The Mail Online is reporting the story of a US soldier who is finally buried more than 60 years after his plane went down carrying a nuclear weapon back in the 1950’s.
He was one of the crew members onboard a B-36 bomber on a “secret cold war mission” that went down off the coast of British Columbia…
The aircraft was reportedly carried a “Mark 4 atomic bomb” at the time it went down.
It was supposedly on a mock training exercise…
Military officials claimed the bomb was no threat because the “plutonium core had been removed (from the nuclear weapon) , prior to that – making it only a conventional bomb”, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The only problem with that cover story was they didn’t bother to tell the pilot, co-pilot and crew , who wound up risking their lives in order to ditch the plane "over water" because they all were convinced they were carrying a nuclear weapon at the time.
Twelve crew members survived the incident, others were listed as missing, among them Air Force Gunner Staff Sgt. Elbert Pollard who died while trying to evacuate the aircraft, all they were able to recover from him was a “parachute and a booted foot…”
What struck me as very odd in this report was some of the reported statements from “eye witness” Dick thrasher, the 90 year old survivor of the crash who statements lead us to believe the men were actually carrying a live nuclear weapon on some type of secret mission.
Thrasher said this in the article:
“‘The pilot said we had to bail out, but that before we did, we had to go out over the water and get rid of this nuclear weapon. So we did that.’
A 90-year-old survivor of the crash went on to say that the plane’s "carburetors iced up in the storm, leading three engines to catch fire.”
It was an exception feat of heroism, given the circumstances at the time.
According to the story, the U.S. military issued conflicting statements about what happened.
At one point claiming “the pilot ditched the bomb into the sea before the plane crashed, resulting in a non-nuclear blast.”
Question: Why would you say that the pilot ditched the bomb into the sea before the plane crashed resulting in a "non-nuclear explosion" if the bomb was diffused already and considered nothing but a conventional explosive at the time?
It just doesn’t make sense?
Apparently the military forgot aspects of the first cover story which said that the nuclear weapon was only a conventional bomb?
BOOTED FOOT FOUND BY FISHERMAN
The men’s bodies remained missing until a “Canadian fisherman in 1952 hooked a parachute that was attached to a booted foot.."
The foot was later buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis as a memorial to all five missing men from the ill fated flight.
It wasn’t until 2001, when a daughter of one of the men asked for the bones of the foot to be exhumed and identified through DNA analysis.
In 2011 it was "confirmed" to be the remains belonged to Sgt. Pollard, who was 28 at the time. His daughter was then notified.
‘I started crying,’ Betty Wheeler (who was two-years-old at the time of her father’s death) told KTVU”
The Mail reported some of the details of the burial of the foot:
“Pollard’s remains were transported by an honor guard and buried during a ceremony at San Francisco’s National Cemetery on Friday.
The soldier’s remains were then given a “21-gun salute” and a flyover at his funeral.
A SPECIAL MEMORIAL DAY REMEMBERANCE!
‘To be able to honor my father in this way and have so many people honoring him, it’s a tremendous gift,’ Ms Wheeler said.
Ms. Wheeler planned specifically for her father’s foot to be buried over "Memorial Day weekend" – a day set aside to remember the sacrifices of service men and women who gave their lives to their country.
See article: “U.S. soldier buried six decades after his bomber crashed while carrying a ‘nuclear bomb’ on top secret Cold War mission” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150373/U-S-soldier-buried-decades-bomber-crashed-carrying-nuclear-bomb-secret-Cold-War-mission.html#ixzz1w1MmyxGt
Robert Tilford