I wonder how many B-43s a SCB-125 era Essex class carrier would have routinely kept on board? 2? 5? 10? You know they had a nuclear section put in the magazines during the reconstruction - I would have.

I'm guessing They were counting on that naivete.

I was thinking that very same thing. Of course they would have nuclear weapons on board. Why wouldn't they?

@@dmk0210 I figured no more than two. An Essex carrier would have less of a strike role, so any situation which called for more than one tactical nuke would involve a Midway or Forrestal. The one or two on the Essex would be a 'just in case', hence the adjustable yield.

@@marckyle5895Adjustable yields were very common on bombs meant to be carried by lighter aircraft because they would often be used in a more tactical role closer to friendly forces. You want to be able to adjust the yield to suit the target and the relevant distance from friendlies. You're not going to be going deep into Russia to bomb a strategic target with an A-4. Fixed yield bombs are usually larger and intended for strategic aircraft or ICBMs. Something that likely has a pre-designated target. As was mentioned, the fact that this one was set for its maximum yield was shocking to the ordinance crew. This seems to imply that they were far more used to seeing and training with bombs on the lower available settings. These lower settings are likely what an A-4 or other light aircraft would most likely use in any situation short of all out nuclear war. That being said they would have carried far more than just two nukes and I think you're significantly underestimating the strike capability of an Essex. There were 2 different sizes of hulls and they were fitted out to a rather bewildering number of refit standards. The combat focused CVs (not the anti-sub CVS) had a standard loadout that was generally 5-6 squadrons with at least half or more being strike aircraft. I couldn't find an actual 1960s era breakdown of the actual plane quantities that made up those combat squadrons but in the mid to late 1960s the USS Oriskany is listed as having 2 squadrons of F-8J Crusaders and three squadrons of A-4E Skyhawks and various early warning/recon planes. In 1971 she's listed as actually having 71 aircraft on board of which 36 were A-7B Corsairs (the A-4's replacement). So with 30+ nuclear capable aircraft on board it would be pretty ridiculous to assume the carrier would only carry 2 nukes for them. Its far more likely to assume they had at least 1 per aircraft if not two. Especially during the height of the cold war. You also have to remember that with the safeguards around nuclear weapons (and japan's dislike of said nukes) that they weren't going to be able to resupply on them after leaving the US. Any nukes they might need for the entire deployment and any potential emergency escalations had to be carried from the start. So its likely they were going to over estimate.

"Tragedy" doesn't feel like the right word...

His name and rank belong on the Memorial!!!

Depends. If the carrier was not in direct support of the Vietnam War, then he will not. June 1969, the USS Frank E. Evans was cut in half by the HMAS Melbourne during a joint exercise, 74 sailors died & they are not on the wall. From Wiki: ‘Despite operating in Vietnamese waters immediately before deployment to Sea Spirit, and being scheduled to return to activities supporting the war effort after the exercise, it was determined that as Sea Spirit was not directly linked with US operations in Vietnam, and the exercise took place outside the geographical limit for the conflict as defined by the outer edge of Market Time operations, the crew was ineligible for inclusion on 'The Wall'. Exceptions to the geographic limit rule have been made for other personnel killed as part of the conflict but not in Vietnam itself; for example those involved in operations in Laos, and those dying in transit to or from Vietnam. However, an act of Congress specifically permitting the inclusion of their names on the memorial is required: legislation to have those killed in the Melbourne-Evans collision has been introduced on several occasions, but has so far failed to gather sufficient support.’

@@jamessimms415 Lt Donald Vol Hester was added to the Memorial in 1986. His accidental death in 1964 (as part of the same squadron and air wing as Doug Webster) occurred between Iwo Jima and Japan, so does not qualify under the above criteria. I do not know on what basis he was added, but if he qualified, so should Webster and the USS Evans sailors.

There's a lot you haven't heard about Philippines, like the million killed by USA just because they spoke Spanish.

One day soon the bomb will detonate and the US will blame it on China starting WW3.

Japan long suspected that there were nukes aboard carriers everytime we sailed there for RR and got testy when we said that. Can't say as I blame them.

I can remember being told that when I was on board the USS Ranger. But everybody knew we had them on board back then. I often wondered how the protesters at NAS Alameda back then would of reacted if they knew how close they were to the rest of the stored Atomic weapons on base.

