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The Time The US Accidentally Nuked Canada
A story covered up for over 30 years
On November 10th, 1950, a B-50 strategic bomber was on its way home from a secret mission. The United States Air Force had secretly deployed a number of nuclear weapons to CFB Goose Bay, a Canadian base in Labrador. The United States had deployed a mixture of 11 Fat Man and Mark 4nuclear weapons in Canada in the summer of 1950 but had decided to remove the weapons from Canadian soil.
The November flight was a secret sortie to remove the nuclear weapons from Canada. B-50s were secretly ferrying out a single bomb at a time. The goal was to remove all 11 of the bombs from Canadian territory by the end of the year.
Unfortunately, shortly after take-off, the B-50 carrying one Mark 4 nuclear bomb experienced severe engine troubles. The prospect of going down over Canada with a nuclear bomb on board was unacceptable, so the crew jettisoned the bomb and rigged it to blow in the air over the Saint Lawrence River. What happened next resulted in a multi-decade cover-up and a nuclear accident that sent radioactive material raining down on the United States’ closest neighbor.
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