1964 Savage Mountain B-52 crash

The 1964 Savage Mountain B-52 crash was a U.S. military nuclear accident in which a Cold War bomber's vertical stabilizer broke off in winter storm turbulence. The two nuclear bombs being ferried were found "relatively intact in the middle of the wreckage", according to a later U.S. Department of Defense summary, and after Fort Meade's 28th Ordnance Detachment secured them, the bombs were removed two days later to the Cumberland Municipal Airport. Three of the five crew members died.

Accident description

The B-52D was returning to Georgia from Massachusetts after an earlier Chrome Dome airborne alert to Europe. It carried two B53-0 Y1 nuclear bombs in ferry configuration, with no electrical connections between the bombs and the aircraft. Near Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, on a path east of Salisbury, Pennsylvania; and after altitude changes to evade severe turbulence; the vertical stabilizer broke off. The aircraft was left uncontrollable as a result; the pilot ordered the crew to bail out, and the aircraft crashed. The wreckage of the aircraft was found near the Pennsylvania-Maryland border on the Stonewall Green farm. Today, the crash site is in a private meadow of Elbow Mountain within Savage River State Forest, along the public Savage Mountain Trail just north of the Pine Swamp Road crossing.

While the official DOD description of the accident says that the two weapons "were relatively intact in the approximate center of the wreckage area," an account from William L. Stevens, a safety engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, says that "both bombs broke apart on impact." Stevens further said that an Explosive Ordnance Demolition team from the military was planning to remove the bombs quickly "to reduce media coverage", under the protest of Sandia engineers who felt it was unsafe to do so until the state of the bombs was fully known. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission eventually developed a "carefully considered process" for removing the bomb pieces to an AEC facility.

Later accounts by residents, and at least one local media account from the time, indicate that the bombs were removed from the site using construction equipment supplied from local businesses to the municipal airport.