Found: Dummy Capsule

“Probably not a UFO, right?”

for God’s sake…please don’t go poking that thing with a sharp stick now!

[B]UFO? Lost Cold War nuclear weapon? Canada’s navy to investigate object found off B.C. coast[/B]

Army records indicate diver may have found bomb lost by the U.S. Air Force in 1950

By George Baker, Andrew Kurjata, CBC News Posted: Nov 04, 2016


A Mark IV “Fat Man” bomb went missing after a plane crash over northwest B.C. in 1950. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Royal Canadian Navy is sending a ship to determine if a diver has discovered “the lost nuke” — a Mark IV bomb that went missing after a U.S. bomber crashed off B.C.'s North Coast in the early days of the Cold War.

Sean Smyrichinsky found the mystery object during a recent diving trip near Banks Island.

“I got a little far from my boat and I found something that I’d never ever seen before,” he recalled. “It resembled, like, a bagel cut in half, and then around the bagel these bolts molded into it.”

When he got back to the ship he tried to describe the object to his crew.

“I came out from the dive and I came up and I started telling my crew, ‘My god, I found a UFO. I found the strangest thing I’d ever seen!’”

The ‘lost nuke’

Smyrichinsky started asking around and was told the story of Convair B-36B, a U.S. Air Force bomber that crashed off B.C. in 1950.

In a book published earlier this year, historian Dirk Septer traces the story of that flight, summarizing it in publicity documents as a Cold War drama:

"Just before midnight on February 13, 1950, three engines of a US Air Force B-36 intercontinental bomber caught fire over Canada’s northwest coast. The crew jumped, and the plane ditched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Almost four years later, the wreck of the bomber was found accidentally in a remote location in the coastal mountains of British Columbia, three hours’ flying time in the opposite direction of where it was supposed to have crashed.

“After years of silence, the United States finally admitted to losing its very first nuclear bomb; the incident was its first Broken Arrow, the code name for accidents involving nuclear weapons. But was the bomb dropped and exploded over the Inside Passage, or was it blown up at the aircraft’s resting place in the mountains?”

The lost bomb was a Mark IV. As soon as Smyrichinsky looked it up on Google Images, he recognized it as the object he had found.

“It was a piece that looked very much like what I saw,” he said. “The plane that was carrying the bomb, it crashed 50 miles south of where I found that object.”

“What else could it possibly be? I was thinking UFO, but probably not a UFO, right?”

Probably not nuclear

Major Steve Neta of the Canadian Armed Forces confirmed the location of Snyrichinsky’s find does coincide with the site of the 1950 crash.

Neta also said records indicate the lost bomb was a dummy capsule, and so there is little risk of the object being a nuclear weapon.

“Nonetheless, we do want to be sure and we do want to investigate it further,” he said.

The Royal Canadian Navy ship deployed to investigate should arrive in the area in the next few weeks.

being 60 years old i’d first want to know if I could salvage it and sell it for profit!! even being inert it should be worth a lot of money? say 2.5 mill for a quick sell?

well, the crash of the B36 off the BC Coast might have not had potential to accidentally cause a nuclear detonation…this 1961 B52 crash in North Carolina came mere millivolts from a catastrophic detonation in Goldsboro

[B]Document Reveals 1961 Nuclear Close-Call over North Carolina[/B]

September 24, 2013 By Christopher Klein

A newly declassified document reveals how close the United States came to accidentally detonating a nuclear bomb on North Carolina in 1961.

On January 23, 1961, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber patrolled the night skies over the Atlantic Ocean. It was three days after the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy, and with the Cold War in a full freeze, American bombers such as this one carrying a pair of 3.8-megaton Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were kept airborne at all times to defend the country. Many hours had passed since the B-52 took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base near Goldsboro, North Carolina, when something suddenly went wrong on the routine Strategic Air Command training mission.

