# Are there any unfound missing planes on land **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 17, 2015, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703 "2015-12-17T16:08:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/41 "2015-12-19T20:17:39Z")
Your link mentions, “According to the USAF, the bomb did not contain the plutonium core necessary for a nuclear detonation.” So it wasn’t going to explode. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/42 "2015-12-19T21:28:40Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > Nitpick - the deviation in altitude was for clearing weather - to 1000 on top, not the view. Sightseeing? No. It was quite common then for air crews to point out anything of interest to the passengers that they might see. It wasn’t reckless or dangerous, all things considered. Remember, in 1956 seeing 2 airliners in flight at the same time was a rare occurrence unless you lived near an airport. Today, not so. > > The DC-7 did see the other, it was just too late to avoid the collision. Neither pilot was careless of inept for 1956. The story I related was told to me by the head of the Oakland FSDO (FAA office). He was the person who stated the deviation was for sightseeing. I used his exact words: ‘to give his passengers a better view’ which is why I put the words in quote marks. Unless there was a radio transmission recorded, how will we know the intent/purpose? It’s not like we can ask the pilots. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/43 "2015-12-19T21:40:02Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > The story I related was told to me by the head of the Oakland FSDO (FAA office). > He was the person who stated the deviation was for sightseeing. I used his exact words: > ‘to give his passengers a better view’ > which is why I put the words in quote marks. > > Unless there was a radio transmission recorded, how will we know the intent/purpose? > > It’s not like we can ask the pilots. There were. Perhaps you should point them that way. > [@wiki](#): > > Shortly after takeoff, TWA’s Captain Gandy requested permission to ascend to 21,000 feet to avoid thunderheads that were forming in the vicinity of his flight path. As was the practice at the time, his request had to be relayed by a TWA dispatcher to air traffic control (ATC), as neither flight crew was in direct contact with ATC after departure. ATC denied the request; the two airliners would soon be reentering controlled airspace (the Red 15 airway running southeast from Las Vegas) and ATC had no means of providing the horizontal separation required between two aircraft at the same altitude. Captain Gandy requested “1,000 on top” clearance (flying 1,000 feet above the clouds), which is still IFR, not VFR (visual flight rules), emph mine. see also [http://www.fss.aero/accident-reports/look.php?report\_key=1251](http://www.fss.aero/accident-reports/look.php?report_key=1251) These were not pilots showing off to the passengers. > [@](#): > > Captain Gandy, with nearly 15,000 flying hours, had flown the subject route approximately 177 times and was well qualified. Captain Shirley, with 17,000 hours, had flown the operation since October 1955, and he also was well qualified. ETA: Wiki here… [1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Grand_Canyon_mid-air_collision) ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/44 "2015-12-21T10:05:16Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Another fighter aircraft from WWII found in the deserts of Egypt a few years ago, it must have wandered a long way off course after one of the battles. They didn’t know about the Jet Stream, so any aircraft caught up in that could wind up hundreds and hundreds of miles off course and away from allies and landing strips. ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/45 "2015-12-21T15:00:54Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Your link mentions, “According to the USAF, the bomb did not contain the plutonium core necessary for a nuclear detonation.” Yes. > [@](#): > > So it wasn’t going to explode. And No. The bombs carried by SAC during airborne alerts were perfectly capable of exploding when mishandled, like two of the four [B28 hydrogen bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B28_nuclear_bomb) did after they were ripped from an disintegrating [B-52 in 1966, over Palomares, Spain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash). They just wouldn’t have any nuclear yield when they did so. Indeed, officially there has never been an accident involving United States nuclear weapons that resulted in any amount of nuclear explosive yield. Still, while the amount of high explosive required for a hydrogen bomb’s primary stage is classified, it’s at least in the 10s of pounds of high explosive. Of course, that’s nothing compared to the 70 Kt of the primary stage, never mind the ~1.5 megatons of the full thermonuclear yield of the B/Mk-28, but still not something you’d want to be near when it went off. When a [Mk 6 atomic bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_6_nuclear_bomb) was accidentally [dropped by a B-47, on the Gregg family farm in Mars Bluff, South Carolina in 1958](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Mars_Bluff_B-47_nuclear_weapon_loss_incident), the high explosive detonation was sufficient to blast a 35 foot deep crater. Thankfully, like the Mk-4 bomb in the B-36 incident mentioned earlier in the thread, it too was normally carried by bombers without its fission core implanted within the weapon. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703.md?page=2)