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Some New Information
The MK39, according to Hansen's book cited above, was a cylindrical device measuring 11 feet seven inches in length and weighing between 9,000 and 10,000 lbs. Hansen wrote in 1990 that the potential yield of the MK39s in the Goldsboro incident was "2 to 2.5 megatons" (rather large, as military devices go). Nuclear Physicist Ralph Lapp caused a stir in 1961 when on page 127 of his just-released book, Kill and Overkill, he said that in the Goldsboro incident the distressed aircraft had jettisoned a "24-megaton bomb." This reference appears to be the origination of what Hansen says is a persistent bit of misinformation on the Goldsboro crash, repeated by Greenpeace, Mother Jones, and most news sources ever since. Hansen says the devices were definitely not 24 megatons in potential yield, but closer to a tenth of that strength. The Lapp reference to "24 megatons" may have resulted from a simple decimal deletion. Hansen told this project that the MK39 may have yielded four megatons at most. There is no need to exaggerate the destructive potential of an MK39 device to illustrate a horrible scenario, and 24 megatons is certainly not required. Even four megatons rates as a mighty weapon, more than 250 times the power of the blast that annihilated Hiroshima. According to Dr. Dietrich Schroeer, nuclear physicist and professor of physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the blast from a ground-level detonation of four megatons would have left a crater in the ground a third of a mile wide and leveled homes five miles away, while the heat would have set fires and inflicted third-degree burns to a distance of nine miles from the point of detonation. Many, if not most, U.S. nuclear weapons are smaller in yield. (Today, the premium is placed more upon accurate delivery of devices in the multi-kiloton range.) Information taken from the 1987 Nuclear Weapons Data Book Vol. II, published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, lends some support to Hansen's identification of the Goldsboro devices. According to Figure 1.2 on page 7 of that publication, the MK39 was one of six bomber-deployed nuclear-weapons models in the active stockpile during 1961. The last of the MK39s was retired from service in 1966. | |
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Last Updated: 24 March 2001
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