A US Air Force B-36 bomber accidentally dropped an atomic bomb off British Columbia on February 13, 1950. The bomb detonated, sank, and the US never told Canada what happened, classifying it as a "Broken Arrow." The wreckage still sits on the seafloor while Americans complain about Canadian wildfire smoke.
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There are reports that last Thursday the US government asked Canada for help in fighting some of its hundreds of wildfires. Yes, the same week American politicians were pissed that smoke from our devastating forest fires was messing with their summer holidays. You know what we're still a little pissed about? That time the American military accidentally dropped an atomic bomb on British Columbia. A bomb that to this day, 76 years later, they still haven't bothered to come pick up. It was February 13th, 1950. A US Air Force B-36 took off from Alaska bound for Texas. It was a practice run for the end of the world, a simulated nuclear strike, and it carried real hardware to sell the rehearsal. A Mark IV atomic bomb sat in the bay, 11,000 pounds, and the Mark IV was basically a, like, an upgraded version of the nuke that Americans dropped on the people of Nagasaki. The good news, and I use that phrase loosely, is that the bomb had a lead dummy core instead of its plutonium heart, so it couldn't actually go nuclear, but it could still make a very large and dangerous explosion. Well, somewhere over the Pacific, the engines iced up and caught fire. The crew couldn't hold altitude. Following protocol, they took the bomber out over the water off our west coast and let the bomb go. The conventional explosives detonated in a huge flash and shockwave above the sea and sank. The crew bailed out over Princess Royal Island, and the plane flew on by itself for another 200 miles or so before burying itself in a mountain near Hazleton. 17 men were aboard. 12 lived. Now, did the Americans tell us that they were using our airspace to transit an atomic weapon? Of course not. All Canada knew was that American airmen were falling out of the sky into a February storm on our coast. So we sent help. The Canadian Air Force put a dozen aircraft into brutal weather to pull our frostbitten neighbours out of the trees. One man was found hanging upside down in one of those trees. Still in his chute. He survived. But even after all that, the Americans still didn't tell us what they dropped. I mean, I guess being the first country to lose an atomic weapon wasn't their proudest moment in their military history. They even gave the mishap a code name, Broken Arrow, and stayed quiet. The plane was found by the Canadian military 3 years later. They let their American counterparts know, who sent a demolition team to the crash site to blow it up. I guess worried about super secret spy stuff or something. By the way, whatever is left of that bomb is still down there off Prince Royal Island. The Americans have never even tried to recover it. But yes, Congressman, please tell me again about how the smoke is keeping you from enjoying your golf matches.
