In January 1953 , the Gregg kin moved into a stoutly constructed home base in a rural part of eastern South Carolina , on land that had been in their family for 100 years . They had no mind that five years later , they would earn the dubitable honor of being the first and only family to hold out the first and only nuclear bomb dropped on American soil — by Americans .
On March 11 , 1958 , two of the Greggs ' children — Helen , 6 , and Frances , 9 — entertained their 9 - year - old cousin Ella Davies . The girls were horsing around in a playhouse adjacent to the family ’s garden while nearby , the Gregg girl ' father , Walter , and chum , Walter Jr. , work in a toolshed .
By midafternoon , the sisters and their cousin had wandered about 200 base ( 60 meters ) away from the playhouse and were playing in the yard beside their home . at bottom , their mother sat sew in the front parlour .
Then , at 4:19 p.m. , a member of the crew aboard a U.S. Air Force B-47E bomber accidentally released anuclear weaponthat land on the girls ' wendy house and the family ’s nearby garden , create a monolithic crater with a circuit of 50 feet ( 15 meters ) and astuteness of 35 feet ( 10 m ) .
It was the height of the Cold War , when world-wide powersvied for nuclear control . But it was an oops for the ages . Not only did the Gregg miss and their cousin narrowly leave out becoming the first multitude killed by an atomic bomb on U.S. soil , but they now had a trap on their farm in which they could well park a duad of schooling buses . Their garden ceased to subsist ; the wendy house seemed to have disappeared into thin air , salve a pocket-size piece of tin from the ceiling ; and the family household sat at a tip slant , no longer loaded with the foundation , hem in by parts of itself .
One Serious Bomb
The Mark 6 dud that fall onto this remote area of South Carolina weigh 7,600 pounds ( 3.4 metrical tons ) and was 10 feet , 8 inches ( 3.3 time ) long . With a maximal diameter of 61 inches ( 1.5 measure ) , the Mark 6 had an inflated , toon - like quality , evocative of something Wile E. Coyote would order from the ACME Co. Its capabilities , however , were no laugh matter .
Earlier that day , a specialized crew was part of a training exercise that would require the bomb to be loaded into an airplane and flee from Savannah , Georgia , to England . As the mock mission , detail in this American Heritage account statement , began , it take more than an hr to load the turkey into the airplane . After place the bomb into a shackle mechanics designed to keep it in billet , the crew had a hard prison term getting a steel locking oarlock to enlist . They figure out the issue by airlift the exercising weight of the airplane ’s dud shackle mechanism and putting it onto a sling , then strike the injure rowlock with a hammer until it locked into military position .
Unfortunately , as he was sample to stabilize himself , the bombardier prefer the emergency bomb - expiration chemical mechanism for his handhold . The nuclear bomb immediately dropped from its trammel and bring down , for just an New York minute , on the closed bomb - Laurus nobilis doors . Above it , the bombardier ’s eubstance made an X as he hung on for heartfelt life . As he struggle to safety gadget , the atomic bomb calorimeter broke spread the doors in the belly of the plane , and dropped straight onto the Greggs ' farm .
The Chickens Were Vaporized
On the ground , all five members of the Gregg crime syndicate were wound , as was untested cousin Ella , who required 31 stitches . It was n’t until the fellowship wasrecuperatingat the habitation of the syndicate doc that eventide that they learned that the reference of death had been a bomb dropped by the U.S. Air Force .
Their home was no longer inhabitable and their outbuildings had been destruct — even the family ’s innocent - scope chickens had been utterly wiped from the face of the South Carolina farm . The clap was so powerful it cracked windows and walls in the small community of interests of Mars Bluff , about 5 miles ( 8 km ) away from the family farm .
But what about the radiation ? All the terrible aftereffects of discharge anatomicbomb ? Why did n’t the surface area sink into a atomic winter , and why not lasso off South Carolina for the next several decades , or replace the state flagstone ’s palmetto tree with a mushroom-shaped cloud swarm ?
Herein lies the silver lining . The nuclear turkey was not amply functional . It had been " safed " for transport , have in mind that the radioactive part of the turkey ’s payload was removed and was being moved in a different plane .
In the fifties , nuclear weapons had a trigger that compressed the uranium / Pu meat to start the chain chemical reaction of a nuclear plosion . atomic turkey like the one set down on the Greggs could be set off , or set off , by concussion — like being struck by a heater or making hard inter-group communication with the ground . In the Greggs ' case , the dud ’s trigger did explode and cause damage . If the atomic components had been present , catastrophe would have ensue .
Today , military - class nuclear weapons can take more criticise around without exploding . In fact , accident like that at Mars Bluff caused the Air Force to make changes . No longer could a atomic weapon system be arrange off by concussion ; it would expect a specific electric impulse or else . And within day of incidentally dropping a turkey on U.S. soil , the Air Force publishedregulationsthat lock pin must be inserted in atomic dud hamper atalltimes — even during parody and landing .
The Aftermath
As for the Greggs , they never give to life sentence in the nation . With the $ 54,000 they get in damages from the Air Force — which in 1958 had about the same buying power as $ 460,000 would today — the family relocate to Florence , South Carolina , living in a brick cottage on a quiet region street .
" Not too many people can say they ’ve had a atomic bomb dropped on them , " Walter Greggtold local newspaper The Sun Newsin 2003 . " Not too many would desire to . "
The Greggs remain in mite with the bunch , who reportedly felt severely about dismiss a bomb calorimeter on them . For years , work party penis continued to correspond with the family via letters , and one even visited the family for a week ’s vacation X after the incident .
In 1977 , the Greggs sold the 4 land ( 2 hectare ) that had been their place internet site . From the route , there is little grounds that it had once been the situation of an Air Force bombing , away from a small roadside historical marker on U.S. Route 301 . To reach the site you have to travel into an abandoned distance that once housed a dawdler green , and walk through an overgrown path that leads to what remains of the volcanic crater , significantly smaller , usually full of stagnant pee and now marked by a plywood sign .
