The Atomic Whoops: When the US Air Force Bombed South Carolina

During the height of the Cold War, both the US and the USSR constantly ran drills in anticipation of a possible nuclear conflict. While the Gregg family of Mars Bluff, South Carolina knew the Cold War was in full swing, they had no idea that they would become the first American family bombed -- accidentally -- by the US Air Force. Join Ben and Noel as they explore one of the most bizarre atomic slip-ups in history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Boom or not to boom. Welcome to the show, ladies
and gentlemen. My name is Ben. Ben. You startled me.
I'm sorry, nol. It was not my intention to startle
you. You You startled me so much that I forgot to
announce my name. But you did it for me, so
thank you for that. I know how you did that,
though you dropped a bomb on me, Ben, you dropped
the bomb on me. I just go beat. It's going

(00:44):
to be. And of course we would be remiss if
we did not shout out our super producer, good friend
Casey Pegrum who is uh who is sipping a coffee
and gave us a cheerful a cheerful nod and toast
a good day, a good day. Yeah. And we're at
the very end of the years we record this right yeah, yeah,
I mean the magic of podcast post production will be

(01:08):
giving you this episode later, but it is in fact
very close to the end of the year as we
sit and record this right now. Yes, absolutely, and here
in the podcast world, as we approached the end of
the year, in vacation times and stuff, things can get
a little hectic, So both of us are a little
bit punchy and filled with some nervous energy as we're

(01:28):
finishing everything up this week, right, really, and we can
relate to this idea of multitasking and having to really
scramble to get things done. And such was the case
during the Cold War when America was gripped by paranoia
surrounding a potential nuclear war with Russia, and part of

(01:48):
that involved the clandestine um transportation of atomic bombs over
American soil. And again with that theme of multitasking and rambling,
sometimes you know, mistakes are made, Yes, yes, oh gosh,
what an infamous understatement. Yes, sometimes mistakes were made. Multitasking

(02:14):
is tricky. And when you feel like you are juggling
something while you're driving something, while you're also doing a
very difficult math in your head, maybe you begin to
feel a little bit like, uh, something approaching a pilot.
And imagine if one of those things you're juggling was
a seventies six hundred pound or three point four metric

(02:35):
ton nuclear warhead. Once upon a time, Friends and neighbors.
In January of nineteen fifty three, the greg family moved
into a home in a rural part of eastern South Carolina,
and it was on land that their family had owned
for a century. Would you describe it as idyllic, Yes, yeah,
bucolic even Uh, they had no idea that five years

(02:58):
later they would er a very strange, distinctive and dangerous
honor by becoming the first and only American family to
survive the first and only atomic bomb dropped on American
soil by Americans. Are pal Lori L. Dove wrote this
great article for How Stuff Works, and she did not

(03:20):
bury the leave. The title of the article is the U. S.
Air Force dropped an atomic bomb on South Carolina, and that, friends,
is the subject of today's story, and it's and we
want to be clear, it is an accidental bombing. It
wasn't as if the Air Force said, you know who's
really bugging us, the Gregg family. So on March eleventh

(03:41):
of nineteen fifty eight, two of the children of Walter
Greg Helen aged six and Francis, age nine, we're playing
with their nine year old cousin, Ella Davies. They were
just paling around. They had a nice little playhouse in
the backyard near a garden patch. And uh, the father
Walt here along with their brother, Walter Jr. We're working

(04:03):
on some projects in a nearby tools shed. Yes, a
lovely day, Yeah, what could go wrong? You can almost
hear the light music in the background right but elsewhere
high in the air. At four nineteen pm, a member
of the crew of the U. S. Air Force B
forty seven bomber futs things up. A little mistakes were made,

(04:29):
and the crew member accidentally released a nuclear weapon that
landed on the girl's playhouse while they were about two
hundred feet away and the families nearby garden, creating a
massive crater that was had a circumference of about fifty
oh and was more than thirty ft deep out of nowhere.

