Broken Arrows: The Lost Bombs of the Cold War

On 14 February 1950, a Convair B-36B plane crashed in northern British Colombia after jettisoning a Mark 4 nuclear bomb. This was the first such nuclear weapon loss in history. The Goldsboro B-52 crash was similar. Information newly declassified in 2013 showed that one of the bombs came very close to detonating which would have irreparably changed the North Carolina coastline.

The 1966 Palomares B-52 crash occurred on 17 January 1966, when a B-52G bomber and a KC-135 tanker collided. The damage and radiation still exists to this day. In 1968 a B-52 bomber near Thule Air Base in Greenland crashed onto sea ice in North Star Bay. The explosives aboard to detonated and the nuclear payload to rupture and dispersed, resulting in radioactive contamination.