Connaissez vous l'histoire du B52 ?

Le B52 est le plus gros bombardier au monde, il est américain bien sur .
Dans la nuit du 29 au 30 aout 2007, un B52 chargé de 6 têtes nucléaires a été bloqué sur la base de Barksdale en Louisiane.
Cette base aérienne a la particularité d'être la base d'ou l'armée US envoie ses troupes et son matériel vers le moyen-orient.
Les autorités américaines jurent leurs gds dieux que c'était une erreur.
Une erreur ? disent ils ?
Vu les niveaux de sécurité impitoyables mis en oeuvre dans le cadre de matériel nucléaire, embarquer des têtes nucléaires sous les ailes d'un bombardier n'est pas une erreur.
Ce bombadier était destiné très certainement à l'Iran.
Qui l'a bloqué ? D'après le site militaire officiel qui a "laché l'affaire' ce sont des officiers qui ne veulent pas d'une guerre en Iran.
Ce n'est pas de la fiction.

Voici l'article intégral qui décrit tout et sur lequel je suis tombé vers le 10-11 septembre .
je précise, le site "Militarytimes" est un site officiel de l'armée américaine .
Cette histoire a une suite, je suis en train de vérifier certaines infos et je vous tiens au courant.
La suite est digne d'un roman d'espionnage, mais je préfére recouper les infos avant de les poster.

B-52 mistakenly flies with nukes aboard
By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer

Posted : Monday Sep 10, 2007 9:03:17 EDT

A B-52 bomber mistakenly loaded with six nuclear warheads flew from
Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug.
30, resulting in an Air Force-wide investigation, according to three
officers who asked not to be identified because they were not
authorized to discuss the incident.The B-52 was loaded with
Advanced Cruise Missiles, part of a Defense Department effort to
decommission 400 of the ACMs. But the nuclear warheads should have been
removed at Minot before being transported to Barksdale, the officers
said. The missiles were mounted onto the pylons of the bomber’s wings.DISCUSS

How did this happen?Advanced
Cruise Missiles carry a W80-1 warhead with a yield of 5 to 150 kilotons
and are specifically designed for delivery by B-52 strategic bombers.Air
Force spokesman Lt. Col. Ed Thomas said the transfer was safely
conducted and the weapons were in Air Force custody and control at all
times.However, the mistake was not discovered until the B-52
landed at Barksdale, which left the warheads unaccounted for during the
approximately 3 1/2 hour flight between the two bases, the officers
said.An investigation headed by Maj. Gen. Douglas Raaberg,
director of Air and Space Operations at Air Combat Command
Headquarters, was launched immediately to find the cause of the mistake
and figure out how it could have been prevented, Thomas said.Air
Force officials wouldn’t officially specify whether nuclear weapons
were involved, in accordance with long-standing Defense Department
policy regarding nuclear munitions, Thomas said. However, the three
officers close to the situation did confirm the warheads were nuclear.Officials
at Minot immediately conducted an inventory of its nuclear weapons
after the oversight was discovered, and Thomas said he could confirm
that all remaining nuclear weapons at Minot are accounted for.“Air
Force standards are very exacting when it comes to munitions handling,”
he said. “The weapons were always in our custody and there was never a
danger to the American public.”At no time was there a risk for a
nuclear detonation, even if the B-52 crashed on its way to Barksdale,
said Steve Fetter, a former Defense Department official who worked on
nuclear weapons policy in 1993-94. A crash could ignite the high
explosives associated with the warhead, and possibly cause a leak of
the plutonium, but the warheads’ elaborate safeguards would prevent a
nuclear detonation from occurring, he said.“The main risk would
have been the way the Air Force responded to any problems with the
flight because they would have handled it much differently if they
would have known nuclear warheads were onboard,” he said.The
risk of the warheads falling into the hands of rogue nations or
terrorists was minimal since the weapons never left the United States,
according to Fetter and Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution, an independent research and policy think tank in
Washington, D.C.The crews involved with the mistaken load at the
5th Bomb Wing at Minot have been temporarily decertified from
performing their duties involving munitions pending corrective actions
or additional training, Thomas said.Air Combat Command will have
a command-wide mission stand down Sept. 14 to review their procedures
in response to this oversight, he said.“The Air Force takes its
mission to safeguard weapons seriously,” he said. “No effort will be
spared to ensure that the matter is thoroughly and completely
investigated.”
http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2007/09/marine_nuclear_B52_070904w/Bonne lecture .