(04:49):
Just but you know, a more a more dramatic sound,
significantly more dramatic. This created like a shock wave that's
cracked windows and shook homes in the nearby community of
Mars Bluff, and it flattened there this playhouse just to nothing,

(05:11):
and there were chickens that were described as having been vaporized.
And it basically just put a hurting on their entire property.
All of the buildings, their outbuildings became uninhabitable. It literally
changed the slope of their land such that the foundation
of the home was no longer secure and it injured

(05:36):
at least somewhat everyone around, right. Yeah, Luckily it was
not a fatal injury for everyone, but the it's difficult,
although we laugh about it, Oh, it's difficult to fathom
the amount of emotional distress this would cause. Right, So,
before we dive into detail about the specs and stats

(05:57):
of this bomb, let's look at it was happening that day, right,
How did this crew get up in the air? Where
were they? Where were they coming from? Where are they going?
Earlier that day, the crew was part of a training
exercise that would require the bomb to be loaded into
an airplane and flown from Savannah, Georgia, across the Atlantic
to England. This was a mock mission. Think of it

(06:21):
like a training exercise. The operation snow Flurry is what
it was called. And so Captain Earl Kohler, who was
the pilot, Captain Charles Woodroffe who was the co pilot,
Captain Bruce Kulta, the navigator, bombardier, and crew chief Sergeant
Robert screp Talk had arrived at Hunter Air Force Base
just outside of Savannah to fly in this operation scrap Talk.

(06:43):
That is a fascinating sounding name. If it was just
h just scrap talk instead of Robert script talk. It
sounds like a character in a sci fire fantasy film.
You're like Star Trek scrap talk, lord of the igneous
rock people in this world. He's in Air Force pilot.
Uh so as noll As he said, what was the

(07:05):
name of that operation again? Operations snow flurring, operations snow flurry.
They carefully load the bomb onto the plane, takes an hour.
They put into a shackle mechanism that's designed to keep
it in place, but they had a difficult time with
a steel locking pin. Yeah. They actually noticed that there
was like a light of fault light that started to glow,

(07:27):
and that told them that the bomb's locking pin had
not properly been engaged. So Navigator Captain Bruce Kulka went
to take a look. So whild captain Navigator Captain Bruce
Kulka is investigating this light and finding the source of
the fault. He accidentally hit the emergency release pin as

(07:53):
he reached around the bomb to pull himself up. The
device hit the bombay doors. It was really a pin.
It was like a like a like a lever. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and he uh when he did this, when he hit
this it forced the doors open, and can you imagine, no,
the look on this guy's face as he watched it

(08:14):
leave the plane. Yeah, I mean the way I've seen it.
As he was kind of crawling on top of the bomb,
sort of had himself positioned like arms and legs spread
trying to get to this pen. And then when he
sort of lost his footing, he reached out and grabbed
this release lever and all hell broke loose. And yeah,

(08:37):
he apparently as that bomb fell out from under him,
he was left. He was watched it, but he was
left suspending himself from that handle and and whatever else
he had a foothold and a grasp on there and
just watching, looking straight down as that bomb hit those
bay doors. Eventually the weight forced them open and then

(08:59):
it was bombs away. And we're very lucky that he
didn't fall out as well, right, because he's as as
he said, he's staying there. Picture a letter X, just
hanging out with nothing between the ground and himself except
for a very dangerous drop through naked air. So back
to the idyllic greg family homestead. The children are playing,

(09:24):
the boys and and the father are are at work
in the shed form right, and they look and they
see this bomber flying overhead. But that would not have
been an unusual side at the time, especially not in
the nineties exactly, because these kinds of runs were pretty common.
So when this chaos went down, Mr greg was was

(09:47):
quoted as saying he thought that the plane had crashed.
Can you imagine just the chaos that would have ensued,
and just not being able to fully wrap your head
around what had happened, and just trying to figure out
the possibilities, And certainly the first one the go to
would not be Oh, the Air Force accidentally dropped an
atomic bomb on my kid's playhouse, right, And so, as

(10:09):
we said, all five members of the family were injured,
as was the cousin Ella, but they had no idea
what was happening. Wasn't until later that night, when they
were crashing at the house of their family doctor, that
they learned it had been a bomb dropped by us
by the U. S. Air Force. Now here's the thing.
The most serious injury sustained in this event was the cousin,

(10:33):
who I think got somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty
one stitches. And you may ask, but Ben Noel, this
was a nuclear warhead that was dropped on this family's house.
Where's the mushroom cloud? What about the radiation? Here's the
nuclear fallout? Why does Mars Bluff still exist? Where where
are the ghouls? Why is this not you know, like
mad Max Overnight, especially considering that this Mark six bomb

(10:57):
was actually larger than its predecessor, the Part four or
Fat Man used in World War Two. And the look
of this thing is is is pretty cartoonish, and it
looks like kind of something that you would see in
a Loney Tunes cartoon on the side or it makes
me think of that seeing Dr Strangelove where Slim Pickens
rides the bomb cowboy style, which could could have got

(11:18):
close to doing exactly. Very very interesting and the same
time period that's being described in that that paranoid cold
war fear. But here's the thing. We we did kind
of bury the lead here a little bit. It turns
out that in order to transport these weapons they would