@@maxmclanahan6821 Probably even more riled. I always thought they were stored primarily at NWS Concord.

I had a friend that was a marine on base that escorted the nukes from the storage to when they were loaded onboard . They were kept at the southwest corner of the base by the north and south runway. @@kenkahre9262

And what film might that be?

"Broken Arrow"@@MichaelOfRohan

_Broken Arrow_

​@@MichaelOfRohanThe saying was actually used in, we were soldiers with Mel Gibson. Broken Arrow", a code phrase notably used during the 1965 Battle of Ia Drang to indicate an American combat unit was in danger of being overrun.

@@lynch6642 The term (also movie title) quoted by dougjb was used in We Were Soldiers, the saying quoted by the OP was not.

Anybody who thinks nothing can go wrong is an idiot. Throughout history the damnedest things have happened at the worst times... things you can't possibly imagine, let alone plan for. But they still happen. And they happen because, no matter how improbable, they are still possible.

Yeah but the bomb was compromised/damaged and it didnt give off anywhere near its original payload capacity, which TBH, is most likely in a real world scenario.

The video indicates that the cover-up was to avoid an international incident with allied Japan during an in-progress war in Vietnam. In addition, the knowledge that such weapons were present aboard carriers is best kept from both China and the Soviet Union. That is not “stupidity, incompetence, or hubris.”

@@rockhopper01 I suspect China, the Soviet Union, and Japan already knew about the nuclear weapons on the US carriers. The cover-up was to avoid a PR disaster (aka "international incident") and egg on the face of the US Navy. Whether it was stupidity, incompetence, or hubris can be debated. Sometimes accidents just happen and defeat the contingencies set in place to mitigate them.

What else is hidden? In short, a LOT!

@@rockhopper01 or protecting the japanese government from their population which was cheated.

@@chicosbailbonds9764 The premier in Tokyo would have been forced to either: act ie force a removal of nuclear bombs from Japan, or resign and force a realignment of Japan.

I think the bigger concern is someone retrieving it...

Yes, that is a big concern. But our host said specifically that the weapons were armed. They were and are not armed and therefore, will not create a nuclear detonation.

Except that he said that the armourer had done all their work..... so they bomb should have been by that time live.

@@TheStefanskoglund1 No. The "explosive train" has several additional steps that must be accomplished before the final detonation sequence occurs, including the pilot "arming" the weapon in the cockpit, the release of the weapon and the separation of the umbilical from the aircraft and the achievement of the final attack profile (Airburst at X altitude, surface burst or sub-surface burst). Without all of those happening in sequence (and with the appropriate accelerometer inputs) the final command to detonate will not occur. It takes a lot to detonate a nuclear weapon (US built- can't vouch for anyone else's)

I don’t agree. As noted in the video his loss was off the coast of Japan and he was not in the war zone. Nor was he participating in a live combat sortie. It was a training accident

​@@shawnmiller4781I think I'm going to go ditto on this. While there have been names added; this was clearly outside of the combat zone. I'm not sure what the requirements are however?

Although Webster was not flying a combat mission or in the war zone, another pilot, Donald Vol Hester, from the same squadron and the same ship was lost in an accident in waters closer to Japan a year previously and his name was added to the Memorial in 1986. I have yet to find under what criteria this was done, but if Hester qualifies, so should Webster.

I’m sorry but I find that hard to believe. Think of the coordination required to to that by the government. I work for the federal government and we operate like an octopus with 16 brains and none are talking to each other. Additionally in my past I worked in airborne reconnaissance. We lost an aircraft with all hands on board and it was in an area somewhere in the Pacific in an area hostile to us. Not near hostile areas but we heard fairly far inland. All were buried with military honors. Their mission would have been classified TS with some letters after the TS. If that wasn’t erased I can’t see much being erased like you said. If you have names submit them to the History Guy and let’s see what he can do otherwise it’s just an old wives tale.

@@kaptainkaos1202 Perhaps. I would hope that is true. All I have is the word of a few old Rangers who were on patrol in areas they said were not being officially acknowledged. Either they are remembering incorrectly, they lied, or are truthful. Have a happy day.

