It was January the 24th, 1961 in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Above the inhabitants of Goldsboro a plane was flying that was carrying two atomic bombs. Suddenly the plane broke in the sky. The pilot ordered his crew to eject at 2,700 meters. Some did manage to escape the doomed plane, but some did not. Three people died in the end. Two died as a cause of not being able to eject and the other one did not survive the ejection. The warheads however did not leave the airplane, at least not until impact. The one bomb that was found had 4 safety switches and only one was off. If that one had not been off, it would have detonated for sure. What happened with the other one? Nobody knows because it was never found again. I think we can all agree upon the fact that this situation could have ended in a disaster. This potential disaster could have been prevented in multiple ways, here are some of them: option 1: making sure all the detonators of the warhead are on the safe mode and/or option 2: transporting the detonators separately in order to make sure that they do not explode.
Learning from failures
