Burning Dropping of Unarmed Nuclear Devices

The following four nuclear device related incidents were told to me over a beer at McGuire’s bar by a local engineer training to be a Nuclear Incident Investigation Technician during my first visit to Davis Monthan in the mid 1980’s. As the title spelt N.I.I.T. we assumed that it was just another example of some harmless limey baiting bar humour so never paid much attention.
I was more intrigued because he mentioned four locations that I had either visited or had worked near to and had no recollection of hearing about these reported incidents.
The central theme of the conversation was on how fail safe nuclear devices were because you can drop them or burn then without triggering the device unless it had been already armed. There would also have been no significant radioactive contamination resulting from these incidents.
I have no knowledge of these devices so would be interested in any other opinions.
Four of the locations discussed and the ones which I recognised were Florence South Carolina in the USA and Torrejon in Spain plus Upper Heyford & Greenham Common in the UK. I’m assuming that these incidents occurred between 1950 to 85 so should be within living memory.
The Florence incident came about because a flight engineer had been working on the aircraft in flight and had released the device that fell several thousand feet onto a local home stead.
The Torrejon incident related to devices being dropped into the sea.
The Upper Heyford incident related to a device being dropped off of its loading trolley onto the concrete during normal aircraft loading operations.
The Greenham Common incident related to an aircraft fire that contaminated a large area of the airfield with magnesium oxide dust. This being due in part to the explosions which resulted from the fire been fought with water and that had carried the oxide dust a great distance in a steam cloud.
Apparently this type of aircraft contained a large amount of Magnesium in its construction and again if I have recorded this conversation accurately then just 15 pounds of Magnesium would produce 25 pounds of oxide dust. Not being a chemist either I don’t know how accurate any of this would be etc.

Maybe someone here can find out how much of a Stratojet (B-47) structure was magnesium. I didn't know mag oxide was toxic

Having read your post, I'm not sure what your main question is.

Yes, for decades nuclear weapons, particularly airborne types, have been designed and built to prevent a nuclear 'explosion' when un-armed. The latter term usually referring to the absence of the 'pit' or 'capsule' from the interior of the implosion device. What cannot be protected against completely, is detonation of the surrounding high explosives at high levels of impact such as a bomb being dropped from high altitude onto sea or land and it is this that can cause destruction of the weapon and some level of radiation contamination.

Quite by chance, last night, I was reading the official summary report of the Palomares (Torrejon) incident that occurred on 17 January 1966 and became a world news topic. Some details of this accident and many others can be found by searching on-line.

The Greenham Common incident was discussed in the AiX thread. This was due to an underwing fuel tank jettisoned from an in-flight B47 landing on an alert area of the base with (allegedly) nuclear armed aircraft.

The Florence, SC incident was significant in that it caused loss of life, injury and damage to civil property due to the HE detonation.

The Upper Heyford incident I have not heard of but am intrigued and will see what I can find.

The Upper Heyford incident occurred during the mid 1980's. A B61 'Silver Bullet' Nuke, rolled off a loading trolley, whilst being shipped from the WSA. It had not been secured correctly. This resulted in a 'Broken Arrow' incident being declared. This information was relaid to me by base personnel who were there at the time and remember the incident. Other than this no official information is available.

Before my time there but allegedly the same happened in the SSA at Bruggen, so the stories went!

Flying wrote:

The Upper Heyford incident occurred during the mid 1980's. A B61 'Silver Bullet' Nuke, rolled off a loading trolley, whilst being shipped from the WSA. It had not been secured correctly. This resulted in a 'Broken Arrow' incident being declared. This information was relaid to me by base personnel who were there at the time and remember the incident. Other than this no official information is available.

Thanks; that is 'recent' and probably still classified. Given the strict handling regulations and training of USAF Munitions crews following checklists this type of incident is rare and probably occurred during aircraft loading.

Trains&Planes;127856 wrote:

Before my time there but allegedly the same happened in the SSA at Bruggen, so the stories went!

Not allegedly! It happened in 84 when a containerised weapon slid off of a transportation trolley within the SSA. That was caused by a lack of securing devices (known problem) and personnel failures. The B of I (redacted) was available for a while via the MOD website until that was recently revamped. I knew two of the people involved.

