As was the case with every nuclear weapon built, including the first ones, “safety rods” had to be pulled out of sockets on top of the bomb to make the explosion sequence begin. The safety rods, also called “Bisch rods,” were thin metal wands stuck in holes on the bomb and hard-connected to the ceiling of the bomb bay. When the weapon exited the bomb bay, it pulled out the rods, threw a switch, and automatically started the arming steps. The weapon prepared itself for a full nuclear explosion on the way down.
The B-52G number 58-187 took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina, at 10:52 a.m. on January 23.[211] It was a “Coverall” mission, in which the bomber’s task was to fly around for 24 hours with two thermonuclear bombs, locked and loaded. It was the peak of Cold War tension, and the Strategic Air Command was keeping one third of their airplanes in the air at all times, ready to strike. Major Walter Tullock was the Command Pilot, Captain Richard Rardin was the Senior Pilot, and First Lieutenant Adam Mattocks was the Third Pilot. They would take turns flying the plane during the long mission. An additional five airmen rounded out the crew. The flight was code-named Keep 19.
After 10 hours and 33 minutes, the routine, boring mission began to unravel. Tullock was at the controls for the second mid-air refueling. The B-52 was connected to a tanker plane by a hollow boom, through which JP-4 fuel was being pumped rapidly while the two airplanes were flying together, 30,000 feet off the ground. The Boom Operator on the tanker, looking out his rear window while steering the refueling pipe, noted a stream of fuel, about six feet wide, exiting the right wing on the B-52, behind the number three engine. This was not good. The width of the stream rapidly increased to 15 feet. At the same time, the Flight Engineer on the bomber noted that the fuel in main tank number three went from full to empty in 90 seconds. That is about 44,000 pounds of fuel. Major Tullock decided to cut the mission short and proceed back to Seymour Johnson.
The tanker shifted to a position behind the bomber so that its crew could see where the fuel was leaking. It appeared to be coming out of the wing, between number three engine and the fuselage. There was a real chance of the leaking fuel catching fire, so engines number five and six were shut down. This was starting to look like a full-blown emergency. Keep 19 was cleared to land at Seymour Johnson, but they were advised to make one orbit to make sure that the leaking fuel tank was empty. Tullock then lined up on Runway 26 and put the landing gear down. So far, so good.
Tullock cautiously lowered the flaps for landing. With this added stress on the wings, the crew heard disturbing cracking, thumping noises, and the plane started to barrel-roll. As the roll reached 90 degrees right, everyone heard the right wing explode, and the commander gave the bailout order over the interphone as the plane started breaking into large pieces. The electronics warfare officer and the gunner were not able to get out, and the radar navigator landed in a tree and died from a broken neck. The other five crewmen parachuted successfully.[212]
The two bombs also abandoned the stricken aircraft. As it fell, the bomber broke apart between the fore and aft bomb bays. The bomb in the aft bay twisted slightly clockwise and slid forward, leaving the plane nose-first as it slipped out of its chain. As it rolled out of the bomb bay, the arming rods were jerked out, and it began the detonation sequence with actuation of the Single Pulse Generator, MC-845. Next, the MC-834 Explosive Actuator fired, then the MC-543 Timer ran down and stopped. The MC-832 Differential Pressure Switch, detecting that the correct altitude had been reached, closed all contacts. Two more steps to go, and the bomb would make Goldsboro into a large inland bay. The MC-640 Low Voltage Thermal Battery was turned on and warmed up. Fortunately, the MC-772 Arm-Safe Switch had not been turned to ARM. That would have required the radar navigator to pull out a knob on his control panel using both hands, shearing off a copper retaining pin, and turn it to ARM. The bomb did not explode. It hit the ground nose-first, and its parachutes were found draped in a tree. The nose, which crushed as intended, was buried 18 inches deep in the soft ground.
The other weapon took the entire bomb rack with it as it fell away from the front half of the plane at about 7,000 feet. Somewhere on its way to the ground, the rack came loose and pulled out the arming rods, but the sequence in which the rods were pulled out was incorrect, so the parachutes did not deploy and no remaining steps in the deployment sequence were activated. The bomb did a free fall, nose down, reaching a terminal velocity of about 700 miles per hour. It landed in the middle of a plowed field and left a crater 15 feet in diameter and six feet deep. It made no explosion. Its MC-543 Timer had only run for 12.5 seconds when it hit the ground. The only way you could tell that a bomb had fallen from the sky was the crater it made.
The bomber itself rained down on the tiny farming community of Faro, North Carolina, over a swath two miles long, on a line starting at Big Daddy’s Road and running northwest to southeast, 1.5 miles south of where Big Daddy’s tees into Faro Road.[213] To the sparsely placed residents awakened by the house-shaking thumps of airplane sections hitting the ground, it was the end of the world. Flames were everywhere as the remaining jet fuel burned off.
Lieutenant Wilson, the navigator, landed in a swamp, feeling exhilarated at being alive. He stripped off his chute and started running toward civilization. He could see the porch light at a farmhouse in the distance. He jumped a fence, landed wrong, and broke an ankle, but still he hurried along. He made it up onto the porch, took a second to get his breath, and knocked. The farmer came to the door and opened it cautiously. Wilson appeared to be a homeless person with possible intention to rob. He was able to convince the man that he had, in fact, bailed out of the airplane that was burning in the distance. The farmer got his wife out of bed, and she made coffee so that they could sit in the kitchen and hear all about it.
Major Tullock, the command pilot, a World War II veteran who had flown everything from B-29s over Japan to B-36s, had never actually parachuted before. He found it curiously relaxing, right up until the point when he got hung up in a tree. It was so dark, he could not see anything, but he thought that the ground was just out of reach of his feet. He released the parachute harness and did a 20-foot free fall into the Nahunta Swamp. It was not clear which way to go to get out of the cold water, so he wrapped himself up in his parachute and waited for daylight, shivering and occasionally finding himself face down in the water.
211
At the time, this airbase was unofficially referred to as “Seymour Johansen, the Swedish Air Base.” I have no idea why.
212
The command pilot and senior pilot in a B-52 are shot out the top of the plane when they eject. The third pilot, Mattocks, was on his own to find an open door and jump. He has gone down in history as the only man who ever successfully abandoned a B-52 through the opening left when the command pilot ejected upward. After he landed, Mattocks, the only crew member of African heritage, was driven the 12 miles to Seymour Johnson AFB by a farmer and his wife, who dumped him out at the gate. Mattocks, who seemed to have lost his military identification, was immediately arrested for having stolen a government-owned parachute, which he still carried, wadded up in his arms. (His treatment was not as bad as it sounds. Without an ID, nobody was allowed on a SAC base. The only way the guards could pass him through the gate was to charge him with a federal crime.)
213
Search for Faro, NC, with Google Earth. It labels the intersection of Big Daddy’s and Faro as the spot, but this is incorrect. Go southwest from there on Big Daddy’s for 1.5 miles. Off the northwest side of the road is a clump of trees in a plowed field. West of those trees 114 feet is where the secondary component of the bomb is still buried. It is at 35.492817° lat, — 77.859307 lon.