Hmm, should we start calling you SR71 Blacbird?
the U.S. arsenal never contained a 24-megaton device, as far as we know.
As far as we
knew, no unexploded thermo-nuke had ever fallen out of the sky and landed in a North Carolina
But srsly, you appear to be spot on about the weapon's yield. While frankly impossible for me to square with the source document, I noticed that the source document referred to this bomb as a both a Mark 39 (or MK-39). After additional searching, I came across a web-site mother load of nuke info. (nuclearweaponarchive.org). One page purports to list all US nuclear weapons. Scrolling down, I found a entry for a MK-39-- listed as having a yield of 4mt.
http://http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html
My original quandary rose from the source document, which states in the very first sentence of "The Report":
"In one of these incidents, a B-52 Bomber had to jettison a 24 megaton bomb over North Carolina. The bomb fell in a field without exploding."
That is verbatim.
The author of the report is "Dr Ralph Lapp, a physicist involved in the Manhattan Project." The "source document" is the title page of Lapp's report, together with comments from "Parker F Jones, the supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia national laboratories." As specific as Jones' criticisms of Lapp are, and as relatively more knowledgeable as Jones appears regarding the incident, he does not challenge that first sentence.
One additional point of interest: in lines7-8 (down from the caption which reads: "
The Report"), Lapp once again refers to a "24 megaton warhead." Jones corrects Lapp in the right hand margin, saying "bomb not warhead." I have no idea, however, if the US ever had single bomb with multiple warheads 1961.
The largest thermonuclear bomb ever tested was a Soviet test ..."
The so-called "Tsar Bomb" (in the West, "Big Ivan" in the SU), tested in 1961, the same year as this incident. The specs I've read in several places put the yield at 50mt (some say 57). Interestingly, the bomb's design yield was 100 mt, but one of the fusion bombs, designed as one stage of this weapon's 3-stages, was replaced with a lead bomb for testing in order to reduce the fall-out (but the test "proved" the 100 megaton design). Meaning of course that a weapon designed for half the yield could have been lighter and smaller.
Estimates put the bomb's weight at approximately 27 tons, length at 8 meters and the circumference at 2.1 meter. It was dropped from a Russian propeller driven TU 95 Bomber on a parachute.
As you said, I found nothing to indicate any public knowledge of a US bomb any larger than a test of 15mt
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/TsarBomba.html (citing many sources, including Janes Defense Weekly.
What I read about this near-debacle indicated clearly that two bombs were involved, one of which came near to being detonated.
Here I'm still a little cornfused. I assume by "read" you mean the two linked articles? I ask only because the articles purport to be based on the newly declassified source document- -which itself says nothing of two bombs. I am not saying it wasn't two, as the articles state (as I originally noted), just noting another discrepancy between the source document and the articles.
... it would have been the worst single-incident catastrophe in the history of the United States.
If we're speaking of man-made catastrophes, pretty hard to disagree. Could be true either way. Good thing no one will ever know.
All I can really say is 'holy fuck'.
