After leaving Lynches River County Park in Coward SC, we drove through Effingham. I had to get that town in the blog somewhere. Like Fuquay Varina, Effingham sounds like you wanted to swear but didn’t or maybe it a punch line to a joke (I know, I apologize now to anyone that lives in Effingham…)
However a little further north is a site the Air force would probably like to forget. In 1958, a B47 was flying over Coward South Carolina with an atom bomb in his plane. When he landed he had lost that bomb.
That bomb landed behind the Gregg family house. When the MK6 bomb struck, it left a crater, damaged their house and killed some chickens. Luckily the nuclear portion of the bomb was still on the plane.
When we neared this ignominious site we were confused. We took a left into a housing development and several turns later our GPS said we had arrived. We were staring at two nice house and possibly an empty lot between them. There were no signs or parking area.
Some would have jumped out and wandered across the grass into the woods where the bomb site was supposed to be. However we do not like to trespass. We also did not want to realized after the fact the “Trespassers will be shot, Survivors will be shot again” sign had fallen down.
We had noticed one of the neighbors standing in his door so we back up to ask about the site. He came out and talked a bit with us. He told us yes we had the right place. Walking between the two houses was the way to get there.
He also apologized for not being as friendly as he usually was. Normally he enjoyed chatting with people who managed to find this out of the way attraction. But with Covid’s Wuhan Flu still a concern he tries to keep any interactions to a mininum. We thanked him and drove to the next lot.
A very short walk brings you to a sign describing the near atomic catastrophe and plywood bomb to show its size.
The bomb crater is filled with water and comes right up the current owners fence
