Airborne Nuclear Weapons incidents
 

Reading over weekend about various Nuclear Weapons accidents since the original bucket of sunshine first saw the light of day.

Was well aware of the various Submarine nuclear accidents where missiles got removed by various "interested parties" after a sinking. In a way that was easier because well away from land and generally in deep water. The out of sight out of mind viewpoint.

Also aware of various incidents in reportage of airborne losses but reading further there just seemed to be a real gap.

As far as is in public knowledge there were no losses under the V Force while carrying, also little on any French losses.

USAF losses are generally in public domain but there seems to be nothing about Nuclear losses from USSR in an airborne capacity.

Now I am not sure whether this has been because they were covered up well but even by now I would suggest we would have known about them.

The other alternate is that Soviet (now Russian) Nuclear doctrine was to try and avoid loading Nukes on aircraft. Down to possibility of crashing or because of lack of control issues or there wasn't enough trust in Pilots.

Interested in viewpoints on this.

racedo,

"The Bombs of Palomares" is a good read !

Danny.

V-Force - nil to answer your question.

Danny, and Thule.

Not an airborne incident, but the book Command and Control by Eric Schlosser detailing the TitanII missile disaster at Damascus is a damn good read. Technicians ignore SOPs regarding procedures, resulting in an explosion that blows the warhead out of the silo. The entire chain of command is dissected in the book in dramatic style and found to be woefully inadequate.

2 serious accidents in the UK:

27 Jul 1957 at Lakenheath, when a B-47 crashed into the nuclear weapons storage area. There were 3 weapons inside, one of which was so badly damaged it was close to detonation.

28 Feb 1958 at Greenham Common, when a B-47 (Granville 20) jettisoned both external tanks which caught fire on hitting the ground, destroying a second B-47 and a hangar. The US would neither confirm nor deny that the second aircraft contained a weapon (or was being loaded at the time), but later surveys detected a radiation hotspot in the vicinity. Subsequent leukaemia cases in the area are allegedly higher than the normal average.

I live in the area and indeed this is often talked about. I know at least one family, who have always lived around here (I haven't) who are convinced they have been impacted and refer to the "secret crash".

Of course, we're not far from AWE either.

There was one…..;)

Pictures & Photos from Thunderball (1965) - IMDb

Btw, i'm sure that i read that the Spanish site is still cordoned off and needs to be further excavated and cleaned even after all these years.

The weapon that was dropped in the sea off the coast of Savannah has never been recovered.

I think you can be pretty (as in 100% ) certain that the USSR would never have voluntarily mentioned such events unless forced to because they occurred in internationally public view, or it suited them to do so for some reason. I certainly can't imagine how we'd have "found out" about them without being told.

Remember, they even tried to pretend Chernobyl hadn't happened - despite the plumes of unmistakable isotopes that clearly proved that it had.

I daresay there are hair-raising tales to be told from behind the Iron Curtain - lots more than from the West given Russia's less than careful approach to such things.

Not necessarily so. Whilst there may have been incidents in the manufacturing and storage process (we had our own after all) the Soviet military appear to have had an effective security and control system wrt their nuclear stores. Their philosophy appears to have been to restrict access (physical and operational) to the absolute minimum and entrust the handling and security of weapons to specially trained units. Neither have I read of any instances; other than weapons tests; when they flew with warshot weapons. I should be very interested if any one is able to refute this?

I feel that they probably approached their tasks with the same degree of commitment and professionalism as we did.

YS

Me neither. If there had been a Soviet equivalent to Chrome Dome, I'm quite certain they'd have made sure we knew about it!

2 racedo:

You wrote:
"..... and avoid loading Nukes on aircraft. Down to possibility of crashing...."


That's correct. I do not know, though, if many incidents and bomb losses in the US AF influenced the decision to avoid loading nukes on the bombers without a solid reason (like the Caribbean crisis, e.g.). After the Soviet Union fell apart, all the archives were made accessible and no mysteries remained. Indeed, many accidents with subs happened, but no serious ones with aircraft. See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...lear_accidents


You wrote:
"...or because of lack of control issues... "


definitely not, everything was (and is) OK with control.


You wrote:
"or there wasn't enough trust in Pilots."


Absolutely not. The pilots (and all other personnel dealing with this stuff) passed through extremely tough selection and were monitored permanently. As it was already correctly mentioned above, the number of experts involved was limited to absolute minimum, they all were highly qualified military pilots and engineers.

Other than the test drops, did any UK aircraft ever fly with a live weapon?

I assume you mean a conventional detonation, with possible spread of radioactive material, as opposed to a nuclear explosion, which I always understood to be virtually impossible to occur accidentally.

"Other than the test drops, did any UK aircraft ever fly with a live weapon?"

Unless this information has been officially released, wouldn't it be classified? Should we not be careful?

Thinking out loud, one wonders, for example, how weapons [if there were any] were retrieved from RAFG during the run-down.

Other than secretly, of course.

Nah, P-N will tell us everything we want to know.

With one eye on the street outside for the arrival of the van with blacked out windows, of course ;)

Its my understanding that V bombers never flew with live weapons (apart from on weapon tests of course). Or in Thunderball.


In fact, its possible that the only time they were ever loaded with live weapons was during the Cuban crisis..... but that it an assumption not a fact.

if you want your eyes opened about the USSR as was read Biohazard - "the Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World"

It was written by Ken Alibek, the person in charge of the programme and who defected when Yeltsin cam to power. You will find out why he left when Yeltsin became powerful and how Yeltsin covered up such an incident on a city wide scale.

Truly scary stuff. if they do this with bugs what do they do with isotopes?