"Armed" or "Unarmed" Weapons?
Military reports at the time of the accident described the two thermonuclear devices as "unarmed." However, that word is inherently inexact, no matter how it is used. The final "arming" of any military nuclear device requires the completion of numerous steps, executed in the proper sequence and timed correctly. It is thus arguable that any nuclear device could be called technically "unarmed" right up to the moment of its detonation.

Even the account of the accident provided by Hansen sends mixed signals, referring to "unarmed" weapons and "partially armed" weapons, and indicating that at least some of the steps necessary for arming were in fact completed in each of the two bombs. Thus, while the devices may technically have been "unarmed" in that they never detonated, they nonetheless could more accurately have been described throughout the event as "partially armed."

"Unarmed" is a frequently used adjective in military press releases describing broken-arrow incidents. A table beginning on page 65 of SIPRI's 1977 Yearbook presents summary information on 32 such incidents. The arming state of the weapon(s) involved is mentioned in nine of these accounts -- and always the weapons are characterized as "unarmed" or otherwise incapable of nuclear detonation. No weapon is ever described as "armed."

The Goldsboro accident occurred at the height of the Cold War. President John F. Kennedy had taken office only four days earlier, and would soon lead the nation through its closest brush with nuclear war, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Moreover, the B-52 involved in the Goldsboro crash was not on a training flight; it was, according to the Department of Defense account, on an "airborne alert" mission, an operation designed to keep U.S. nuclear arms airborne and deliverable 24 hours a day.

Milton Leitenberg, arms-control specialist and Senior Fellow with the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, wrote the SIPRI Yearbook chapter on nuclear-weapons accidents. Leitenberg described to a reporter for this project U. S. airborne-alert activity during the late 50s to early 60s: "In those years, we kept something like 30% of the SAC aircraft in the air at all times, an amazing percentage, and an equal proportion on the runways ready for takeoff at five minutes' notice." He added, "Flights went to turnaround points perhaps two-thirds of the way to their targets. But they were all called training missions, at least, if anything went wrong."

It is predictable and even understandable that military sources would tell the press that the weapons involved were "unarmed." Professor Eric Mlyn of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who directs The Robertson Scholarship Program and has written extensively on defense policy, says the U.S. and the Soviet Union were in "full-fledged, all-out competition" at the time of the accident and that all matters concerning nuclear weapons were kept very secret. Mlyn said, "Policymakers tried not to talk about nuclear weapons at all," given the controversy they created. [see video]

The circumstances and the times surrounding this event make it unlikely that the Air Force was then transporting in its "airborne alert" bomber fleet nuclear weapons which were not fully capable of detonation.

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Last Updated: 24 March 2001