To unravel a decades old US military mystery that
unfolded on Canada's west coast, filmmaker, Michael
Jorgensen, teamed up with one of the world's leading
nuclear weapons experts to take on the Pentagon.
The resulting story, about potential radiological disaster and government conspiracies, will be the subject of Jorgensen's next documentary tentatively titled "Lost Nuke".
"The story is about the first Broken Arrow which is the US Military code word for a lost nuclear weapon," explains the award winning cinematographer and director.
To research the project, Jorgensen obtained "a phonebook" of official US air force documents. According to the papers, on February 13 1950, a seventeen man crew flew a B36 bomber out of Fairbanks, Alaska for a simulated combat mission. As part of the run, the crew had a nuclear bomb on board, similar to the one dropped on Nagasaki, Japan five years earlier. The mission was supposed to take them to Fort Worth, Texas. But halfway there, while flying along the coast of British Columbia, three of the six engine propellers caught on fire. The crew was forced to drop its bomb into the ocean before bailing themselves. Jorgensen says the air force insists the bomb "detonated in a non-nuclear explosion"
As for the plane, it was the largest bomber ever built. Captain Harold Barry (played by Jeremy Schwab) tried to aim it in a southwest direction to crash into the Pacific Ocean. Instead, Jorgensen says crewmembers watched from the ground as "the plane turned around 180 degrees and started flying back north."
Fast forward three years later: the US air force is searching for a lost Texas oilman whose private plane has crashed somewhere between Alaska and Seattle. While combing the BC interior, search crews stumble upon the missing B36 bomber, 200 miles in the opposite direction from where it should have crashed.
To Jorgensen, none of this makes any sense, "Here was an airplane that had half of its engines on fire, it's losing altitude very rapidly at about 500 feet a minute, and somehow this airplane turned around 180 degrees and flew another 200 miles? And gained probably 5000 feet in altitude? How did that happen?"
The filmmaker says, following the bomber's discovery, the military made a move that only deepens the mystery, "When they find the plane in 53', the air force does something they've never done before. They send a special operations team to go into the crash site and destroy the plane."
He pauses before adding, "There's obviously something they're trying to hide."
In fact, to Jorgensen's frustration, the Pentagon still refuses to reveal what the special ops team was deployed to destroy at the crash site, "Why, after 54 years, won't the air force talk about this?"
To find his own answers, Jorgensen followed a three man expedition team led by nuclear weapons expert Dr. John Clearwater to the remote crash site about 100 miles north of Terrace B.C. For the expedition, Clearwater was granted the first Canadian archaeological permit to remove artifacts from the site.
Jorgensen also tracked down two of four surviving crewmembers to interview. One man, now a priest was the B36's co-pilot, "In 54 years he's never spoken about this to anybody," says Jorgensen. "He said, 'You know there's stuff I can't talk about because I wouldn't want to say anything that people might use to damage or hurt my country.'"
Despite the secrecy surrounding the first Broken Arrow, Jorgensen has managed to dig up new clues which he will only say this about, "The conclusions that (the expedition team) have come to are in total direct 180 degrees from what the air force is maintaining happened."
Jorgensen's "Lost Nuke" version of events is in the editing process and is set to air on the Discovery Channel this fall. Its debut will coincide with the launch of a traveling exhibit showcasing the artifacts found during filming. Jorgensen hopes his work will encourage people to question history, because "from what we found up on the mountains, and from some other research, we think the (Pentagon's story) is not the true story."