Fuel started to gush out of a leak in the plane. Nineteen tons of fuel were lost in just two minutes. As the pilot attempted to limp back to Goldsboro, the right wing suddenly sheered from the plane. The bomber plunged into a tailspin and began to break up. Six of the eight crewmen ejected. As the plane spiraled to earth, the bombs, each of which were 260 times more powerful than the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, broke loose and plunged to the ground as well. Five of the men who were ejected parachuted to safety; the other three crew members were killed in the crash.

When responders arrived on the crash scene 15 miles from Goldsboro, they discovered one of the nuclear weapons had landed in a field with its deployed parachute tangled in the branches of a tree. The second bomb had anything but a soft landing. It became entombed after striking the ground at nearly 700 miles per hour.

While the fact that the crippled B-25 was carrying two nuclear weapons was widely reported—“Jet Carrying A-Weapons Crashes” blared a banner headline in the Greensboro Record—the military kept secret just how close the accident came to causing a nuclear catastrophe. Although the Air Force at the time reported that there was no danger of a nuclear explosion, a newly declassified document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by author and investigative journalist Eric Schlosser as part of the research for his new book, “Command and Control,” reveals otherwise.

First published by the Guardian last Friday, the secret two-page document was written in 1969 by Parker F. Jones, the supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia National Laboratories. In a nod to the 1964 Stanley Kubrick film “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” Jones wryly entitled his memo “Goldsboro Revisited or: How I Learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb.” While the nuclear devices that fell near Goldsboro were equipped with safety devices to prevent accidental explosions, much as revolvers have safety catches, Jones reported that three of the four safety mechanisms in the bomb that had deployed its parachute had become unlocked during its plunge to the ground. Two were rendered ineffective by the breakup of the aircraft, and a third was set off by the fall. Fortunately, the last failsafe, a low-voltage switch, worked. According to the Guardian, “When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity.”

“One simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe,” Jones wrote. The safety supervisor also asserted that had the mid-air breakup of the B-52 caused an electrical short to the switch, “a postulate that seems credible,” it could have resulted in a nuclear explosion. Jones concluded that “The Mk 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52” and that the devices designed to prevent an accidental detonation were “not complex enough.” The near-disaster resulted in more stringent safeguards being placed on America’s nuclear arsenal.

Had one of the bombs involved in the 1961 crash detonated, nuclear experts estimate that the blast would have instantly killed everything within an 8.5-mile radius. Lethal radiation fallout could have traveled up the Atlantic seaboard and stretched as far north as New York. As Jones understatedly wrote in his secret document, “It would have been bad news—in spades.”

how the planet has avoided an accidental but horribly catastrophic nuclear detonation is a pure miracle if there ever was one

I worked on several navy DSV jobs. The DSV TURTLE and SEA CLIFF first. Later the RUWS that was the later model of the CURV that retrieved the H bomb in the Med in’65. Back when going to sea was fun…

[QUOTE=c.captain;192412]well, the crash of the B36 off the BC Coast might have not had potential to accidentally cause a nuclear detonation…this 1961 B52 crash in North Carolina came mere millivolts from a catastrophic detonation in Goldsboro[/QUOTE]

And again in 1968, the B52 at Thule. That one might still be out there.

well, the most provocative, ingenious, stellar comment of my gcapt. history didn’t post last time. I hope for the benefit of mankind this has been fixed this time but I say the safeguards are way more robust than ‘articles’ we read. but to paraphrase: a 700 mph impact would possibly deform the belyrium implosion sphere to where it’d be in failure mode at ignition.

[QUOTE=jimrr;192449]well, the most provocative, ingenious, stellar comment of my gcapt. history didn’t post last time. I hope for the benefit of mankind this has been fixed this time but I say the safeguards are way more robust than ‘articles’ we read. but to paraphrase: a 700 mph impact would possibly deform the belyrium implosion sphere to where it’d be in failure mode at ignition.[/QUOTE]

well sure, Marty, but it only takes 88 mph if we can channel the implosion into the flux capacitor. I’ve always found that prefabulated amulite gives a superior deformation to belyrium without placing undue stress on the spurving bearing. Unless you want to reverse the nonreversable tremie pipes… but I don’t think anyone wants to go that far, amiright? I mean, we don’t want to risk frying the interocitor.