Author: Rainbow Kursk
"Broken arrow", a pronoun used by the United States to refer to the accidental launch, detonation, theft or loss of nuclear weapons, according to Rudolph Herzog's "A Short History of Nuclear Folly", there have been 32 nuclear weapons accidents in the United States since 1950.
Among them, the biggest threat of surface radiation impact is the large explosion of the US military anti-aircraft missile base in New Jersey on June 7, 1960, which coincides with the 60th anniversary of the launch of the event this year.
On June 7, 1960, people in New Jersey and New York suddenly received an urgent notice from the New Jersey Police that a nuclear bomb explosion had occurred at the US military joint base in McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, and the government was actively rescuing it.
The vague announcement immediately alarmed the population, and many ran to the nuclear war shelter, thinking that they had been attacked by a Soviet nuclear bomb.
In fact, a "Bomark" A long-range air defense missile booster with a W40 nuclear warhead on the anti-aircraft position of the base at that time exploded, and the explosion destroyed the entire launcher.
What frightens the US military is that if it is just an ordinary explosion, the key is that this anti-aircraft missile is a missile on combat readiness, which is equipped with a W40 nuclear warhead and an explosion yield of about 10,000 tons of tnt, which is equivalent to the power released by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
The "Bomark" is the only anti-aircraft missile ever equipped by the US Air Force, and the later "Nike" and "Patriot" anti-aircraft missiles are actually the responsibility of the US Army.
The "Bomark" is a peculiar cruise-type long-range anti-aircraft missile, which is actually an unmanned interceptor, using a ramjet engine, capable of flying at hypersonic speeds, with a range of up to 400 kilometers, and the record it created for shooting down a target aircraft at an altitude of 30,000 meters has not been broken until now.
This missile is equipped with a W40 nuclear warhead, and the main task is to send the nuclear warhead into the Soviet bombers and cruise missile groups, detonate the nuclear bomb and complete the air defense combat task.
The "Bomak" missile is usually stored on the warehouse-type launch position, and the sliding door above the warehouse is opened and the missile is erected to be launched.
Although this early missile used a solid-fuel ramjet engine, it was tied to two huge liquid fuel boosters, and it took 2 minutes to refuel the missile before launch.
It was a very dangerous link, and eventually this unreliable booster explosion triggered the catastrophe of 1960.
It is the position of a standard "Bomac" anti-aircraft missile company with 28 warehouses for the storage of missile maintenance and launch mechanisms.
The big bang in 1960 was caused by the explosion of a missile's booster. Fortunately, despite the power of the explosion, it destroyed all three launch depots and the missiles in them.
But none of them could detonate the nuclear warheads carried in these missiles.
Unfortunately, the missile propellant's complex chemical composition also includes other radioactive components, which are further enhanced when exposed to extreme heat.
Firefighters who responded to the accident unknowingly used fire hoses to flush large amounts of radioactive contaminants into the surrounding area.
The results of the firefighters' disposal led to a further expansion of radioactive contamination, and some scientists at the time believed that radioactive dust might even be blown to New York if the wind direction was followed at the time.
To this end, the U.S. military used more than 1,000 trucks to remove all the surrounding radioactively contaminated mud.
The launch site was also abandoned, and the US military simply used it as a huge nuclear waste disposal site. The entire incident was not fully disposed of until 2004, but there is still a low amount of radioactivity in the area, which has become the "Chernobyl" of the United States.
The "Bomak", a cruise anti-aircraft missile with a nuclear warhead, was decommissioned shortly after the incident under the strong opposition of the public. The mission of air defense operations in North America shifted from nuclear anti-aircraft missiles to manned fighter jets.