By Police in Bellvue, Washington received an unusual phone call from an Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio. Someone from their town offered to donate a nuclear missile on behalf of a neighbor who had died.
The missile was apparently in the garage of the man’s house.
⚡ U.S. police found an Inert nuclear missile in the garage of a home in Washington state. pic.twitter.com/FPWE2ngYEG
— War Watch (@WarWatchs) February 4, 2024
For a second, there was concern that America was about to face another Tybee Bomb Incident, but the police department issued a statement clarifying what happened:
On Wednesday evening, Bellevue Police received a call from an Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio. The museum had received a call from a Bellevue resident who expressed interest in donating an item that had belonged to his deceased neighbor. The man stated that his neighbor had originally purchased the item from an estate sale.
Yesterday, members of the Bellevue Police patrol division and bomb squad responded to the residence and contacted the neighbor who had called the museum. Officers were given access to the reported missile. Bomb squad members inspected the object and then learned that it was in fact a Douglas AIR-2 Genie (previous designation MB-1), an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead. There was no warhead attached.
Bomb squad members confirmed that the object was inert and contained no rocket fuel – essentially meaning that the item was an artifact with no explosive hazard.
The New York Times explained that the Genie was “the world’s first nuclear-armed rocket designed to destroy aircraft targets, and was the most powerful interceptor missile deployed by the U.S. Air Force, according to Boeing.
In 1954, Douglas Aircraft began work on “a small unguided nuclear-armed air-to-air missile,” according to Boeing. Douglas Aircraft built more than 1,000 Genie rockets before discontinuing production in 1962.
It was clear that the missile remnant did not pose a threat given that it was missing its warhead and did not contain rocket fuel, Officer Tyler said.”
“It was essentially just a rusted piece of metal at that point,” he told The New York Times. “An artifact, in other words.”
The military did not request the unused nuclear missile back, so now it will likely be heading to the museum.
Who in AF Museum authorized this??
CUT bureaucracy OK Air Force