Comments on: BBC Discovers Nuclear Bomb on it’s Website

By: Strangely

Strangely — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:43:38 +0000

Hi mate.
As far as I can tell, 78252 wasn’t recovered – intact. The peer-reviewed wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-52_crash_at_Thule_Air_Base , makes this clear. Unless you are partial to some extra information, I can’t agree with you.
Apart from the non-recovery of all parts of the exploded bomb, there is continuing fallout (pun intended) from the event even now, both political, social, scientific and legal. Tons of contaminated ice were collected from the smashed and exploded weapon, although most nuclear material is supposed to have gone through the ice after the resulting fire.
This webpage, http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/b52_stratofortress.htm , about halfway down, says the extra pilot (Capt. Leonard Svitenko) on the mission was killed on the bailout after he hit the plane aerials. His death doesn’t appear anywhere else to my knowledge.

However, this is all a moot point.

The whole point of my post was a critical look at the BBC’s reporting of “news” when exactly the same stuff was reported 8 years previously, plus an observation on the numerical significance of the number. This made the reasons for later article’s publication somewhat suspect in my view. Piecing together a bit of timeline,

BBC initial report tijmed for Hiroshima anniverary – 2000
Last Scientific monitoring of the crash site – 2003
Last BBC news article on the same subject – 2008

…And that’s the point. The timing of this “news” event seems suspect to me… It has no sense apart from someone either making a political point of some sort OR it’s an example of the old newspaper and magazine trick of re-hashing an old story to fill space.

By: T.L. Denboer

T.L. Denboer — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:12:13 +0000

78252 was recovered. case closed.

By: Strangely

Strangely — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:02:16 +0000

You’re not wrong there Francisco! All machines break eventually and all people make mistakes. That we are all still here seems amazing given the potential possibilities for doom…
My aside at the end wasn’t a pedantically accurate assessment of weapon numbers though, as I hope you gathered; it was my whimsical reference to the sheer quantity of destructive force available.
The sooner it’s all ditched and replaced by a sane policy of dialogue, the better.
The news article I referenced though, is not part of that policy. It’s a continuation of the escalation of FUD, fear and doubt, that promotes darker times ahead, not lighter. You have to ask why the BBC, a supposed “impartial” news organisation, would join in such activity?

By: Francisco

Francisco — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:15:37 +0000

“As an aside, assuming the Trinity bomb at Almagordo was Number One, then the notion that a bomb lost in 1968 was number 78252 is an intensely sobering thought…”

That’s actually a collection of assumptions– that Alamogordo’s Trinity was ‘Serial No. 1′, that uranium and plutonium (and uranium/plutonium) bombs are numbered in the same group, that the numbers run consecutively, rather than being coded to date, location, size/power, USAF vs US Navy, or simply to confuse any Cold War enemy…

The fact that the United States government (along with a variety of other governments) made, and is making, weapons designed to leave nothing but rubble and glowing cockroaches on what was at one time a truly beautiful world is indeed sobering, and saddening, and fear-inspiring. The fact that said governments, being run by fallible human beings, occasionally lose such weapons (oops?) is even more so.