Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon

Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon

By Norman Leach

  


History / Military / Aviation History / Nuclear Warfare History / United States / 20th Century
224 pages, 9 x 6"
50+ b&w Photos
ISBN 0–88995–348–1 paper • 19.95

On the eve of Valentine's Day, 1950, an American Strategic Air Command B-36 bomber-loaded with an atomic bomb-flew into the frozen night on a simulated bombing run from Alaska to San Francisco. The engines suddenly failed on this notoriously unreliable aircraft and the crew, before parachuting into the rugged terrain of northern British Columbia, set the autopilot to take the aircraft far out to sea.
Years later the wreckage of the bomber was accidentally discovered on a remote northern British Columbia mountaintop hundreds of miles from its presumed location deep beneath the Pacific Ocean.
Before reading this book I was unfamiliar with author Norman Leach. From this first impression it seems Canada has a stellar addition to the historical community.
Broken Arrow examines the tragic loss of a US Air Force bomber in the early days of the Cold War over British Columbia, with most of the crew baling out over Princess Royal Island. This definitive historical record of the event effectively debunks urban legends and conspiracy theories, all done in a thorough and highly readable fashion, I look forward to reading the next work of Mr Leach.