@@Art65483 I have to agree with Kaptain Kaos. Your main point, that some people are not on The Wall, is to be expected, as some ops are too sensitive to acknowledge. But school records? Naw. We're just not that efficient. (Now that I see Kaos' history, I wonder if he and I were in the same squadron, doing "interesting things" in the Pacific.) Your Ranger buddies are not "lying," they're totally convinced of their story, however it got started.

I was with VA-305 out of Point Mugu with one of the last A-7 squadrons. Dam, good plane, slow but solid. That would of been about 1981 / 82.

I was in the Army in the late 1980s. There were a lot of soldiers injured and killed during training.

@@shawnr771. Military people died as a result of the German Red Army & other such organizations in bombings.

Those sound like pretty fair criteria for listing.

If you see SD on the tail it indicates that aircraft is set up for Special Delivery.

Yes but he wasn’t in Nam nor flying a mission to Nam so the Vietnam memorial is not the appropriate place

It was ejected before the crash and has never been found.

It is mind-boggling to think that a nuclear bomb is just laying on a mountainside in Canada.

@@mikebronicki8264 under snow, under water. The site was very remote and difficult to locate, and the plane was thought lost at sea. The wreck site wasn’t found until three years after the accident, with no sign of the weapon nor unusual radioactivity. The bomb did not have it’s plutonium trigger, but did include radioactive material. In 2016 a diver found what he thought might be a part of the bomb, but an investigation showed that it was not.

Codenames are specifically designed not to be overtly descriptive of what they represent since the codename itself is is not classified to the degree that the "file" or "operation" that it represents because uncleared individuals may encounter it. My personal experience with this was in 1971 when, on duty at the operations office of a Navy P-3 squadron as an uncleared Airman (E-3), the phone rang, and a voice at the other end said "Branding Iron" and hung up. I looked at the phone, and hung up. At the time, the duty officer and enlisted Master-at-Arms had gone to dinner and I was the only one manning the duty office. Five minutes later, the phone rang again. I answered it, and the same voice said "Branding Iron" again. This time he didn't hang up, waited a few seconds and said "Airman, do you know what that means?". "I have no idea" I replied. He said, "Is your duty officer there?" "No" I replied, "They are out to dinner." He said (very kindly), "Well when they return tell them that someone called and said "Branding Iron". "Who is this" I said. He said "That doesn't matter, just pass the message along please, they will know what to do." Twenty minutes later the Duty Officer and MAA returned and I told them the story. The blood drained from his face and he went to the classified safe and extracted a file and broke into a flurry of activity. Later he took me aside and explained that "Branding Iron" was a codeword to initiate a "scramble" of the ready alert crew. He also stated the he was in trouble but that I did everything right and not to worry about it. I never heard a word of the incident again.

Some Russian submarine got lucky that day!

Thank you!

​@@TheHistoryGuyChannel Pardon me for asking this question... Where exactly did the accident happened ... inside Philippine waters or near Okinawa ??

With the engine off and no APU connected, the aircraft has a limited amount of hydraulic pressure to operate the brakes, while being moved from flight deck to hangar bay. On the elevator is always the most crucial time for either the pilot or “plane captain” (enlisted crewman who rides the brakes while the aircraft is being towed), and calls for maximum attentiveness.

On an Essex the only way to fall off is back into the hangar deck. Both L2 and L3 one can roll off the edge into the ocean and the platforms are not that small for an A-4.

Thank you for your service!

I hope you did not ( or don’t know of ) the one lost off of NC. Coast. I believe they found it a few years ago.

​ There were two that fell IN North Carolina proper, near 😂Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, in Goldsboro, NC. Along with the bomber that crashed (it developed a fuel leak, soon after refuling. A B-52, I beleive) One was recovered, one buried itself so deep, they couldn't recover it, only a lot of the pieces of it, so the U.S. government bought the section of property at ground zero, and about 400 feet in all directions around it, in the middle of the farmers field. There's even an NC historical marker placed nearby the area, just outside of Goldsboro, NC. I don't recall hwaring of one being lost off the coast, however.

@@ghowell13 That's disturbing. It begs the question of how many there are out there that we don't know about. And not j6st the USA. How many Soviet era nukes are there buried in the ocean or in the interior of the former USSR. We probably only see the tip of the iceberg. I bet there are more.

