photo provided

photo provided

March 11, 1958, Florence, South Carolina

"A B-47E accidentally jettisoned an unarmed nuclear weapon without its fissile core at 15,000 feet, which impacted in a sparsely populated area 6- 1/2 miles east of Florence, South Carolina.The bomb's high explosive material exploded on impact, causing property damage and several injuries. The aircraft, which was heading to an undisclosed overseas base, returned to Hunter Air Force Base in Georgia without further incident."

So says a Web site produced by a watchdog organization that tracks accidents involving military nuclear devices. We all breathe a sigh of relief that, as Shakespeare voices, "All's well that ends well."

As one would expect, the Pentagon and the Air Force are tight-lipped when pressed for more details than a terse "Yes, we confirm an incident occurred." It's the military equivalent of the government's mantra, "mistakes were made."

Yet how could an ultra-sophisticated supersonic jet with some of the world's best trained pilots accidentally "lose" an atom bomb over South Carolina during the height of the Cold War? The reality is that we know little more today than we knew then. Here's what can be pieced together from published reports.

America's Marshall Plan for rebuilding western Europe touched a raw nerve in the Kremlin. When Truman pushed for a NATO alliance to thwart Red Aggression, Moscow countered with its own version, the Warsaw Pact. When Russian Bear bombers flew the length of our east and west coasts in an intimidating fashion, our bombers kept the pressure on their borders with flights from England and Spain.

In 1958 the Soviet Communist Party Congress ousted Nikolai Bulganin and replaced him with ultra-hardliner Nikita Khruschev. Meanwhile 90 miles from Miami the Marxist Fidel Castro holed up in the Sierra Maestra mountains to broadcast revolutionary tirades from Radio Rebelde with compatriot Che Guevara.

The tension of the Cold War prompted London graphic design artist Gerald Holtom to design the now famous peace symbol logo that debuted in February 1958 at Housman's Book Store in Caledonian Road. It was there that the nuclear disarmament newspaper called Peace News was published.

The curious peace symbol design is actually the semaphore version of the alphabet letters "N" and "D" superimposed to represent nuclear disarmament.

Our CIA was well-aware in 1958 of Castro's intent to destabilize the Cuban government, and the Red Menace reached into Guatemala and Haiti, as well. For the U.S.A.F. every day was "game day." General Curtis Lemay, commander of Strategic Air Command, kept bombers on alert. B-47s, B-58s, and B-66s were all supersonic aircraft capable of delivering nuclear destruction to an enemy thousands of miles away. Even on practice missions the pilots were aware that they could be diverted to their pre-assigned "real" mission.

Hunter Air Force Base near Savannah was a hub of strategic bomber activity. In 1958 Hunter was home to the famed 2nd Bomber Group, the oldest continual operating bomber group in the nation's military aviation history.This unit had been created in 1918 to serve in France under General Billy Mitchell. Forty years later they were still on the front lines of freedom. Bomber crews were briefed on the routine training mission and on the "divert" mission should the orders to divert come.

On Tuesday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. a B-47E Stratojet roared into the sky, banked left over the Atlantic and began a series of maneuvers at 40,000 feet over eastern South Carolina.At 4:19 p.m., reports the next day's Florence Morning News, a civilian pilot attempting to land at the Florence airport heard a brief radio interchange between a military jet and the Florence control tower. The military pilot reported that an unarmed explosive device had accidentally jettisoned.

Seconds later a powerful explosion occurred in the woods behind Walter Gregg's home in Mars Bluff, an outlying community near Florence.

Nearby Mount Mizpah Baptist Church was partially destroyed by the blast that created a 30 foot deep, 75 foot wide crater. No deaths were reported.

The Florence newspaper reports that motorist J.A. Sanders was traveling on U.S. Highway 301 several miles from the impact and that his auto was turned around completely in the road.

A former Air Force officer who requests anonymity says there was about as much chance of that atomic bomb detonating as there would have been of Fire Ball Robert's Pontiac race car being dropped from the air and jarring into gear and racing off driverless. In other words, there was an elaborate arming procedure that was deliberate and involved more than one person verifying codes and countdowns.

Still, this story of what happened accidentally in South Carolina went around the world.

The foes of nuclear weapons had a field day when the U.S.A.F. admitted that the March 11th accident was actually the second in three weeks involving a B-47 stationed at Hunter. On February 5, 1958, a B-47 and an F-86 Saberjet collided over the beach near Tybee, Georgia. The B-47 jettisoned its nuclear, unarmed device into the ocean —where presumably it remains to this day.

The military has a code name for these types of nuclear incidents -- Broken Arrow. Accidents occur in any line of work, but in the military these incidents go directly to the President's desk-- and you can be certain that "heads will roll."

No official mention of the pilots was made public. The detonator device that did explode was equal to about 6000 pounds of TNT. Florence newspaper reporter Bev Ballard reported that she crawled down into the crater and reemerged covered with a strange kind of goo. The Air Force set up geiger counters, but never once did these instruments emit a beep. Parts of the bomb casing were found 700 yards distance from the crater.

Today, civilian pilots can still discern a series of concentric circles emanating from the bomb blast.

The Department of Defense made estimates of damages and cut the checks.

Soon life was back to normal for the little town that received an unwelcome visitor in the form of an updated "Fat Man" A-Bomb that had been deliberated dropped upon Nagasaki 13 years previously.

The defense of freedom is not without risks. We salute the Cold Warriors who were on watch daily to deter the Red Menace.

(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. Visit his Web site at www.historyslostmoments.com.)