20. A Soviet submarine accidentally fired a nuclear warhead in 1977
On November 22, 1977, the Soviet submarine K-171 accidentally released a nuclear warhead whilst off the coast of Kamchatka. The cause of the accident has never been determined or revealed, in part due to characteristic Soviet military secrecy, and the incident only became public knowledge after a newspaper report on the incident in Vladivostok in 1993. The jettisoned warhead became the subject of an expansive search and recovery operation involving dozens of Soviet ships and aircraft, which eventually located and retrieved the intact nuclear device.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Afri Special Report: DoD Nuclear Mishaps”, H.L. Reese, Nuclear Defense Agency, April 1983.
“U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents”, Jaya Tiwari and Cleve J. Gray, Center for Defense Information.
“Nuclear weapon missing since 1950 ‘may have been found”,
“The Crash of the B-29 on Travis AFB, CA”, Check-Six, November 21, 2014.
“Broken Arrow Nuclear Weapon Accidents”, Jeff Scott, Aerospaceweb, April 2, 2006.
“Broken Arrow B-47”, Check-Six, November 22, 2016.
“The day America dropped 4 nuclear bombs on Spain… but the disaster, 50 years ago, has been forgotten by all but its surviving victims”, Guy Walters, Daily Mail, January 18, 2016.
“List of Military Nuclear Accidents”, Wikipedia.
“U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents: Danger In Our Midst”, Center for Defense Information, 1981.
“Broken Arrow: Goldsboro, N.C.”, IBiblio, December 4 2000.
“Narrative Summaries of Accidents Involving U.S. Nuclear Weapons 1950-1980”, Department of Defense.