8 Days, 2 H-Bombs, and 1 Team That Stopped A Catastrophe

Nearly 60 years ago, a U.S. B-52 bomber carrying two hydrogen bombs broke apart over rural North Carolina.

The bombs fell into a tobacco field. They didn't go off, but if they had, each 3.8-megaton weapon would've been 250 times more destructive than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Lt. Jack ReVelle, then a 25-year-old Air Force munitions expert, was called to the scene. His job: make sure the bombs did not explode.

"What the status of the weapons were at that time was unknown, so we were working in the dark," Jack, now 83, tells his daughter, Karen, 47, at StoryCorps.

Of the two bombs, one had its parachute deploy, and it landed in one piece. For Jack and his 10-person crew, it was much easier to deactivate and haul away than the other bomb, whose parachute had not opened.

"This huge, multi-ton weapon penetrated the ground at 700 miles an hour and buried itself in the swamp," Jack says.

The crew set out on the harrowing task of digging it up.