@Guerrilla:
You have to wonder why they didn’t take the arming devices completely out of the bomb. Perhaps my ignorance of how atomic weaponry is manufactured comes into play, but that would seem to be the most logical action when transporting ordinances across your own country, you would think taking the most precautions to prevent any such mishaps.Â
When I ran into that item in a newspaper a couple of days ago, the story (as it appeared in the media’s telling of it) struck me as being both sensationalistic in tone and extremely vague on the technical details – something which isn’t uncommon in media reports. Â So I appreciate the link which MalachiCrunch provided, since it eventually led me to the original two-page declassified document which was published by The Guardian. Â That document itself is a bit problematic. Â On the first page, the discussion by Lapp on the left side is (like the newspaper articles it inspired) both vague and dramatic, while the analysis by Jones on the right side is telegraphic in style and sarcastic in tone…so it’s hard to know how seriously to take both components. Â The second page (also an analysis by Jones) is more informative and written in a more serious way – but I’m still puzzled by the suggestion that an H-bomb can arm itself by the simple action of being dropped from a plane. Â I don’t have any expertise in this area, but it was always my understanding that nuclear bombs can’t function unless they’ve been specifically armed by the bomber crew, following a very precise activation sequence. Â I was under the impression that, unless these arming steps are followed by the crew, the worse that can happen in an accident involving an H-bomb is for its conventional explosive charge (which will initiate the nuclear explosion if the bomb is properly armed) to detonate, with the result that the plutonium in the warhead will be scattered into the environment. Â This happened to two of the H-bombs that fell on Palomares in 1966: they produced radioactive contamination, but there was no nuclear explosion.