In 1958, U.S. Air Force Mistakenly Released Nuclear Bomb Over South Carolina

Read on to learn about the extraordinary events history books won’t tell you.

A U.S. Air Force bomber accidentally dropped a load that could’ve obliterated the entire Florence, North Carolina community. Luckily, it didn’t detonate, and the story has remained out of the spotlight for the past 60 years. But, curiously, many stories about the event differ and even contradict themselves.

But they were very lucky because if the atomic warhead had detonated, it would have been almost double as powerful as the Hiroshima attack during World War II. So, the real miracle is that nobody was lethally hurt.

The news spread quickly in the local news, but the army didn’t want it to become a national problem. So the population couldn’t know that the U.S. Air Force was flying around with atomic bombs and that there was a slim chance that they could drop in your backyard.

It’s crazy to think there were very few security protocols for carrying and handling these lethal weapons of mass destruction. Usually, the uranium bombs taken during the drills did not include the component necessary to trigger them. However, in 1966, the secretary of defense testified that four of the missing bombs did contain the trigger capsule. 

The Cold War was at its height, and the U.S. was taking every precaution it could. Nuclear power had proven to be the ultimate threat, and at the time, bombers were required to carry a warhead with them in case there was an emergency and war broke out while they were in mid-flight.

Hudson was around six years old when the bomb crashed and was hit by a flying brick. The other children were unscratched. But the adults didn’t have time to ask and rushed all the children to the hospital to be checked.

A Geiger Counter, an artifact that was invented in the early 20th century to measure radiation levels, and by the 1950s, every hospital in the U.S. were equipped with one. Luckily, she wasn’t contaminated with radiation, and the wound in her head healed normally.

The statements around the event were contradictory from the start, and the Gregg family needed clarification about the information they were given. Nothing made sense. Nevertheless, it was a hard time, and they had to rebuild their family house since it was uninhabitable from the crash. 

One of the pilots made a call reporting they had dropped “hot cargo” from the B-47 aircraft, and the three pilots were subsequently sent on a seven-year overseas assignment. 

“They told my daddy everything was aboard. It was a totally different story than what the government put out,” said one of his daughters in an interview many years later. Military planes flew above the farm for a long time, measuring the radiation levels, which made the family suspicious.

Even though nobody was seriously hurt by the blast, they lost most of their belongings during the incident and the roof on top of their heads. It was only thanks to the community around them that they got back on their feet.

Nowadays, there is only a tiny sign; if you’re lucky, someone will help you find the farmhouse where the crater lies. It’s still on private property and isn’t necessarily a tourist attraction, but it’s part of the local history of Florence.

This “broken arrow,” as they called the lost bombs, is only one of the many unplanned bomb drops of the Cold War on U.S. soil. After the incident in Mars Bluff, the government forbade hot cargo on their training missions.

In October 1963, nuclear bombs were officially banned. The government of U.S. and Russia signed The Partial Test Ban Treaty. They forbade nuclear weapon tests anywhere on land, sea, or outer space and put a halt to the most dangerous weapon ever created by man.

The game show consisted of a panel that had to guess a secret from the contestant. It could be something unusual, funny, or incredible. With every failed guess, the contestant earned $10 and could potentially win up to $80 if nobody guessed it. The show ran for a long time and was very popular back in the day.

Marshall Yarborough, the Florence County Historical Commission chairwoman, told the press, “It’s not many towns that can say they had an atomic bomb drop and nothing (deadly) happened.” Mars Bluff and the Gregg family were extremely lucky to have survived this potentially lethal accident. 

Yarborough thinks it’s an essential piece of history and that creating a park where the community could visit and learn about the events in that place could benefit the area. But the Greggs differ and feel that enough harm has been done to their property. 

She has moved on, but the scars remain literally and metaphorically. She doesn’t talk about it much, but she said in an interview, “It’s like a chapter in your life you just close. I think I’m lucky to be alive.” 

But times have changed, and thankfully, we have safety protocols to avoid catastrophes like this. So, now all we have left is to wonder how many events like this happened in the early 20th century that we probably don’t even know about because they weren’t deemed “too dangerous.”