I'm not certain how the laughing face got inserted in my comment. Obviously I somehow managed to place it there, but it was unintentional.

@@pooryorick831 there's no real way of knowing the full truth of your statement, though true it most definitely is, without doubt. I'm not certain we want to know, although we certainly need to know. Alomg a similar vein, how much nuclear material went missing at the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. is another unknown, although I would think that any material has likely been recovered as it was being planned on being used for nefarious acts, else there would be areas besides Chernobyl/ Pripyat that are hazardous fallout areas now.

Yeah, a bomb blast at that depth wouldn't really do much.

Weren't there some Skywarriors and Vigilants that were quite large?

@@davidhoffman1278 The A-3 Whale was the biggest jet to operate routinely on carriers. In fact, when my EA-3B hit the deck, it would bounce a bit, which the crew called the Whale Dance. As to size, there was a C-130 making landings (Forrestal, I think), but it was a test only.

in the Pacific, only Heavy 4 (VAH-4) flew on the small, modified WW II, carriers. That was the most difficult carrier landing routine in the Vietnam era. The plane had no ejection seats for the three man crew which led to the designation of A3D, which officially stood for Attack model #3 Douglas ( now absorbed by Boeing), to be changed aboard carriers to " all 3 dead".

@@TomSwift-wy1gx VQ-1 or 2? I was in VQ-1 and got lucky to fly on the Whale a few times before I stuck with the EP-3

@@kaptainkaos1202 Q-2, Guam. I was ELINT petty officer 75-79. My first flight was on a big bird in the SOJ, but I was soooo bored, I asked for whales immediately upon landing. You?

Yes, the video is aboard Ticonderoga- “Carrier Qualification of the F3H-N2.”

Rare airplane now. Only three left.

@@stanstenson8168 They were a cool looking bird, just needed lots more thrust and better throttle response. You can squint and see how the F-4 came from it.

Don't confuse the August 2, 1964, incident with the August 4 incident which apparently never happened.

To clarify, both the real firefight on August 2 and the imaginary firefight of August 4 (where it appears that the US basically fired in the direction of spurious radar returns that they took to be Vietnamese vessels) were used to justify the war. Politically it was very relevant and maybe should have been mentioned. But the video is about a different topic altogether so it's arguable how relevant the events of August 4 are here.

​@@TruthNerdsI think what really should be mentioned is exactly what the USS Maddox was doing there in the first place. The USS Maddox was providing intelligence and communication servixes for clandestine South Vietnamese forces operating in North Vietnam. The US was far more involved in the war between North and South than was being admitted to the public.

It isn't. Broken Arrow refers solely to a nuclear weapon incident. The entire scenario presented in We Were Soldiers is pure horseshit. Typical Mel Gibson fantasy. The most historically inaccurate part of the film.

@@mikearmstrong8483 - I hear ya. All I'm saying is that it comes up when you Google "radio call sign when a us force is being overrun"... 🤷‍♀

@@jemc4276 That's because wikipedia allows any idiot to post whatever they want with no real editing or review. I served with a nuclear capable unit and I know the reporting procedure, and it has absolutely nothing to do with just yelling Broken Arrow over a radio.

Those were Demons - thank you! I knew they weren't Skyhawks but I wasn't sure what they were.

"Dug-out Doug" they called him. Not a popular fellow.

@@DavidMartin-ym2te That's what I call him too. I was trying to be polite.

@@DavidMartin-ym2te The media loved him but he was one worthless officer....and person.

"Hey! Thanks for picking up our nuke for us!"

It wouldn't have been armed while in transit and may not even have the warhead in place. You can bet someone got demoted. They use modified trucks to transport nuc demolition charges so they have more tie-down points.

Gotta ask. Did you personally pick up the weapon, or was it "your wrecker" from "your squadron" but not you personally. Asking to be clear.

@@TomSwift-wy1gx It was my issued M816 wrecker and I was the operator with a rigger for assistance. And yes the warheads were attached. But no arming mechanism. The missile broke out the lower rail stop from the mobile launcher. The short range tactical nukes had an operating range of 40 miles.

@@peteengard9966 Very cool. Thanks for that.