told to us by our four Presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. For those who grieved over family lost in Vietnam it gives closure. This story is filled with real life experiences of two brave warriors dedicated to solving a decades old mystery. Both suffered wounds and both continued the quest. There is comedy, romance and tragedy found between the covers. The two warriors display wisdom, compassion, strength, humility and loyalty. They accept what is freely given but never ask for what should be given freely. They reach for lofty goals and share the struggle for success. One character is a black man born in Columbus, Georgia in 1895. He was tired of the racial persecution and at sixteen he left America for France. The man worked his way there by engaging in very unique occupations. He makes it to France and joins his adopted counties military when world war one breaks out. His several near-death experiences as an infantry-man are culminated with his becoming an aviator and an ace fighter pilot. After the war, he becomes a successful night club owner. When the second world war breaks out he becomes a spy for the allied army. At the end of the war he is asked to help France become a nuclear power. He and a second pilot fly to the island of Tinian. Using guile and deception they abscond with the unused A-Bomb developed by the Manhattan Project.In the process of returning it to France, it is stolen during a fueling stopover in Vietnam. The pilot is then given the responsi

In The Day We Lost the H-Bomb, science writer Barbara Moran marshals a wealth of new information and recently declassified material to give the definitive account of the Cold War’s biggest nuclear weapons disaster. On January 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the sleepy Spanish farming village of Palomares during a routine airborne refueling. The explosion killed seven airmen and scattered the bomber’s payload–four unarmed thermonuclear bombs–across miles of coastline. Three of the rogue H-bombs were recovered quickly. Tracking down the fourth required the largest search-and-salvage operation in U.S. military history. Moran traces the roots of the Palomares incident, giving a brief yet in-depth history of the Strategic Air Command and its eccentric, larger-than-life commander, General Curtis LeMay, whose massive deterrence strategy kept armed U.S. bombers aloft at all times. Back on the ground, Moran recounts the myriad social and environmental effects of an accident that spread radioactive debris over hundreds of acres of Spanish farmland, alarmed America’s strategic allies, and damaged Spanish-American diplomatic relations. As the American military floundered in its attempt to keep the story secret, the events in Spain sometimes took on farcical overtones. Constant global media hype was fueled by the hit James Bond movie Thunderball, with its plot about an atomic weapon lost at sea. In addition, there were the unwanted attentions of a rusty- hulled Soviet surveillance ship and even awkward public relations stunts, complete with American diplomats in swim trunks. The Day We Lost the H-Bomb is a singular work of military history that effortlessly and dramatically captures Cold War hysteria, high-stakes negotiations, and the race to clean up a disaster of unprecedented scope. At once epic and intimate, this book recounts in stunning detail the fragile peace Americans had made with nuclear weapons–and how the specter of imminent doom forced the United States to consider not only what had happened over Palomares but what could have happened. This forgotten chapter of Cold War history will grip readers with the tension of that time and reawaken the fears and hopes of that dangerous era.

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.

Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed. Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.

A nonfiction account of the first loss of an atomic bomb by the American military, which took place over the coast of B.C. in February, 1950. On a cold, windy February night off the coast of B.C. in 1950, a new B36 United States Air Force bomber experienced catastrophic engine failures on three of its six engines. Before the airplane crashed into a mountainside, the crew dropped their atomic bomb over the Pacific Ocean into Hecate Strait. The aircraft was carrying one of the first two Mark-4 atomic bombs ever loaned to the USAF by the Atomic Energy Commission. In addition to a very heavy atomic bomb, the craft carried seventeen crewmembers. The U.S. military, very concerned about the loss of seventeen men, one bomber and one atomic bomb, immediately launched a huge search operation. Many of the crew were rescued by fishermen and the Royal Canadian Navy, but the aircraft, full of secret equipment, was not found. Broken Arrow No.1 examines exactly what happened in the preparation for the mission, the mission itself, the accident, the loss of the bomb, the search, and eventually the destruction of the bomber four years later.