Philippine Sea A-4 incident, 1965

foreign [Music] [Music] 1965 was a momentous year in American history the United States started bombing North Vietnam with Operation Rolling Thunder and U.S combat troops arrived in country for the first time starting a new phase in the Vietnam War the United States invaded the Dominican Republic Malcolm X who was assassinated and Mariner IV passed by Mars but one of the biggest stories of 1965 went unreported in the news in fact it was Kept Secret for decades perhaps the single most dangerous U.S military nuclear accident in history the December 5th 1965 A4 Philippine Sea incident deserves to be remembered by 1965 the United States had more than thirty thousand nuclear weapons a number that would peak in 1966 before declining since the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima the bombs have never been used in Warfare but they were constantly ready for use at a moment's notice among the safeguards put into place to avoid the potential for a devastating nuclear accident in this massive Arsenal was the formation of the atomic energy commission which in the first years after World War II kept control of the actual nuclear material in the hands of civilians instead of the military use of nuclear weapons in conflict in Korea was according to Truman always on the table although it required presidential authorization numerous figures suggested their use either in certain situations or to discourage Chinese intervention in the war Douglas MacArthur commander of the U.N forces engaged in Korea asked for discretion to use nuclear weapons in the event of retreat when the Joint Chiefs questioned MacArthur about the use of nuclear weapons in the event of Soviet or Chinese escalation MacArthur provided a list of hypothetical targets that would require the use of 34 Atomic weapons ultimately disagreements regarding strategy and insubordination in the form of comments to the Press would lead Truman to relieve MacArthur in a still controversial decision in a speech outlining his decision on April 13 1951 Truman explained I believe that we must try to limit the war to Korea to prevent a third world war a number of events have made it evident that General MacArthur did not agree with that policy no nuclear weapons were ultimately used in the fighting in Korea but the United States remained at high alert during the 1950s and 60s as part of the American strategy to maintain a threat of mutually assured destruction from 1960 to 1968 a large part of the strategy involved Operation Chrome Dome in which American planes with armed nuclear weapons would remain in flight at all times a significant shift from the initial plan to keep nuclear material separate from actual weapons and the subject of another episode of the history guy this change in policy was a reaction to developments by the Soviet Union in 1949 just four years after the U.S first tested the nuclear weapon in the Trinity test Soviet scientists detonated their first nuclear weapon American experts were surprised by how fast the Soviets were catching up to American nuclear technology the same year the reach of Communism grew significantly with the formation of the People's Republic of China which seemed to further threaten American interests Air Force General Curtis LeMay in charge of the American Strategic Air Command pressed for greater access to nuclear weapons so they would be available in case rapid nuclear response was necessary the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles also required all nuclear weapons to be armed and easily ready for potential use the dangers of this kind of nuclear proliferation became quickly apparent in February 1950 a convair B-36 crashed in British Columbia while on a simulated bombing run not revealed to the public at the time was that the bomber had been carrying a mark IV nuclear bomb it was the first Broken Arrow incident an incident in which a nuclear weapon is accidentally launched detonated or lost the bomb has still not been recovered to this day as in Korea the United States intended to keep their options open in the growing conflict in Vietnam a war which quickly came to represent the battle between communism and democracy abroad during the war large numbers of nuclear weapons were moved to stations in the Pacific such as Guam Okinawa the Philippines and Taiwan by mid-1963 the U.S had around 2 400 nuclear weapons in their onshore stockpile in the Pacific but these were not the only weapons deployed in the region in addition to missiles and planes numerous nuclear weapons were stored on ships in 1965 more than 10 percent of the total nuclear stockpile was at Sea more nuclear weapons in the entire current U.S stockpile including abort aircraft carriers numerous Navy planes were capable of launching nuclear weapons including the Grumman A6 Intruder the LTV A7 Corsair 2 the McDonald Douglas F4 Phantom 2 and the Douglas A4 Skyhawk introduced in 1956 the Douglas A4 Skyhawk was a Delta winged light attack aircraft capable of carrying the b-43 nuclear bomb developed in 1956 by Los Alamos National Laboratories to be carried by both heavy bombers and smaller fighter bomber aircraft the b-43 was a variable yield thermonuclear weapon which had two variants with five yield options between 70 kilotons and one Megaton for the relatively small subsonic A4 Skyhawk dropping the bomb would have been a dangerous for the crew so the bombs were sometimes equipped with parachutes to slow The Descent and give the pilots a chance to escape the point was also equipped with a thermal Shield that could be used to block the blinding light from the actual destination the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga was an Essex class carrier built during World War II