A B-52G jet carrying a crew of eight people and two hydrogen bombs disintegrates in midair over the small farming community of Faro in Wayne County. Before the explosion, the jet was in the air for 12 hours — only halfway through its routine mission over the Atlantic Seaboard — when without warning, it lost 19 tons of fuel pressure in just two minutes. First Lt. Adam Mattocks is 27, a North Carolina A&T State University graduate, and the third pilot on the flight. It is a routine mission. The plane is part of a fleet of about a dozen bombers in the air, ready to defend the country against the Soviet Union as part of the strategic air command. When the fuel pressure drops, near Raleigh, the pilots set out to try to land at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro. The crew, including Mattocks, levels the jet off at 10,000 feet with a technique called “slow flight” that checks to see if the plane has enough fuel to land.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 02:59:21 +0000
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