(11:38):
be what's called safe in other words, they still had
explosives in them, but they did not have that nuclear payload,
that core of plutonium. And thank god, because as we
said at the top, this was a mock mission. This
was timed to see how long the operation would take

(11:59):
were it to happen in a genuine conflict. So they
did safe it, but safety it is not the same
thing as just making it a dummy bomb. It did
possess explosive power, it did explode. It did not, thank
sweet Pete, contain any sort of nuclear payload. Yeah, that
part was actually transported separately, which you know, good good

(12:21):
on you Air Force, smart smart smart going uh. And
you know this thing did lead to updated security measures
where it was absolutely required that these locking pins be
in place at all times, um, even during takeoff and landing.

(12:42):
I would think, especially during day that's what I get dislodged.
And you know they they yell at us about our
overhead luggage bins that may shift during takeoff and landing.
Watch out. I would think it'd be pretty important to
have that locking pin make sure that that bomb didn't
shift during takeoff and landing. And in this mission in
snow flurry, they actually the jury rigged a bit because
they used a hammer to bang the pin in place.

(13:04):
But imagine banging a nuclear warhead with a hammer. This
is interesting because it may seem ridiculous to us now,
but we have the benefit of hindsight in a very
real way. The technology behind nuclear weapon detonation changed as
a result of this in a very very important h fashion.
So back in the fifties and this time. One thing

(13:25):
that's so scary about knocking this thing around with a
hammer is that nuclear weapons had a trigger that compressed
the uranium plutonium core to set off the chain reaction
of a nuclear explosion, and things like this Mark six
that got dropped on the greg family homestead could be
set off or triggered by concussion, which means anything from

(13:46):
shooting it with a bullet, knocking on the ground, dropping
out on a playhouse, dropping it on a playhouse. And
so the bomb's trigger did explode when it hit the ground,
when they hit the ground of the Greg's, the ground
to the Greg's. I'm feeling though, one if the nuclear
components had been there, it would have been a massive catastrophe.

(14:07):
We're talking hundreds of thousands of people would have died.
Because you know, I hadn't heard of this story until
we looked into it for the show. I would bet
that many listeners have not heard of this, the US
accidentally dropping an atomic bomb on an unsuspecting family in
the South. And that's because at the end of the day,

(14:27):
nobody died. There was no atomic fallout. It was not
a catastrophe of epic proportions. It did, however, become one
of the driving forces for very important change, which is
that today nuclear weapons are going to be set off
not by concussion but by a specific type of electrical impulse.

(14:49):
Within days out of this accidental bomb drop, the Air
Force published new regulations that I think you already mentioned
right where they said, hey guys, let's make sure that
we don't, you know, act we want to drop bombs
where we are supposed to drop them. No more of
this willy nilly, you know, pin hammering business. But what
about the Greg's What about I feel like we've we've

(15:12):
talked about the near miss right that occurred, But what
about the actual Gregg families and poor cousin Ella, Well,
they never returned to that home out there in the
Mars Bluff. They received about fifty four thousand dollars and
damages from the Air Force, which by today's standards would

(15:34):
be in the neighborhood of half a million bucks, which
is not too bad. But also we have to think.
You know, they owned that land, it was in their
family for a hundred years. There's some things that you
can't really put a price on. And they moved to
a nice little cozy bungalow in nearby Florence, South Carolina,
and this became. Of course, we don't know if Walter

(15:56):
greg was the kind of guy to hang out in
a bar, but we do know was a church member
for all of his life. Wherever he was hanging out
and spinning his free time, you know, this was his
go to story when people are spinning tales. You know,
he pointed it out. Not too many people can say
they've had a nuclear bomb dropped on them. Oh and also, uh,

(16:18):
he was a former paratrooper, so he's familiar with aspects
of military aviation. And he also spent most of his
non military life working as a conductor for the railroads.
And he finishes that quote with and not too many
people would want to And I would side with Walter
on that point. Um to this day, you can actually

(16:40):
go visit this site. There's a historical marker which is beautiful,
embarrassing historical marker. It says atomic bomb accident at Mars
Bluff marchha Leavin. The bomb landed in the woods behind
the asbestos shingle sided home of the railroad conductor Walter
Bill Gregor. Greg his wife, their three children, and a

(17:05):
niece were injured by the concussion, which destroyed the house
and outbuildings and did slight damage to build things within
a five mile radius. And that's when we say slight
damage to think of like the windows breaking exactly so
they One of my favorite parts of this story is
there's something that I picture as a very Wes Anderson moment.

