Thanks for mentioning this. I had meant to refer to this accident, but after spending 2 more minutes looking into got the impression that there is less consensus on what happened than I thought.
However, Michael H. Maggelet and James C. Oskins, authors of Broken Arrow: The Declassified History of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents, dispute this claim, citing a declassified report. They point out that the arm-ready switch was in the safe position, the high-voltage battery was not activated (which would preclude the charging of the firing circuit and neutron generator necessary for detonation), and the Rotary Safing Switch was destroyed, preventing energisation of the X-Unit (which controlled the firing capacitors). The tritium reservoir used for fusion boosting was also full and had not been injected into the weapon primary. This would have resulted in a significantly reduced primary yield and would not have ignited the weapon’s fusion secondary stage.
Bomb 2, the object of the Goldsboro controversy, was not “one step” away from detonation. [...]
In Bomb 2, the High Voltage Thermal Battery was not activated, so no electrical power could reach any components necessary to fire the weapon and produce a nuclear explosion. [...]
While the Ready/Safe Switch in Bomb 2 showed “armed” after recovery, it was actually safe [...]. Most importantly, the high voltage necessary to fire bomb components was not present for bomb 2.
[...]
How close was the Goldsboro bomb to producing a nuclear explosion? Not at all.
I didn’t attempt to understand the specific technical claims (not even if there is a dispute about technical facts, or just a different interpretation of how to describe the same facts in terms of how far away the bombs was from detonating), and so can’t form my own view.
Do you have any sense what source to trust here?
In any case, my understanding is that nuclear weapons usually had many safety features, and that it’s definitely true that one or a few of them failed in several instances.
Thanks for mentioning this. I had meant to refer to this accident, but after spending 2 more minutes looking into got the impression that there is less consensus on what happened than I thought.
Specifically, the Wikipedia article says:
One of the Wikipedia references is a blog post by one of the authors mentioned above, with the title Goldsboro- 19 Steps Away from Detonation. Some quotes:
I didn’t attempt to understand the specific technical claims (not even if there is a dispute about technical facts, or just a different interpretation of how to describe the same facts in terms of how far away the bombs was from detonating), and so can’t form my own view.
Do you have any sense what source to trust here?
In any case, my understanding is that nuclear weapons usually had many safety features, and that it’s definitely true that one or a few of them failed in several instances.