Phew, that was close !

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24280831 I never knew about that, did you ?

Re: Phew, that was close !

I read this yesterday and it was the first I knew of it.

Re: Phew, that was close !

I heard about this on the radio Alan , one has to wonder how many other near misses there were we never got to hear about for years if at all . I seem to remember there was at least one in the USA.

Re: Phew, that was close !

Very brave of him to do that and he deserves something like the nobel peace prize IMO.

Re: Phew, that was close !

Someone with sense for a change - good lad ....

Re: Phew, that was close !

I'd not heard it before Alan - I too wondered, as I read it, how many other near misses there have been.

Re: Phew, that was close !

This also was close, the time an American B52 bomber broke up over Carolina and dropped two atomic bombs on the State. Of the four safety switches in one bomb 3 failed When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device and it was only the final, highly vulnerable switch that averted a disaster. which is why they are just still on the map.

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct...53217764,d.bGE

Re: Phew, that was close !

What a risk he took, and thank God he did, a brave man under pressure. Like everyone else, I wonder about the near things we will never know about on both sides during the cold war, seems we were living through very dangerous times indeed.

Re: Phew, that was close !

There were other 'near misses' too. One was triggered by a flight of geese which formed a 'v' formation over the Atlantic - the Americans thought they were under attack and pressed the buttonb to launch the missiles - it was only AFTER they launched the missiles that someone thought to check on the 'v' formation, found it to be a flight of geese and then had to destroy the missi;les in flight before they could be armed.

Another sim ilar incident was triggered by the rising moon appearing over the horizon out of the Atlantic which also put the entire American forces world-wide on immediate alert.

Re: Phew, that was close !

I hadn't heard about that either Alan - just goes to show how precarious a situation the world is with these missiles in existence.