Operation Red Hat - Near Misses

Near Misses

Eyewitnesses describe an incident on Okinawa in June or July of 1959 when a MIM-14 Nike-Hercules anti-aircraft missile, apparently complete with a 2 or 20 kt nuclear warhead, was accidentally fired from the Nike site 8 battery which was at Naha Air Base. While undergoing continuity of the firing circuit, stray voltage caused a short circuit when a faulty cable that was lying in a puddle allowed the missile's rocket engines to ignite while the launcher was in a horizontal position. The Nike missile left the launcher and smashed through a fence and down into a beach area skipping the warhead out across the water "like a stone." The rocket's exhaust blast killed two Army technicians and injured one. Very similar accidental launches of Nike missiles occurred on April 14, 1955, near Fort George G. Meade at the W-25 site in Davidsonville, Maryland and at Inchon, Korea. As reported in The Washington Post of December 5, 1998, the South Korean missile inadvertently launched from a Nike-H site near the summit of Mt. Bongnaesan where the missile exploded above some reclaimed land off Songdo, showering residential areas with debris, destroying parked cars and breaking windows.

On November 19, 1968, while conducting a bombing mission to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War, a U.S. Air Force Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (registration number 55-01030) from McCoy Air Force Base, Orlando, Florida, assigned to Strategic Air Command (SAC), 3rd Air Division, and operated by the, 306th Bombardment Wing (Heavy) attached to the 4252d Strategic Wing, burned and exploded after its jet engines experienced a power failure upon takeoff at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa. The Pilot/Commander, Captain Charles D. Miller (USAF), one of two who later died of burns, was able to keep the plane on the ground.

The resulting fire detonated the plane's 30,000-pound (13,600 kg) bomb load of twenty-four, 500 lb (226 kg) bombs, (twelve under each wing) and twenty-four, 750 lb (340 kg) bombs inside the bomb bay and caused a blast so powerful that it created a crater under the burning aircraft some thirty feet deep and sixty feet across and blew out the windows in the dispensary at Naha Air Base (now Naha Airport), twenty-three miles (37 km) away.

Had the plane become airborne, it would likely have crashed about 1/4-1/2 mile (400–800 meters) north of the runway into Chibana Ammunition Storage Depot, containing high explosives, ammunition, and hardened weapon storage area for aerial bombs, chemical weapons, and nuclear warheads. Stored at the depot were Mark 28 nuclear bomb warheads used in the MGM-13 Mace and AGM-28 Hound Dog cruise missiles and W31 warheads for nuclear tipped MGR-1 Honest John and MIM-14 Nike-Hercules (Nike-H). Nike-H nuclear and MIM-23 Hawk conventional anti-aircraft missile launch sites were located close by. Each type of missile potentially had a conventional, chemical, or nuclear capability depending on the type of warhead fitted. Additionally, in the event of of mass air penetration by North Vietnam, North Korea, China, or the Soviet Union, F-106 air defense interceptors stood ready for scrambling with W-25 nuclear warhead tipped AIR-2 Genie missiles and were kept on alert status in hardened hangers next to the runway at Naha Air Base near associated weapon storage areas. Additional Mace, Nike-H, and Hawk missile launch sites were spread throughout the island.