Today in 2007 at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, munitions crews mistakenly loaded a B-52H bomber with 6 nuclear-armed Advanced Cruise Missiles, each carrying a live W80-1 warhead with a variable yield of 5 to 150 kilotons. The plane sat on the ramp overnight without any special security guards.
Amazing
Before takeoff early the next morning, the B-52’s radar navigator closely inspected only the 6 missiles on the right-wing pylon, all of which properly carried dummy warheads. The pilot signed the manifest listing 12 unarmed ACMs as cargo without conducting a required final verification inspection.
This was supposed to be a routine fight supporting the Air Force’s March 2007 decision to retire the ACM by ferrying the missiles stored at Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, for disposal (by August 2007, more than 200 unarmed ACMs had been safely transported to Barksdale). It wasn’t.
The B-52 departed Minot at 8:40 AM on August 30 and landed at Barksdale at 11:23 AM (both local times). The crew signed out and went to lunch. Again, there were no special sentries. It wasn’t until 8:30 PM, when munitions crews began unloading the aircraft, that one person noticed something amiss.
Approximately 36 hours had elapsed from the time the armed missiles were mistakenly removed from their bunker at Minot to the time an airman noticed them aboard the B-52 in Barksdale. In all that time, not a single person realized they were missing or that they had been left unguarded at both bases.
As a result of this BENT SPEAR incident, the secretary of the Air Force and US Air Force chief of staff resigned, 7 senior USAF officers were relieved of their commands or positions and reassigned, and 65 airmen lost their Personnel Reliability Program certifications to work with nuclear weapons.
I miss consequences.
fair enough like
At least some heads rolled. Not like Gabbard exposing an undercover CIA agent.
Gabbard is LITERALLY working for Putin. Treason isn’t a big enough word.
You're not lying. I could say prostitution, but that's assuming money changed hands. I'm not sure that part would be true.
Well, it's not like they accidentally released a hydrogen bomb. Which has happened more than once. "Command and Control" by Schlosser has the details.
No, it's not as bad as those catastrophic accidents. But it could have been, especially if the aircraft had caught fire or crashed and no one in the air or on the ground was aware it was carrying six thermonuclear weapons.
I agree. Reading that book was a shocker for me.
And somebody thought no one would ever know...