On Tuesday, 24 January 1961, at about 12:30 a.m., two hydrogen bombs fell to earth near the tiny farming village of Faro, NC.
Obviously, neither bomb yielded its awful potential, or the world would today be mourning an infamous catastrophe. The two model MARK 39 devices came down when the B-52 bomber in which they were riding suffered structural failure and disintegrated in mid-air 12 miles north of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, NC. The plane exploded as it fell. Five crewmen parachuted to earth safely. Three died -- two who went down with the doomed bomber, and one who was found two miles from the crash site hanging by his parachute in a tree, his neck broken. The H-bombs jettisoned as the plane descended, one bomb parachuting to earth intact, the other striking a farmer`s field at high speed -- "probably mach 1" (about 760 miles per hour) speculates one retired Air Force Colonel.
In 1958, a damaged Air Force plane dropped a nuclear bomb into the ocean near Savannah. The bomb was never found. Now, bomb hunters from Georgia think they know where it is. They fear terrorists could find it, too.