1959 crash nuclear secret for decades

Buried deep underground on Barksdale Air Force Base’s East Reservation is a dark secret.

It’s earth from a Bossier Parish cotton field and scraps of wreckage from a transport that crashed on takeoff 56 years ago Monday, killing none of the seven men on board but burning beyond repair their giant C-124 Globemaster II and its cargo.

“I remember the day it went down,” recalled Ralph Lecroy, a former Bossier City resident, now living in Alabama, who later joined the Air Force and four years later served as a loadmaster on C-124s. “All of Bossier City was concerned.”

That’s because the airplane carried what people were told — at the time — was an unarmed nuclear weapon.

Read more: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/life/community/2015/07/02/crash-nuclear-secret-decades/29582107/

Cross-posted in the Good Reads forum.