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Mar 14, 2025 7 min

Broken Arrow

from The Dave Bowman Show

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.

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Broken Arrow

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This episode is 7 minutes long.

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This episode was published on March 14, 2025.

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