she was originally commissioned in 1944 and recommissioned 10 years later in 1954. the Ticonderoga had been involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident sending aircraft to defend a U.S Destroyer attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on August 2nd 1964. the incident led directly to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which allowed president Lyndon Johnson to intervene in Southeast Asia in March of 1965 the first American ground troops landed in South Vietnam the Ticonderoga was overhauled at the beginning of 1965 but returned to the Pacific near the end of the year rubbing at Dixie Station on November 5th her first tour in Vietnam lasted six months and plans for the carrier launched more than ten thousand combat sorties as with all American aircraft carriers and many other surface ships in the period she carried nuclear weapons which could be ready at a moment's notice according to Declassified documents American carriers often carried as many as a hundred nuclear weapons at any one time American strategists were especially concerned about a possibility of military intervention from China as they had been in Korea the carriers were a major part of the American plan for potential nuclear war in December of 1965 the Ticonderoga was in route to the portet Yokosuka Japan for maintenance and rest according to chief petty officer Delbert Mitchell an aviation ordinance man on board the ship on Sunday December 5th Captain Robert Miller authorized a crew cut to training exercise that involved loading a nuclear weapon the plan was to load an a4e Skyhawk with a b-43 nuclear bomb the plane would be loaded on the port catapult but not launch it would then be brought back below decks Mitchell and his loading crew assembled in Hangar Bay number two around 1 30 in the afternoon at two o'clock the bomb arrived covered with a great tarp and escorted by two armed Marines Mitchell told the Naval History magazine the W division Personnel removed the tarp from the weapon and we all immediately identified it as a live b-43 thermonuclear weapon we were flabbergasted by what we saw on the side of the weapon was a symbol why one meaning of that had a one Megaton yield that meant that the bomb had an explosive yield of about 1 million tons of TNT by comparison fat man the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 had a yield of only 21 000 tons each member of the crew had a checklist and Mitchell's job was to verify that the weapon was unsafe and reported to the crew chief the bomb was tucked underneath the Skyhawk and hydraulically lifted into place on the plane's bomb rack once it was in place the Ordnance Cruise job was done until the plane returned 24 year old Lieutenant Junior grade Douglas Webster was assigned to fly Webster had flown 17 sortees into Vietnam at that point as part of the va-56 Skyhawks Squadron nicknamed The Champions after checking the plane Webster entered the cockpit next plane handlers push the plane onto the number two plane elevator where it would be raised to the flight deck the elevator sat at the edge of the deck with one side open to the Sea a low safety rail was in place along with a net meant to catch anyone who slipped from the elevator the plane was pushed with the rear of the plane facing the open side of the elevator and had to be pushed over a lip between the elevator and the deck but around the same time the carrier beta slight turned and the deck leaned towards the ocean suddenly Mitchell recalls the plane directors began to blow their whistles frantically while crossing their fist directing the pilot to set his brakes but the Skyhawk kept rowing Webster appeared oblivious and was looking down even as the crew ran towards the rolling plane one of the plane handlers managed to throw a chalk under one of the plane's tires which caused the plane to Pivot to the right as the port main gear Mount hit the netting on the aircraft elevator this caused the main Mount to break through the steel netting and the Skyhawk lifted itself and fell inverted into the ocean as the rear Wheels rolled off the bottom of the plane slammed against the deck in the book Brotherhood of Doom James little another witness says he saw Webster's face in the instant before it fell I'll never forget the startled look on his face when this happened in a matter of seconds but it was as if it was happening in slow motion the plane pushers Marines and all of us stood there in stunt shock Mitchell said we never saw Lieutenant Webster after he climbed into the cockpit or what efforts he might have attempted to get out of the Skyhawk but we were stunned to witness a plane pilate and nuclear weapon fall upside down the land of gear stuck out of the water as the plane sank despite their shock efforts to recover Lieutenant Webster were immediately made carrier came to a stop dispatching a helicopter to recover the pilot but he didn't come up two nearby destroyers the Gridley and the Turner Joy were called in to search the area in a whale boat and crew was launched the only sign of the accident that could be found was Webster's helmet which according to Mitchell he hadn't been wearing at the time of the accident with the canopy open Mitchell says the force of the Skyhawk hitting the water would have seriously injured him as the canopy closed it's unlikely until thinks that Webster was able to make much of an effort to escape the doomed craft little wrote I've often thought of the horror of those final moments of that young Pilot's life as he plunged down into the dark depths of the sea with the sunlight on the surface rapidly disappearing knowing that he was entombed within his coffin plummeting to his grave little dedicated his book Lieutenant Webster who