Captain X and the H-Bomb

Without travel, many people become stagnant and uninspired. Travelers that arrive on our islands and sample our brand of paradise are searching for new experiences and jewels of inspiration to enhance their lives at home.

Everyone has a story about an adventure, a mishap, or a life-changing escapade, and sometimes if we take the time to listen to the visitors that chose Marco, Goodland, and the Isles of Capri, we can travel through the realm of his or her experience and discover an overwhelming story without ever leaving home. If we take the time to make friends and listen carefully, we might even unearth an escapade that once held the mysterious label of Top Secret.

Our story begins in the vast and dusty desert of White Sands, New Mexico. After the very first atomic bomb test was at the Trinity Site on the big ocean of sand, and reports of a flying saucer crashing near Roswell, New Mexico, made headlines across the nation, many inquisitive eyes turned toward New Mexico. As the following decade began, it cannot be surprising that extensive rocket testing was the next secretive project in New Mexico, along with an Air Force base that was home to one of the largest bomber aircraft ever produced.

In 1957, the world was a scary place. Soviet Russia and the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe were also capable of delivering nuclear war via heavy bomber groups, and as a result, American aircrews were flying around the world in the giant B-36 six-engine bombers to counter the threat from communist Russia. The Soviet aircrews were busy flying around the world carrying nuclear weapons, and so were the captains and the aircrews of the United States Air Force.

The Convair B-36 Peacemaker in 1957 could fly 10,000 miles without refueling and carry a nuclear payload of 87,000 pounds of nuclear weapons. The giant aircraft is the largest mass-produced piston engine airplane ever created and was 230 feet wide from wingtip to wingtip. On many occasions, the route for a B-36 and her routinely patrolling crew was north over Canada and Alaska and then potentially onward over Russia.

On one almost perfect flying day on May 22, 1957, a B-36 Peacemaker lifted off from a dry and dusty runway and began her patrol. Captain X was in command and sitting in the left seat in the nose of the giant airplane. He was taking no chances. The captain was carrying along with his fourteen crew members a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb.

Not many pilots were truly comfortable while being in command of a B-36. The plane was a monster. The crashes were legendary, deadly, and potentially catastrophic. Everyone knew that a firearm could go off by accident, but every captain of a B-36 was praying that the deadly payload created by the scientists in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos would not become like a firearm accident and become a disaster for the history books.

As the six big engines droned onward and lifted the airplane higher, Captain X could not help but reflect on the misbehaving “Gremlins” that seemed to have their own secret compartments aboard every giant B-36. Gremlins began with early aviation and were known to be the mysterious little gnome-like creatures that were always lurking around resting airplanes and waiting for the chance to use their mischievous scissors on wires or control cables.

On one infamous flight, the captain and co-pilot claimed all six of the big engines on the B-36 suddenly went into reverse for no apparent reason, and that was why the bomber carrying an H-bomb crashed. No one believed the pilots until it happened again with the two outboard engines on another identical airplane.

Captain X was not only scanning the plethora of engine and avionic instruments on his aircraft as the big ship continued to climb on her northern track, but he was also listening to his 14 crew members as they spoke to each other over the airplane’s intercom system. On the flight deck, the vibration from the six engines in competition was beginning to become more noticeable. After a few minutes, the chatter on the intercom was all about the now obvious vibration. In another few minutes, a crewmember traveling through the tunnel from the rear of the bomber emerged near the flight deck and protested that the increasing rattle in the airplane was “wrecking his nerves.”

Then it happened. The vibration dropped to zero, and the plane suddenly began to rise in altitude. No one spoke. The intercom was quiet. For five seconds, the silence continued until everyone realized what had happened, and everyone began speaking at once.

“Oh S---,” the copilot exclaimed. “That’s about it,” Captain X replied.

Everyone suddenly knew what happened. Somehow, in some dreadful way, the over-intense vibration rattled loose the 15-megaton H-bomb, and it fell through the massive bomb-bay doors. There was now an H-bomb falling on the United States.

Meanwhile, at about six miles south of Gibson Road, near Albuquerque, New Mexico, a single cow was grazing in the middle of a field. The cow never knew what happened. The hundreds of pounds of TNT explosive used to trigger the atomic blast exploded where the cow was grazing and made a thirty-foot crater in the pasture. The nuclear material, however, never detonated because the H-bomb was not armed.

Captain X and his crew, however, only knew they had inadvertently dropped an H-bomb and were waiting for the low-altitude blast to blow them out of the air. When the thudding report of the minor explosion echoed throughout the airplane, Captain X and his crew knew they had made an escape from the ultimate gremlin sabotage, but they had no idea what would be waiting for them when they landed one hour later.

Upon landing, Captain X and his crew members were overwhelmed on the runway by more officials than anyone knew was possible. All of the crew were suddenly crowded into a confidential briefing room and told not to ever tell anyone about what happened to the H-bomb and the cow on May 22, 1957.

The story remained secret until the mid-1990s when the Freedom of Information Act released the details of the accident, and the story of the falling H-bomb was discovered by a British news team and turned into a television episode.

In the world of tourists and travel, visitors can sometimes share stories that were once beyond explosive and even Top Secret.