PETERTHEEATER;127871 wrote:

Thanks; that is 'recent' and probably still classified. Given the strict handling regulations and training of USAF Munitions crews following checklists this type of incident is rare and probably occurred during aircraft loading.

PTE, if only that were true. They are not quite so squeaky clean as we were! There have been some "major" coc***s in the last few years including air transfer (within the US) of live weapons that were supposed to have been disarmed.

I commend to forum users “Lightning Up” the autobiography of AVM Alan White CB AFC FRAeS (Pen and Sword ISBN 978 1 84884 021 8, published 2009). I found it a most interesting read, and it so happens that one page deals with the Bruggen “occurrence” mentioned above. AVM White was then deputy commander of RAF Germany, so this is ‘horse’s mouth’ stuff. No date is given, but it must have been c1983 (confirmed by an above reference to 1984). The MoD publicly ‘owned up’ to this and other similar accidents and a newspaper article (which, infuriatingly, eludes me at the moment) was published in the 1990s listing them.
I was a little surprised to read of Jaguars being equipped with two WE177s, having understood that policy throughout the RAF was one nuke per aircraft per sortie, with the only exception to have been Skybolt. However, in the AVM’s own words:

“Bruggen represented the serious side of our Cold War defences. Four Jaguars were kept permanently on standby there, each loaded with two tactical nuclear bombs slung under their wings. The hardened aircraft shelters in which they were housed were themselves inside security fences guarded by armed RAP police in watch -towers and at the electronically operated gates across the taxiway leading out of the readiness dispersal. The police had orders to shoot any pilot attempting to taxi out if they had not received the requisite and required coded clearance. By my time in Germany the RAF had been handling nuclear weapons for over twenty-five years without risk or mishap. Orders and instructions were clear and tight, and ground-handling equipment proven - or so we thought.
“One evening I was telephoned by Bruggen’s Station Commander, John Thompson, to say that he had a problem: a bomb being returned from servicing at Aldermaston (nestling in its specially designed carrying-case) had not been properly secured on the low-loader lorry that was transporting it from the delivering Hercules to storage in the Bruggen bomb-dump (the Hercules had been late in arriving, the Station Armament Officer had been called away to deal with something else, and the corporeal driver, on duty longer than he thought he would be, decided that he could get away without strapping the case onto the low-loader as was clearly required by regulations). The bomb, or rather the carrying-case with the bomb in it, had slid off the low-loader as the driver turned a corner and had hit the ground. The case had burst and some slight damage appeared to have been done to the casing of the bomb.
“To cover the possibility of a leakage of radiation John Thompson had sensibly called a 'practice' incident to enable him quietly to establish a cordon on the Station at a safe distance. The laid down procedures required me to acquaint the British Embassy at Bonn immediately of any type of nuclear incident, no matter how trivial, and this I did. The following morning I went down to Bonn to have a word with my point of contact there, the Minister, Christopher Mallaby. Christopher, later HM Ambassador in Bonn, and after that in Paris, was primarily interested in knowing how quickly we could remove the problem from Germany. He was not very happy when I told him that nothing could be done until experts had been whistled up from Aldermaston, and had had time to determine if the bomb could be moved safely.
“There followed a fraught period while it was painstakingly pored over and the warhead carefully X-rayed. Nobody was taking any chances and there were a considerable number of consultations between the experts on the spot and Aldermaston. Finally, after some three weeks of testing and teeth-sucking the bomb was deemed safe for moving, loaded onto a Hercules and shipped out. As it turned out, there never had been any risk of radiation leakage. However, nerves in the Embassy stayed a little frayed until I was able to report that the bomb was well out over the North Sea; the real fear was perhaps not so much of a leakage of radiation, but rather of a leakage to the German Press. The subsequent Board of Inquiry into the incident recommended disciplinary action against six servicemen.
“Incidentally, the especially designed cases in which the bombs were transported had been tested for strength as a condition of their procurement. The requirement was that they survive undamaged a drop of twenty-five feet onto a concrete surface. They had passed this test perfectly but no one seemed to have thought of testing them with a mock-up in them of the heavy article they were designed to contain.”

By my time in Germany the RAF had been handling nuclear weapons for over twenty-five years without risk or mishap.

I am aware that the date is not precise but were nuclear weapons being handled in 2 TAF in the late 1950s?