A less infamous date in history-Atomic Bomb dropped in SC

First let me say thank you to all the veterans of the armed forces, as well as the generations of Patriots, and citizen soldiers that date back to the American Revolution, of which, my ancestor was a General. And especially thank you to the WW2 veterans that are still here with us. December 7, 1941 was the date in infamy which started it all.





With that said, after WW2, we entered the Cold War. As everyone knows, we came close with the Cuban Missile Crisis. But, here's one you won't read about in the history books, it's an interesting untold story that few people know.




Did you know that an atomic bomb was dropped on South Carolina?

On a little town with the name of "Mars Bluff" in fact.

It happened many years ago, on March 11, 1958, at around 1620 hrs.

Fortunately, the plutonium core was stored in the 'birdcage' of the B-47, and not in the bomb, or the northeast corner of SC would probably be a much different place than it is today! It's a sobering feeling to stand there, and think about that!

Check this out:


The story:
https://historyonair.com/episode_detail/HP001.htm



Video tour of the site:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ct1PwicI40

In the late 60's, I was a mechanic on B-52s and we'd have "exercises" where we would launch ten B-52s loaded with nuclear bombs from the alert pad along with tankers and deploy to far corners of the world, usually to flex our strength when the other side showed some signs of movement. I can tell you it was a little nerve racking.

I'll bet! NBC weapons can easily be the end of mankind, it's a very eerie feeling just talking about them, much less standing where one fell, thank God it was unarmed.


I was born and raised in SC, and I had never heard of the A-bomb crater until about 5 or 6 years ago, I saw the sign as we were driving toward Florence one day, and so, I just had to check it out.

In the area where the bomb fell, several years after that, sometime during the 1980's, a developer had planned to build a housing subdivision called "Francis Marion Forest" But it never went through, all that was there was the infrastructure, i.e., the power poles, the asphalt streets and driveways, and even the power poles with meter boxes in the yards.

Well, I didn't know about the subdivision, nor about the bomb being unarmed when it fell, so, the first thing I thought was, "OMG! It wiped out a neighborhood, and it must still be condemned from too much radioactivity! We better not hang around too long!" But I also thought, "now if that were true, this would be a restricted area, they wouldn't let us within a mile of here."

Then I went home and looked it up on the net, and breathed a sigh of relief, as well as learning another piece of our history.