Enlarge image
Cop, Douglas AIR-2 Genie: Everything within the law
Photo:
Bellevue Police Department
The tip came from Dayton, Ohio: The air force museum there contacted the police in Bellevue, a suburb of Seattle in the US west coast state of Washington, by telephone on Wednesday evening. They received a call from a resident of Bellevue: The man wanted to donate an item that had belonged to his deceased neighbor and had now bequeathed to him. This is what the Bellevue police say on their own blog.
The next day, patrol officers and a bomb disposal squad made their way to the house and asked the man. In the garage they actually found - as the museum people from Ohio stated - a nuclear missile. More precisely: an AIR-2 Genie from the arms manufacturer Douglas.
This is a so-called air-to-air missile that is intended to fire at enemy fighter aircraft. They could be equipped with a 1.5 kiloton nuclear warhead. The type was built under the name MB-1 Genie from 1957 to 1962, i.e. at the height of the Cold War. The US Air Force retired them in 1985.
The example that the police found in the man's garage looks correspondingly battered and rusty. The owner told the police that his neighbor bought the rocket himself during an estate liquidation. The bomb disposal specialists examined the projectile and determined that the rocket was inactivated, contained no fuel - and of course did not carry a nuclear warhead. And the US military didn't want them back either.
Ultimately, the police said goodbye and left the discarded nuclear missile in the garage. It will now be restored there and then passed on to the museum.
fdi