Broken Arrow

In the depths of the Cold War, America’s Strategic Air Command kept nuclear-armed bombers in the sky around the clock, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. But on March 14, 1961, a B-52F Stratofortress on airborne alert out of Mather Air Force Base faced a catastrophic failure over California’s Central Valley. With two hydrogen bombs onboard, the crew battled extreme heat, decompression, and fuel exhaustion before making a desperate escape. In this episode of Dave Does History, we unravel the harrowing true story of the Yuba City B-52 crash—one of the Cold War’s closest brushes with disaster.