Kirtland air accident
United States Air Force Convair B-36 Peacemaker · Bomb falling out of the bomb bay
From Biggs to Kirtland Air Force Base
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Occurrence
- Event fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- Unknown
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Military
Convair B-36 Peacemaker
- Aircraft type
- Convair B-36
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- Unknown
- Operator
- United States Air Force
- Onboard fatalities
- 0
- Route
- From BiggsTo Kirtland Air Force Base
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Kirtland air accident – an air accident which took place on 22 May 1957. A B-36 Peacemaker aircraft was transporting an atomic bomb from the base at Biggs in Texas (USA) to Kirtland base in the state of New Mexico. At 1150 local time, during the approach to the airfield, at an altitude of about 1700 feet (approx. 500 metres), the bomb being carried in the aircraft fell out of it, together with the bomb bay doors. The parachutes did deploy automatically, but because of the low altitude at the moment it left the aircraft, they did not open fully. The bomb fell seven kilometres south of the base, approx. 500 metres west beyond the boundary of the military zone. As a result of the impact, the fuzes of the conventional charges in the bomb went off, which tore the bomb apart and blasted a crater in the ground 3.5 deep and 7 metres in diameter. The debris of the bomb was scattered within a radius of one and a half kilometres from the place where the bomb fell.
According to military sources, there was no contamination of the area around the crash site, because for safety reasons the nuclear payload was not in the lost bomb during transport, but landed safely together with the aircraft.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Polish Wikipedia article “Katastrofa lotnicza w Kirtland” (revision 75489638, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
Sources
Polish Wikipedia article: Katastrofa lotnicza w Kirtland
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 75489638 · 2024-12-06 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q11737200
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- pl Wikipedia article "Katastrofa lotnicza w Kirtland" (page 128327, revision 75489638), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- operator named as an armed force or military unit in the infobox
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the Polish Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.