“Unraveling the Mysteries: How Fire, Ice, and Plutonium Could Redefine Our Understanding of the Universe”
In August 1961, a fourth route was added to Chrome Dome known as Hard Head or Thule Monitor, which called for a single B-52 to orbit Baffin Bay and keep watch on the the U.S. Air Force Base at Thule, Greenland. Perched high above the Arctic Circle halfway between Washington, D.C. and Moscow, the island of Greenland – an autonomous Danish territory since 1814 – was of vital strategic importance to the United States – so much so that in 1946 the U.S. Government attempted to purchase it from Denmark. While the Danes refused the offer, as staunch NATO allies they nonetheless allowed the U.S. military to station aircraft on the island, resulting in the construction of Thule Air Force Base between 1951 and 1953. In 1958, Thule became home to the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System or BMEWS, a network of powerful radars and computers designed to provide early warning of a Soviet ballistic attack over the North Pole. In the eyes of North American Aerospace Defense or NORAD, the BMEWS radars at Thule would likely be the first site to be targeted by a Soviet surprise attack. The job of the Thule Monitor was thus to continuously confirm that the Air Base was still intact and whether any loss of communication was due to a Soviet attack or just regular technical difficulties – and for more on another bizarre incident involving this site, please check out our previous video That Time the Moon Nearly Started World War 3 (and Other Silly Cold War Shenanigans)
As can be imagined, so many nuclear-armed aircraft in the air 24 hours a day was a massive and complex task – and a dangerous one. Accidents could – and did – happen. The first major incident took place on January 17, 1966, when a Chrome Dome B-52G collided with a KC-135 tanker aircraft during a mid-air refuelling over the Mediterranean Sea. The tanker exploded, killing all four crew aboard, while four of the seven crew aboard the B-52 managed to eject safely. The bomber was carrying a standard load of four B28 thermonuclear gravity bombs, each with a yield of 1.1 megatons of TNT. Thermonuclear or “Hydrogen” bombs comprise two main sections: a conventional nuclear warhead called a primary and one or more secondary stages containing Lithium Deuteride fusion fuel. When the bomb is detonated, radiation from the primary converts the fusion fuel in the secondary stages into hydrogen and compresses it, fusing the hydrogen and releasing massive amounts of energy – and for more on these terrifying weapons, how they work, and how they were developed, please check out our previous video Who Invented the Hydrogen Bomb? One of the B28 bombs from the disintegrating bomber plunged into the Mediterranean, sinking in 780 metres of water, while the three others fell to earth near the small fishing village of Palomares, Spain. The conventional explosives in two of these weapons detonated on impact with the ground, vaporizing the plutonium cores and contaminating nearly 3 square kilometres of Spanish countryside. Thankfully, due to numerous built-in safeguards, this did not trigger a full-scale nuclear detonation. While the remains of these three bombs were quickly located and cleaned up, recovery of the fourth took considerably longer, the weapon finally being raised on April 7, 1966 after a two and a half month search by a fleet of nearly 30 U.S. Navy vessels – and if this sounds somewhat familiar, yes: the search for the lost Palomares bomb is a major plot point in the 2000 film Men of Honour starring Robert de Niro and Cuba Gooding Jr.