(17:27):
It's the the Greg's and the Air Force crew. They
got in touch with each other, and the crew would
hang out with them because they felt so bad, you know,
and write them letters. And to me, I just picture
something in a lost Wes Anderson film where you know,
there's this immaculately decorated and choreographed room, right, it's perfectly set,

(17:50):
everything is just so, and then Captain Kolka navigator walks
in and says, hello, this is the anniversary of the
time that I accidentally dropped the bomb on you. And
then Walter Gregg says, yes, Captain, I'm aware. It's just
like I have brought you this gift and then they
then they eat a nice Thanksgiving style meal together, but

(18:13):
it's like I brought you a gift, is like, well,
I hope it isn't another bomb. And speaking of bombs,
there is also you can go to where the crater
is and it's still there. It looks kind of like
a crappy pond now because it's basically just you know,
it's it's obviously filled in over time, um, but it's
still there. It's it's it just tends to be full
of standing water and there's a plywood silver spray paint.

(18:36):
It looks like plywood. Um. Actual size bomb it's like
a silhouette m K six seventy hundred pounds. And there's
like an Instagram photo on the How Stuff Works article
where the girl standing next to it and saying I've
been wondering for years where exactly the atomic bombs I
was and we finally found it. We do want to
say that it is on you can visit it. However,

(18:58):
the site is located on private prop. The Gregg's did
sell the land and right yeah, and it's currently on
private property. There's no public access road. So we don't
want ridiculous history to be known as a show that
encourages trespassing. So do check with the do check with
the locals before you go on an expedition, and be

(19:20):
careful how to get snake bit or get a tick
or something. There's probably some tall grass around there, um,
but yeah, to get to it, you have to go
through this abandoned lot that used to have a trailer
park and walk through a totally overgrown path and then
you come upon this crappy pond that was created by
the one and only time that an atomic bomb was
dropped on American soil by American forces. And so this

(19:45):
this got me thinking. As I was I was always
reading this, I was remembering this poem by Elizabeth Bishop
called one Art, which is the art of losing isn't
hard to master. That's that's the first line, and it
goes on, I don't want to ruin it. It's it's
worth reading. No poetry spoilers, No poetry spoilers, ridiculous, right,

(20:05):
no trespassing, no poetry spoilers. But but it's a poem
essentially about how easy it is to lose things. And
it also inspired me to to think about the other
times that nuclear weapons around the world have been lost.
And it turns out that since nineteen fifty there have
been thirty two nuclear weapon accidents UH the accidental launching

(20:30):
firing Debtonatin, the after loss of weapon. I mean around
the world, you know, in Canada, in England, and the
strangest thing that happens is in in a few cases
the exact location is unknown. There was a incident in
March tenth of nineteen fifty six, just a couple of
years before this incident UH in the Carolinas, where a

(20:55):
B forty seven carrying two nuclear capsules on a flight
from Tampa, Florida to an overseas base was reported missing.
It didn't make contact in the Mediterranean when it was
supposed to for second refueling, and no one ever found
the plane. It's just out there somewhere in the oceans. Yeah.
So at least thirty two of these broken Arrow events occur,

(21:17):
which is why that John Travolta movie is called Broken Arrow?
Who else can't bring you Broken Arrow? Who else don't
bring you about? A lover y? And if you were
the Greg's what would you have done when you found
out that this occurred? Personally? I don't play the lottery

(21:40):
but I would think my my probability odds are pretty
cool right now. Or it could be like a final
destination kind of scenario where it's like, you know, the
Reaper was robbed and then I'd be looking for like
any number of things to kill me in my just
basic surroundings, which those movies got stranger, stranger and more
and more like intricate. They had to double down with

(22:02):
the room Goldberg nest of it all. Enough, there we go,
that's the correct phrase. So I guess we're done here, right. No, wait,
what is that? Do you hear it too? Oh? Yeah,
I hear that. Wait, casey, where are you laughing? Oh? No,

(22:24):
here it comes. It's time, gentlemen. Yep, I'm back. It's
the Quister, Quister Jonathan Strickland. Ye, we thought the show
was over. No, no, it has only just begun, my friends.
For it is time to test your ability to tell
fact from fantasy. Okay, then let's get on with this.