gave his life for his country while ensuring Readiness for nuclear war after searching for several hours the Navy gave up and returned to their scheduled activities the deck log of the Ticonderoga mentions the event only briefly at 1450 while being rolled from number two Hangar Bay to number two elevator a4e aircraft rolled off the elevator and sank in 2 700 fathoms of water 2700 fathoms equates to more than sixteen thousand feet deep ER than where the Titanic Lays in the minutes after the accident a message was sent from the carrier indicating a broken arrow incident President Johnson was notified but his itinerary that day suggest he did nothing special following the news exactly what went wrong is a matter of speculation the brakes had been checked just prior to Webster entering the plane and were determined to be in working order what Webster was looking at in the cockpit is of course unknown it's possible there was some kind of mechanical error that Webster was unable to reach the brakes whatever the case the plane pilot and bomb were never recovered the loss of nuclear weapons was an obvious potential disaster for the US military The Fallout of the loss of four nuclear weapons over palomares Spain in 1966 resulted in a PR disaster with significant political Fallout including Banning plans carrying nuclear weapons from Spanish airspace knowing the potential political consequences Lemay had chosen simply to keep this Broken Arrow incident state secret in the absence of other Witnesses the Navy and U.S government chose to cover up the loss of the weapon the Pentagon only admitted to the accident in 1981 and then saying only that a nuclear weapon had been lost in international waters in 1965 at the time they did not admit to a location said only that it occurred 500 miles from land it wasn't until 1989. 24 years after the incident that the details of the accident were fully revealed there were reasons the Pentagon did not want to release the details on May 10 1989 issue of the Miami Herald notes the U.S Navy had concealed details of the loss of the bomb for 24 years because was eager to hide the presence of nuclear weapons aboard vessels awaiting the Vietnam War and because of fear of feeding Japan's apprehension of atomic weapons the accident was only acknowledged when William Arkin an investigative journalist and former Army intelligence officer released copies of the ship's log obtained from the National Archives Arkham expressed shock that at the time these ships were engaged in the Vietnam War they were armed with nuclear weapons at a press conference Arkin lamented for 24 years the US Navy has covered up the most politically sensitive accident that has ever taken place perhaps as politically sensitive as the idea that your ships participating in the war in Vietnam were carrying nuclear weapons was the fact that the accident took place only 80 miles from the Japanese ryuku Islands the 1960 Japan U.S security treaty required prior consultation for the U.S to carry nuclear weapons into Japan the incident implied that the Japanese government was looking the other way when U.S vessels carrying nuclear weapons into Japanese ports in fact Ticonderoga had been heading for Tokyo Bay when they accident occurred the Miami Herald noted the Japanese who find nuclear weapons particularly painful because of the World War II bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki reacted with surprise and outrage to Revelations that the bomb remained submerged so close to Japanese territory and op-ed in the Iowa City Press Citizen was more direct the Japanese are miffed because as a matter of polite political hypocrisy it is pretended that we do not bring Atomic weapons into Japanese territories the event caused an international incident that strained U.S Japan relations and a diplomatic inquiry and Japanese protesters picked the American Embassy in Tokyo Mitchell told Naval History magazine in 2019 sometimes I think back to this incident and after 54 years still haunts me since 1950 the US military has admitted to 36 Broken Arrow events six nuclear weapons lost by the US military have never been recovered but the 1965 incident is unique unlike every other acknowledged Broken Arrow incident when Lieutenant Webster's plane fell into the Philippine Sea the weapon aboard was fully armed including the nuclear pit that is necessary for a detonation the only active nuclear weapon ever to be lost by the United States the Navy maintains that the weapon broke up before it reached the ocean bottom that the bomb Parts have decayed and that there is no threat of a detonation and amongst it all there is one more loss that needs to be acknowledged Lieutenant Douglas Webster's name is not on the Vietnam War Memorial despite several efforts to have it inscribed there Michael Raul his stepbrother said Doug was a superlative guy he was decisive and strong-willed and he just married a beautiful young woman he had all the characteristics to be top-notch a leader wherever he went in any field chief petty officer Mitchell told the naval Institute press Fair wins and following Seas Lieutenant Junior grade Douglas Webster I for one have not forgotten you I hope you enjoyed watching this episode of the history guide if you did please feel free to like And subscribe and share the history guide with your friends and if you also believe that history deserves to be remembered then you can support the history guy as a member on YouTube a supporter on our community at locals or as a 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Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 48,727

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy

Id: 6AKb6HLnpFY

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2023