Nearly seven decades ago, the US had a near-nuclear disaster on its own soil. On March 11, 1958, a B-47 Stratojet bomber was flying from Georgia to the UK for training. The plane was carrying a huge 7,600-pound Mark 15 nuclear bomb.
During the flight, the B-47 bomber suffered turbulence, and at the same time, a crew member was leaning over the bomb's release mechanism to check it. The bomb came loose and fell from the plane, according to the Super Sabre Society.
It fell over Mars Bluff, South Carolina. The bomb didn't explode because the nuclear part wasn't activated. But it still had regular explosives inside, and those went off when it hit the ground.
The blast created a massive crater - 35 feet deep and 75 feet wide. The explosion destroyed the home of a resident, Walter Gregg, and injured his wife and children.
The bomb had a 30-kiloton blast material, and had it exploded, the town of Florence, five miles away, would have been completely destroyed.
Most of the 30,000 people living in Florence County would have either been killed or seriously harmed by radiation, according to Army Times.
The Mars Bluff accident was not an isolated incident. A month before that, a US bomber accidentally dropped a hydrogen bomb into the water near Tybee Island, Georgia. This happened after the bomber collided with a fighter jet during a training exercise.
The bomb was never recovered, and experts estimate that if it had detonated, it could have caused a nuclear explosion 100 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
During the 1950s, there were about a dozen unplanned nuclear bomb drops in the US and nearby areas, and all these accidents happened during training flights or routine exercises. After this, the military decided to stop carrying nuclear bombs on training flights to prevent future accidents.
