North Carolina's Nuclear Incident | The Strange Truth

[Music] Bomb number one was literally a Washington Monument right in the middle of a tobacco field, tail up in the air. The parachute that had deployed was strewn amongst the branches. We found that the weapon was in sufficiently safe condition to transport it back to the base. After it had been lifted up by a crane, it was put on a flatbed truck and rolled back to the base.

The day after, the Air Force said four things: there are two bombs, they were unarmed, they have both been recovered, and there's absolutely no danger. So, out of those four things, they were right about the fact there were two bombs.

As we were digging the hole, as we were getting deeper and deeper into the ground, one of the first things we found was the back of the bomb, which is the parachute pack. We had a huge crane come out there and lift the parachute pack out of the hole.

It seems to me it would be just easy; you just dig this bomb out, right? It might seem that way to you, but it wasn't. I was at the lip of the hole that we had been digging for several days, and one of my sergeants called up to me at the top and he said, "Lieutenant, we found the arm safe switch."

I said, "Great." And he says, "No, not great. It's on arm." When the arm safe switch is on arm, it clearly means that a passage has been made in the electronic circuitry to allow the signals necessary to cause the bomb to blow. To this day, I get goosebumps thinking about that.