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, the tanker crew advised the B-52 aircraft commander, Major Walter Scott Tulloch (grandfather of actress Elizabeth Tulloch), that his B-52 had a fuel leak in the right wing. The refueling was aborted, and ground control was notified of the problem. The B-52 was directed to assume a holding pattern off the coast until the majority of fuel was consumed. However, when it reached its assigned position, the pilot reported that the leak had worsened and that of fuel had been lost in three minutes. The aircraft was immediately directed to return and land at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. As the aircraft descended through on its approach to the airfield, the pilots were no longer able to keep it in stable descent and lost control. An entire wing of the aircraft apparently was lost. The pilot in command ordered the crew to abandon the aircraft, which they did at . Five men landed safely after ejecting or bailing out through a hatch, one did not survive his parachute landing, and two died in the crash. The third pilot of the bomber, Lt. Adam Mattocks, is the only person known to have successfully bailed out of the top hatch of a B-52 without an ejection seat. The crew's final view of the aircraft was in an intact state with its payload of two Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs still on board, each with yields of 3.8 megatons. Sometime between the crew ejecting and the aircraft crashing, the two bombs separated from the aircraft. The pilotless aircraft broke up in the air shortly after the crew ejected. Witnesses reported seeing two flashes of red light, suggesting that fuel explosions contributed to the breakup of the plane. At 12:35 a.m. EST on January 24, the remaining pieces of the B-52 impacted with the ground.