Isn't one of the design "features" of the safeties called a
strong-link/weak-link system?
My (limited) understanding is that the "strong link" must be actuated to enable
operation of the device, but that the actuation mechanism/electronics are
designed so that they will break and prevent operation at lower levels of
stress (the "weak link" portion) than are required to make the "strong link"
actuate improperly...
That motor-driven drum switch didn't operate. To me, that sounds like the
system worked as designed. (And therefore, there was no danger...)
The underlying logic of multiple safeties is different than a pistol that has a
magazine disconnect or a shotgun with a trigger disconnector.
Operation can only occur if /all/ of the proper steps are taken /in the proper
sequence/.
(Try slam-firing a pump shotgun with a trigger disconnector... It will only
fire if the trigger is pulled after you've pumped it... Now imagine having a
shotgun that is designed so that the trigger mechanism is BROKEN when someone
tries to slam-fire it... and that the broken parts were so buried in the
mechanism that the thing had to be shipped back to the manufacturer for a major
overhaul to replace them.)
--
John W Reames
jream...@verizon.net
Home: +14106646986
Mobile: +14437915905
> On Jun 12, 2014, at 23:18, "WILTON" <wilt...@nc.rr.com> wrote:
>
> "----- and if that switch had also become inoperative, ----" If it had
> FAILED at the right (wrong) time in such a manner to produce the same ARMED
> circuitry as if the RN had deliberately ARMED it. Again, NO switch failed or
> was inoperative.
>
> Wilt
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: <arche...@embarqmail.com>
> To: "Mercedes Discussion List" <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
> Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 10:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [MBZ] The accident that could have changed history
>
>
>> Wilton wrote:
>> ".......Soon after the accident, SECDEF McNamara commented that all of the
>> switches in the arming, fusing and firing systems but one had failed, and
>> AND ONLY THAT ONE SWITCH HAD PREVENTED A NUCLEAR DETONATION. (At least
>> twelve switches, timers and devices, actually, easily counted in
>> declassified Official Observer’s Report, Air Force Accident, February 16,
>> 1961. Two of the twelve were not “called” to act because of their position
>> in the sequence.)
>> (Wilton wrote:) IT'S TRUE THAT ONLY ONE SWITCH IN ONE OF THE BOMBS HAD
>> PREVENTED A NUCLEAR DETONATION, but let’s discuss for a minute whether or
>> not any switches or devices failed......" (snip)
>>
>> Gerry wrote
>> So in spite of all the false details from writers and journalists that have
>> come out since the accident, it's true that only one switch prevented a
>> nuclear explosion, and if that switch had also become inoperative, there
>> would have been a nuclear explosion?
>>
>> Obviously the fault did not lie with the Air Force but with Boeing which
>> made changes in the original design of the plane that caused the wing to
>> fail, and the designers of the bombs which did not design a fail-proof
>> safety system. Good essay, Wilton.
>> Gerry
>> ..................................................
>>> Tim Crone wrote:
>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: WILTON <wilt...@nc.rr.com>
>>>> Date: Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 4:44 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [MBZ] OT: Bombing Goldsboro
>>>> To: Mercedes Discussion List <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 'Nother case of an author filling in gaps in his "knowledge" with his
>>>> imagination. No release lever was "triggered," and there was no such
>>>> lever. Bombs were wrenched out by extremely unusual centrifugal forces.
>>>> 'Even had to make up prevailing winds and crossing wires.
>>>>
>>>> Mattocks flung himself in desperation toward co-pilot's open hatch on the
>>>> right; again, extremely unusual centrifugal/rotational forces redirected
>>>> him accidently through pilot's hatch on the left. Aircraft likely inverted
>>>> when mattocks exited.
>>>>
>>>> Pilot landed in swamp; one bomb landed in edge of field with parachute in
>>>> tree; second bomb landed in farmer's field and made deep impact crater.
>>>>
>>>> "Optimum blast altitude" was not a factor; both were "ground contact."
>>>>
>>>> Wilt
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 2:49 PM, arche...@embarqmail.com <
>>>> arche...@embarqmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Nuclear bomb nearly detonated after falling on North Carolina -
>>>>> declassified report
>>>>>
>>>>> In a scenario that could've been extremely devastating, the United States
>>>>> narrowly averted a nuclear disaster in 1961 when an atomic bomb nearly
>>>>> detonated after falling out of a B-52 bomber that broke up in the sky.
>>>>>
>>>>> According to the Washington Post, the incident took place on January 21,
>>>>> 1961 - less than 20 years after nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima
>>>>> and
>>>>> Nagasaki - and is explained further in a recently declassified report
>>>>> published by the National Security Archives.
>>>>>
>>>>> When the US Air Force aircraft went into a tailspin and broke up, the two
>>>>> bombs fell towards Goldsboro, North Carolina. The parachute for one of the
>>>>> weapons failed to deploy, and the plane crash had actually pushed the bomb
>>>>> into "armed" mode by the time it hit the ground. Luckily for North
>>>>> Carolina, the plane's destruction also damaged the switch necessary to
>>>>> trigger detonation
>>>>>
>>>>> /"The report implied that because Weapon 2 landed in a free-fall, without
>>>>> the parachute operating, the timer did not initiate the bomb's high
>>>>> voltage
>>>>> battery ("trajectory arming"), a step in the arming sequence,"/ wrote Bill
>>>>> Burr of the National Security Archives.
>>>>>
>>>>> /"For Weapon 2, the Arm/Safe switch was in the "safe" position, yet it was
>>>>> virtually armed because the impact shock had rotated the indicator drum to
>>>>> the "armed" position. But the shock also damaged the switch contacts,
>>>>> which
>>>>> had to be intact for the weapon to detonate."/
>>>>>
>>>>> Burr noted in his report just how fine the line was and is between safety
>>>>> and destruction.
>>>>>
>>>>> /"Perhaps this is what Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had in mind, a
>>>>> few years later, when he observed that, 'by the slightest margin of
>>>>> chance,
>>>>> literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was
>>>>> averted,"/ he wrote.
>>>>>
>>>>> These details are just the latest to surface about the incident, which was
>>>>> first revealed by nuclear weapons expert Eric Schlosser last year in a
>>>>> book
>>>>> titled, "Command and Control." Through a Freedom of Information Act
>>>>> request, Schlosser was able to obtain documentation regarding the incident
>>>>> for the first time, and helped shed light on just how close the Air Force
>>>>> came to witnessing an atomic bomb explode on US soil.
>>>>>
>>>>> The documents revealed that three of the four safety switches on the other
>>>>> bomb failed to work properly, meaning, as Schlosser noted, that only "one
>>>>> simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United
>>>>> States and a major catastrophe." The parachute on this one deployed, but
>>>>> when the bomb struck the ground the final firing signal triggered, only to
>>>>> be halted by that fourth safety switch.
>>>>>
>>>>> The bombs contained a payload of four megatons each and could have
>>>>> generated explosions 260 times more powerful than the one that occurred in
>>>>> Hiroshima.
>>>>>
>>>>> Before the documents related to the Goldsboro incident surfaced, the US
>>>>> government had denied that its nuclear weapons stockpile had ever put the
>>>>> nation at risk.
>>>>>
>>>>> *www.digitaljournal.com*/article/358759
>>>>> or Google: Goldboro Incident
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________
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>
> _______________________________________
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