Qualla: The Day Two Nuclear Bombs Fell on Yuba City

The Day Two Nuclear Bombs Fell on Yuba City: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Air Force, Public domain. The crew had been flying for nearly 24 hours, some of them on dexedrine to stay awake. Their B-52F Stratofortress, serial number 57-0166, carried two Mark 39 Mod 2 thermonuclear weapons in its bomb racks as it flew a routine airborne alert mission out of Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento. Then the cabin depressurized. The bomber dropped from cruising altitude to 10,000 feet, burning fuel at a rate the flight plan never anticipated. A tanker rendezvous failed. The crew, according to a later account by retired B-52 pilot Earl McGill, refused an offer of unscheduled aerial refueling and bypassed emergency landing fields. On March 14, 1961, the engines went silent over the Sacramento Valley. The crew ejected safely. The aircraft, now a 200-ton glider carrying two nuclear bombs, plunged into farmland 15 miles west of Yuba City.

Image: United States Air Force | Public domain

The Day Two Nuclear Bombs Fell on Yuba City: Impact

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Air Force, Public domain. The crash tore both weapons from the aircraft. The bomb in the rear rack stayed mostly intact inside its ballistic drop case, its nuclear components still contained. But the impact had done its work on the weapon's mechanisms: the arming pull-out rods had been extracted, and the ...

Image: United States Air Force | Public domain

The Day Two Nuclear Bombs Fell on Yuba City: How Close Was Close

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Air Force, Public domain. The safety systems held, but not without alarming caveats. Despite both Arm/Safe switches being set to Safe, the low-voltage thermal batteries in one weapon activated anyway. Post-mortem analysis by the Defense Atomic Support Agency determined that a cable short circuit had allow...

Image: United States Air Force | Public domain

The Day Two Nuclear Bombs Fell on Yuba City: The Goldsboro Connection

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US Department of Defense, Public domain. Three weeks before Yuba City, a nearly identical accident had unfolded over Goldsboro, North Carolina. A B-52 broke apart in midair, dropping two nuclear weapons of the same type into tobacco farmland. The Goldsboro weapons lacked a critical safety upgrade that the Yuba City bomb...

Image: US Department of Defense | Public domain

The Day Two Nuclear Bombs Fell on Yuba City: Cleanup and Quiet

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Air Force, Public domain. Explosive ordnance disposal teams from Beale Air Force Base and McClellan Air Force Base arrived the same day. They removed the two tritium reservoirs and the separated uranium pit on March 14. The following day, they collected the scattered high explosives -- including the intac...

Image: United States Air Force | Public domain