The BBC has a “great story”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7720049.stm about the 1968 crash of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber in Greenland. The BBC says that

The high explosives surrounding the four nuclear weapons had detonated but without setting off the actual nuclear devices, which had not been armed by the crew.

The Pentagon maintained that all four weapons had been “destroyed.”

That sounded familiar to me, but according to the piece,

*declassified documents obtained by the BBC* under the US Freedom of Information Act, parts of which remain classified, reveal a much darker story, which has been confirmed by individuals involved in the clear-up and those who have had access to details since.

The documents *make clear that within weeks of the incident, investigators piecing together the fragments realised that only three of the weapons could be accounted for.*

Even by the end of January, *one document talks of a blackened section of ice which had re-frozen with shroud lines from a weapon parachute. “Speculate something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary,”* the document reads, the primary or secondary referring to parts of the weapon.

The U.S. conducted a search for the weapon, but never found it.

The Beeb also has what it says is a “declassified USFG video”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7720671.stm of the operation to clean up the debris from the crash. And there’s “another video”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7720655.stm of an interview with two of the pilots from the mission in question.