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Loading... Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon (edition 2008)by Norman Leach (Author)
Work InformationBroken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon by Norman S. Leach
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On the eve of Valentine's Day, 1950, an American Strategic Air Command B-36 bomber-loaded with an atomic bomb-flew into the frozen night on a simulated bombing run from Alaska to San Francisco. The engines suddenly failed on this notoriously unreliable aircraft and the crew, before parachuting into the rugged terrain of northern British Columbia, set the autopilot to take the aircraft far out to sea. Years later the wreckage of the bomber was accidentally discovered on a remote northern British Columbia mountaintop hundreds of miles from its presumed location deep beneath the Pacific Ocean. Did an atomic bomb lie undetected for a number of years in coastal northern British Columbia? Or was the nuclear weapon jettisoned and destroyed only miles from Canadian shores, becoming the world's first dirty bomb? Was this America's first lost nuclear weapon? Finally, and most baffling, did one of the missing crewmembers, the last man aboard, attempt to pilot the doomed aircraft back to its Alaskan base? A Discovery Channel special on this topic aired in November 2006 with strong media coverage. The special is expected to air several more times in 2007 and 2008. This compelling true-life mystery will resonate with readers in a world in which a new nuclear arms race is shaping the geopolitical climate. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)363.17Social sciences Social problems and services; associations Other social problems and services Public safety programs Hazardous materialsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Were we at war with the US? No, it was a mystery for years what had happened to the flight of this huge plane. How could any of the debris end up there? For an estimate of size, the tail alone was the equivalent of a five-story building and to get it in and out of the hangar, or even sometimes for take-off, the nose had to be lifted...in the hangar so the tail could dip down enough to get out, and on the tarmac to get enough speed for lift, because it was carrying so much weight, the weight of the very heavy atomic bomb, a very big bomb, "Fat Boy". Maybe not a complete one, but the equivalent weight and position. This was in the time of the "Cold War". These facts we may never have known if Mr. Leach had not written this book. The crash discovery was made 40 years after the event, but where was the bomb? Did it explode as a "dirty bomb"?
Because we had moved to Smithers, BC after the discovery of this crash site, it really intrigued us. It took so many years to be discovered, but that's not surprising because it was totally in the opposite direction than it should have been. The good news is that several of the crew survived the terrible weather they had parachuted into on Princess Royal Island.
This book is exceptionally well-written, Norman S. Leach wrote this with a passion and a lot of research and it immediately becomes a great non-fiction search and recovery, the product of an amazing piece of history between the flight from a frozen Alaska night, Valentine's Day, 1950 and during the years of the "Cold War". ( )