
A U.S. Bomber Crashed on Greenland with 4 Nukes aboard in 1968 - johnshades
https://www.fastcompany.com/40518772/thule-accident-nuclear-weapon-lost-greenland-us-denmark
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CapitalistCartr
As I've mentioned before, we dropped nukes all over the place until we changed
our policy about 1970, after dropping four nukes on Franco's Spain. We did a
lot of crazy things during the Cold War. These stories seem eternally popular
on HN.

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skj
Sounds legit.

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skj
To be clear, "dropped" is different than "lost". When someone describes
dropping a bomb they're describing an intentional explosion.

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CapitalistCartr
Nope, I mean dropped as in the first definition, as in fell out of the
airplane, plummeting pell-mell towards the Earth

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Stratoscope
When people read about "dropping four nukes on Franco's Spain" they will think
it means deliberately dropping four nukes with the intent of exploding them.

You may have had a different meaning of "dropped four nukes" in mind, but when
the common everyday meaning of a phrase is one thing, and you mean a different
thing, it helps everyone if you can be clear and specific about what you're
actually referring to.

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Armisael16
I would think most people would be aware that the US has never nuked Spain and
reconsider that initial interpretation.

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pelagicdev
Or that time a U.S. Bomber crashed on U.S. soil (North Carolina) with 2 nukes
on board during a training mission; one of which was armed!

Link:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash)

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mrep
Even if it was armed, it would be unlikely to go off. Here is a quote from a
missile silo accident: [https://www.armytimes.com/news/2017/11/04/details-of-
south-d...](https://www.armytimes.com/news/2017/11/04/details-of-south-dakota-
nuclear-missile-accident-released/)

"Incredible as it may sound to a civilian, Hicks said he spent no time
worrying about the thermonuclear warhead. He had been convinced by his
training that it was nearly impossible to detonate a warhead accidentally.
Among other things, he said, the warhead had to receive codes from the launch-
control officers, had to reach a certain altitude, and had to detect a certain
amount of acceleration and G-force. There were so many safeguards built in,
Hicks later joked, that a warhead might have been lucky to detonate even when
it was supposed to."

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totalZero
Some folks who knew more than you and I seemed to think there was potential
for a nuclear disaster.

> In 2011, Lt. Jack Revelle, the bomb disposal expert responsible for
> disarming the device, claimed "we came damn close" to a nuclear detonation
> that would have completely changed much of eastern North Carolina

> In a now-declassified 1969 report, entitled "Goldsboro Revisited", written
> by Parker F. Jones, a supervisor of nuclear safety at Sandia National
> Laboratories, Jones said that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage
> switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe", and
> concluded that "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the
> airborne alert role in the B-52".

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melling
And Bayes Rule was used to find one of the bombs:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash#Weap...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash#Weapons_recovery)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory)

