National Network for Equitable Library Service

Just before midnight on February 13, 1950, three engines of a US Air Force B-36 intercontinental bomber caught fire over Canada’s northwest coast. The crew jumped, and the plane ditched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The fact that the huge aircraft had been carrying a Mark IV nuclear bomb was kept carefully hidden. Almost four years later, the wreck of the bomber was found accidentally in a remote location in the coastal mountains of British Columbia, three hours’ flying time in the opposite direction of where it was supposed to have crashed. How did it get there? Did somebody remain on board and fly it there? Only after years of silence did the United States finally admit to losing its very first nuclear bomb; the incident was its first Broken Arrow, the code name for accidents involving nuclear weapons. But was the bomb dropped and exploded over the Inside Passage or was it blown up at the aircraft’s resting place in the mountains? This Cold War-era tale borders on fantasy as Dirk Septer follows the last flight of bomber 075 and attempts to unravel the real story behind more than 50 years of secrecy, misdirection and misinformation.