DescentBB

The Guardian wrote:The bombs fell to Earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: Its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.....

....But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe."

Writing eight years after the accident, Parker F Jones found that the bombs that dropped over North Carolina, just three days after John F Kennedy made his inaugural address as president, were inadequate in their safety controls and that the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt, leading to a nuclear burst. "It would have been bad news — in spades," he wrote.

Duper wrote:heh, well, for starters, it wasn't armed. it also dropped into the bay. I read about this a couple of months ago. They spent a couple of months looking for the bomb but couldn't find it.

I think there's a wiki entry on it/