Customer Reviews

Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon

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Norman Leach has written an amazingly clear and concise explanation on the events surrounding the loss of America's First Nuclear Weapon. Broken Arrow is the story of a Strategic Air Command (SAC) crew, and the perils they faced on the evening of December 13, 1950. As a former SAC member myself during the final years of the Cold War, I found Broken Arrow to be a refreshingly honest and straight forward account of the events surrounding the loss of the B-36 and the Mark IV Atomic Bomb that it carried.

Mr. Leach has purposely avoided the tempting sensationalism that revisionist historians and conspiracy theorists often use to further their own views. I was deeply moved by his understanding of the men, the times that they lived in, and the reasons for their willingness to sacrifice everything for a country they truly loved.

"The men of SAC believed in their hearts they were protecting the United States and the free world from the threat of Communism. Their actions cannot be judged outside the context of their times nor can they be separated from the depth of their convictions." - Norman Leach (Broken Arrow) Americas First Lost Nuclear Weapon.

Thank you Mr. Leach for a truly inspiring and realistic account of one of the Cold War's first great mysteries.

The start of the 1950s began with one of the deadliest things ever created by humanity just up and disappearing. "Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon" is the story of America's near-fatal mistake that could have cost the world millions of lives. When a simulated bombing run went wrong, the world lucked out; the bomb washed up in British Columbia, Canada - a nation with sense enough not to do the world wrong with it. Many questions arise however, and "Broken Arrow: America's First Lost Nuclear Weapon" is a deft examination of them all, highly recommended for community library military history shelves.

Very interesting story, but the book includes a few howlers that are apparent to anyone who flies. For example, Leach theorizes that the airplane didn't crash after most of the crew bailed out because the remaining pilot "turned it into the wind", thereby gaining lift and altitude. It just doesn't work that way: airplanes don't care which way the wind is blowing; they fly relative to the air mass they are in. The plane's continued flight for several hundred miles couldn't have had anything to do with turning into the wind. Could it be that the plane gained altitude because the crew had just unloaded 10,000 pounds of nuclear bomb before exiting the aircraft? And why didn't the crew attempt to continue flying after jettisoning the nuke? That question is never asked, even though some of the survivors were still available at the time of writing.

There are a few other minor factual errors, such as Leach's estimate of the turning radius of a B-36. In sum, the author's lack of an aviation background keeps the book from being as convincing and authoritative as it might have been. I don't know why publishers don't have such books proofread by a pilot, but I think that doing so would solve a lot of problems and make for a better story.