The B-47 was the first line of America’s strategic defense in the late 1950s and early 1960s — AirVectors
Morocco-U.S. nuclear accident
The U.S. has had over 30 broken arrow incidents but the incident at Sidi Slimane, a city in Morocco was said to be one of the most serious ones. Many lives would have been lost in an accident that could have detonated a hydrogen bomb right at the centre of the city, Sidi Slimane, in 1958. In 1951, the French government gave the U.S. access to territory in Morocco, one of its colonies, to build an airbase but when Morocco gained independence in 1956, pressures started piling within the North African country to have the U.S. expelled from their air bases.
As U.S. officials were closing their bases, a near disaster happened. On January 31, 1958, a B-47 bomber on ground alert, loaded with a nuclear weapon, caught fire on the runway at the U.S. air base at Sidi Slimane.
B-47s strategic bombers parked at Sidi Slimane four years before the near disaster — Unredacted
The B-47 bomber carried a single Mark 36 bomb, a second-generation hydrogen bomb that was so powerful at the time of the accident. The crewmen escaped without injury before the spread of the fire, splitting the plane into two.
It is said that cars full of airmen and their families had to escape into the Moroccan desert, over fears of a nuclear disaster. The fire lasted for two and a half hours. The high explosives in the Mark 36 burned but fortunately did not detonate. Though no one knew about the incident over what officials called the unnecessary anxiety it would have caused, the king of Morocco was aware but he tolerated the situation and did not create a fuss over it.
