1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash
The 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash was an accident that occurred near Goldsboro, North Carolina, United States, on 24 January 1961. A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress carrying two 3.8-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs broke up in mid-air, dropping its nuclear payload in the process. The pilot in command, Walter Scott Tulloch, ordered the crew to eject at . Five crewmen successfully ejected or bailed out of the aircraft and landed safely; another ejected, but did not survive the landing, and two died in the crash. Information declassified since 2013 has showed that one of the bombs was judged by nuclear weapons engineers at the time to have been only one safety switch away from detonation, and it being "credible" to imagine conditions under which it could have detonated. Accident The aircraft, a B-52G, was based at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, and part of the Strategic Air Command's airborne alert mission known as "Cover All" (a predecessor to Operation Chrome Dome), which involved a continuous flow of staggered, nuclear-armed bombers on a "ladder" route into the Canadian Arctic and back. Around midnight on 23–24 January 1961, the bomber had a rendezvous with a tanker for aerial refueling. During the hook-up,