(22:46):
So this is the segment of the show where in
our nemesis, the evil Quister Jonathan Strickland comes in to
test our ability both to discern fact from fiction, as
he said, and also to to see whether we can
work together to figure it out and also to slowly
wear us down over time until we crack. And and

(23:09):
for those who did not hear the previous installment, here
are the general rules that hold sway from one incident
to the next, which is, you have three minutes three
trying something out. Three. I'll probably have a different one
every time. I'm on three minutes three in order for

(23:31):
you can talk with one another. You can address me
with any questions. If I have any more information, I
will give it to you based upon the way you
ask the question. I may not give you all the
information you wish, but you have those three minutes to
make your determination, at the end of which you must
then tell me whether or not the scenario I present
to you was fact or fantasy. And I also create

(23:54):
an arbitrary rule every time, and it will change every
single time. So last time you had to proceed every
question with a phrase. This time you have to and
every question to me with the words tick tick tick boom,
three ticks in a boom, three ticks followed by a boom.

(24:15):
And as as soon as I finished giving you your scenario,
you will start the timer of three months. The enormous
Grandfather timer. As we have previously established, we's been our
whole budget on that thing, you know, I know it's
I really had this whole like like sketch for a
costume and a mask, and instead I'm just I'm just

(24:35):
hearing a plaid shirt. It is. It's an audio podcast, though,
you could be wearing anything just right in my work. Alright,
So alright, so yeah, I'm hanging I'm hanging on the
edge of the second hand. I'm gonna do a pull
up and start the timer when it's excellent. So here
is your scenario. In October twenty s the Royal Navy

(25:01):
was called out to detonate an unexploded World War One
era bomb which previously had been used by a family
as a doorstop. Start the timer, okay, okay, so it's
a World War One era bomb which in and a doorstop.

(25:22):
So clearly not the size of our giant forehead they
were talking about today. It sounds more like maybe the
size of like a like a propane tank or something maybe, yeah, yeah,
what kind of bombs are they using in world? Definitely
not nuclear? No, uh, all right, the quister, could you

(25:43):
could you repeat the salient points one more time? Tick? Tick,
tick boom. Yes. October two thousand seventeen, Royal Navy has
called out to a farm in Devon, England to detonate
an unexploded mom of the World War One era that
had previously been used as a doorstop. I'm going to

(26:08):
say true. I think true. I think we're gonna I
think we're gonna call this one earlier. I think maybe
we will. All right, are we official on it? Yes?
Locking the answer, locked in. We think it's true. Gentlemen,
you are two for two. Yes. As it turns out,
there was a farm in Devon, England and the while

(26:32):
it had been previously used as a doorstop, what had
actually happened was that they found this bomb inside a wall.
It had been placed on purpose inside the wall when
the wall was constructed. The grandparents of the owners of
the farm said, oh, we used to use as a doorstop.
It was a corroded twenty five pound unexploded ordinance from

(26:55):
the UK. Chances are it was actually uh fire into
the farm area by accident from a nearby firing range.
So that's what I was gonna ask. Is this sort
of like a mortar round? Almost along those lines? Pund
Shell got it. Yes, very well done, very well done.
So you've gotten one fantasy correct, one fact correct? What

(27:19):
will next time bring? Who's to say it's except me?
I have like the next three written, so I yes, okay,
you know what Quistion does his homework. You know, you
can say a lot about Jonathan, but he definitely does.
Got to respect the craft, you know, I got to
respect that, gotta respect the quiz. Well, Jonathan, you know,
thank you so much for coming aboard the show. Thank him. Okay, Jonathan,

(27:44):
I acknowledge that you are here. We can't we can't
really deny it. I, as we've also previously established, I
have no way of getting out of this room without
someone from outside opening the door for me. Again, we
spent a lot of the budget on our gigant grandfather Timer,
and you know that we just didn't allocate the right

(28:05):
money for locks. It's fine, I'll just sit in the corner. Now,
get the hands, foul demon. I'm just back here. I'm sorry.
It's okay. You can stay getting a call all right? O. Hey, yeah, okay, yeah, sure, no,

(28:25):
you know I'll have lunch with you. We're recording so well,
Jonathan makes his lunch plans. We we would like to,
So while Jonathan is making his lunch plans, we would
like to thank you listeners for joining us for another
episode of Ridiculous History, another of of Jonathan's diabolical quiz segments,
which you know, I could, I could, I could take

(28:48):
her leave. I'm having a good time. I'm having I'm
having a great time with it. I mean we're you know,
technically we're winners. Now that's true. Let us know if
you're having a good time, right I said ridiculous at
How Stuff Works Talk and you can also find us
on Facebook, Twitter, and uh Instagram right where we are
Ridiculous History. And you can also of course find our

(29:09):
nemesses Jonathan on his own show tech Stuff, which is
available wherever you find your favorite podcast. So be well,
have a fantastic week. Throw us a review if you'd like.
We'd love to hear from you, and stay tuned for
another episode of Ridiculous History. Guys, I'm on the phone.