英国卫报：1961年1月23日，美军一架B52在北卡上空误丢2 ...

美国记者Eric Schlosser根据信息公开法获取了这一事件的解密文件并提供给卫报，1961年1月23日，美军一架B52轰炸机误将2枚氢弹（每枚400万吨TNT当量，是广岛核爆的260倍）在北卡州Goldsboro上空投掷，其中1枚的起爆装置已经启动，四个起爆开关有3个最终打开，只有最后一个低压开关没有被触发。一旦起爆，华盛顿纽约费城巴尔的摩这片区域将化为乌有。美国政府竭力否认这一事故，桑迪亚国家核武实验室的专家认为，一个简单的电机装置避免了这场大灾难。这一事故发生八年后，调查员Parker F Jones在撰写报告书时发现，这一发生时间仅仅在肯尼迪就任总统的三天后的事故，当时最后控制起爆的开关很可能因为短路而失效最终导致爆炸。调查员给报告书起名为“我是怎么学会不信任氢弹的”（讽刺）。

英文报道见：
http://www.theguardian.com/world ... north-carolina-1961
A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.

Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".

Writing eight years after the accident, Parker F Jones found that the bombs that dropped over North Carolina, just three days after John F Kennedy made his inaugural address as president, were inadequate in their safety controls and that the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt, leading to a nuclear burst. "It would have been bad news – in spades," he wrote.

Jones dryly entitled his secret report "Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb" – a quip on Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical film about nuclear holocaust, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

美国记者Eric Schlosser根据信息公开法获取了这一事件的解密文件并提供给卫报，1961年1月23日，美军一架B52轰炸机误将2枚氢弹（每枚400万吨TNT当量，是广岛核爆的260倍）在北卡州Goldsboro上空投掷，其中1枚的起爆装置已经启动，四个起爆开关有3个最终打开，只有最后一个低压开关没有被触发。一旦起爆，华盛顿纽约费城巴尔的摩这片区域将化为乌有。美国政府竭力否认这一事故，桑迪亚国家核武实验室的专家认为，一个简单的电机装置避免了这场大灾难。这一事故发生八年后，调查员Parker F Jones在撰写报告书时发现，这一发生时间仅仅在肯尼迪就任总统的三天后的事故，当时最后控制起爆的开关很可能因为短路而失效最终导致爆炸。调查员给报告书起名为“我是怎么学会不信任氢弹的”（讽刺）。

英文报道见：
http://www.theguardian.com/world ... north-carolina-1961
A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.

Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".

Writing eight years after the accident, Parker F Jones found that the bombs that dropped over North Carolina, just three days after John F Kennedy made his inaugural address as president, were inadequate in their safety controls and that the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt, leading to a nuclear burst. "It would have been bad news – in spades," he wrote.

Jones dryly entitled his secret report "Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb" – a quip on Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical film about nuclear holocaust, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.