How Did the C.I.A. Lose a Nuclear Device?

[Pivo]

A plutonium-packed generator disappeared on one of the world’s highest peaks. The mission demanded the utmost secrecy.

A team of American climbers, handpicked by the C.I.A. for their mountaineering skills — and their willingness to keep their mouths shut — were fighting their way up one of the highest mountains in the Himalayas.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... =url-share

[RedRoxx44]

The most famous incident of a nuclear warhead dropping over the US was the
1961 Goldsboro, North Carolina, crash, where a B-52 bomber released two MK39 hydrogen bombs, narrowly avoiding a catastrophic detonation thanks to safety switches, with one bomb's uranium core still missing today. Another significant event was the 1958 Tybee Island, Georgia, loss, where a B-47 dropped a nuclear bomb into the ocean, which was never recovered. These "Broken Arrow" incidents highlight near-misses during the Cold War when nuclear weapons were accidentally released or lost.

This is from AI when I asked " dropped warheads over the US" so color me not surprised that things go " missing" or " unrecoverable" by our illustrious government ( and not just ours).

[xsproutx]

I was involved in a missing nuke incident, although it wasn't missing for too long. I was at Minot and we were doing an exercise simulating dropping some nukes. This involved getting the B-52s loaded with a loadout of nukes and conventional and then "waiting for orders". This involves a security detail for each plane, front and back, and I had the joy of walking wingtip to wingtip for a week or so. Exercise ends, I PCS a day after and go on leave. Get to my new duty station and it turns out we accidentally left a warhead on a missile before getting put back in storage, loaded it on a plane again, let it sit on the tarmac for days with no guard (because they didn't realize it had a nuke) and then that plane flew to another base halfway across the country and only then did they realize they had a nuke on board.

Heads rolled and I was stoked not to be at Minot when that stuff rolled downhill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Unit ... s_incident

[AZLumberjack]

@xsproutx
Been to Minot a few times, always glad to leave.

[Alston_Neal]