Seemingly forgotten to history, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber with four hydrogen bombs on board crashed in Greenland, located 750 north of the Arctic Circle.
The plane went down in January 1968 near Thule Air Base after a cabin fire forced the crew to abandon the plane. Six crew members were able to eject out of the plane but one died.
Three of the four bombs were accounted for and were the subject of a lengthy cleanup effort, involving both U.S. and Danish officials. None of the bombs actually went off as they weren’t armed by the crew.
The BBC reported several years ago that the fourth nuclear warhead was abandoned in the ice after a massive operation to recover the debris resulted in the collection of 500 million gallons of ice–some of which had radioactive materials from the bombs.
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“The incident was the subject of much controversy at the time and in the following 40 years. Danish authorities had discovered in 1965 that the Americans were storing nuclear weapons at Thule against their wishes. The accident was therefore seen as a breach of Denmark’s nuclear free zone policy and caused much diplomatic friction,” reads a post from SonicBomb.com.
Read more at There’s a Nuclear Warhead Trapped Somewhere Under Greenland’s Ice
