My dad's "H-Bomb" story was funnier: he was standing flight line guard when a few gallons of cold fuel splashed onto the runway while refueling an armed B47. Foof, a 3-4 diameter puddle of fire. Couple of squirts from an extinguisher and its out.
Except...
one of the other flight line guards observing this immediately determined that a fire underneath a hydrogen-bomb armed aircraft meant doomsday, so he:
- abandoned his weapon
- abandoned his post
- commandeered a jeep
...and was stopped at the outer/Spanish gate (Torrejon AFB is/was a reservation inside a Spanish AF base, so you had the outer perimeter then an inner perimeter surrounding the US base) going hellbent for leather. When they asked the guy why he ran he said "I was trying to get away! There's h-bombs on that plane!"...as if puttering out to metro Madrid would have saved him...
Mind you, the fire was out in the space of about 30 seconds.
Sometimes you've gotta wonder what's going on inside peoples' heads.
Although to be fair given how close we've come to actual near-accidental nuclear detonations (accidental war aside), I can kinda see where he was coming from.
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