Qualla: 1958 Mars Bluff B-47 Nuclear Weapon Loss Incident

1958 Mars Bluff B-47 Nuclear Weapon Loss Incident: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DTMedia2, CC BY-SA 3.0. The two girls were playing in the yard - Helen and Frances Gregg and their cousin Ella Davies - when the bomb came down. It was about 4:30 on the afternoon of March 11, 1958. Walter and Effie Gregg were inside the family home on a country road outside Mars Bluff, South Carolina, with their son Walter Jr. The B-47 that had just released a Mark 6 hydrogen bomb over their playhouse was a speck somewhere above. The conventional high-explosive charge inside the weapon detonated when it hit the ground and tore a crater roughly seventy feet wide and thirty feet deep where Walter Gregg's vegetable garden had been. The playhouse was gone. The Gregg house collapsed inward. And every member of the Gregg family - somehow, miraculously - walked out alive.

Image: DTMedia2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

1958 Mars Bluff B-47 Nuclear Weapon Loss Incident: The Greggs

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DTMedia2, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walter Gregg was a railroad conductor and a World War II veteran. He and Effie had built a quiet life with their three children, Walter Jr., Helen, and Frances, on a rural property near Mars Bluff in Florence County, South Carolina. Their niece Ella Davies, age nine, was visiting...

Image: DTMedia2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

1958 Mars Bluff B-47 Nuclear Weapon Loss Incident: Aircraft 53-1876A Has Lost A Device

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wilson44691, CC0. The bomb came from B-47E aircraft 53-1876A out of Hunter Air Force Base near Savannah, Georgia, bound for Britain as part of Operation Snow Flurry. Captain Bruce Kulka was the navigator-bombardier. Somewhere over the Pee Dee region, a warning light indicated the bomb-locking pin ...

Image: Wilson44691 | CC0

1958 Mars Bluff B-47 Nuclear Weapon Loss Incident: The Crater in the Garden

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DTMedia2, CC BY-SA 3.0. The blast blew the playhouse to splinters and lifted Helen and Frances and Ella into the air. It collapsed the Gregg home around Walter and Effie. The shock wave damaged buildings within a mile and was heard for many more. When the Air Force crews arrived, they found a crater sev...

Image: DTMedia2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

1958 Mars Bluff B-47 Nuclear Weapon Loss Incident: Not the First and Not the Last

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DTMedia2, CC BY-SA 3.0. The New York Times reported that this was the first time a nuclear weapon had been accidentally dropped on the United States outside testing grounds. It was not even the first that year. A few weeks earlier, a B-47 had collided with an F-86 over Tybee Island, Georgia, and jettiso...

Image: DTMedia2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

1958 Mars Bluff B-47 Nuclear Weapon Loss Incident: The Historical Marker

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DTMedia2, CC BY-SA 3.0. The crater filled in over the years. The Gregg family rebuilt and stayed in Florence County. Walter Gregg died in 2003 at age eighty-one; Effie died in 2010. The site is on private land and not generally accessible, but a roadside historical marker was placed nearby in 2008, and ...

Image: DTMedia2 | CC BY-SA 3.0