This picture supplied by Bellevue, Wash. Police Division exhibits a an inert rocket within the storage of a house in Bellevue, Wash, on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024. Bellevue police responded Thursday to a report of a military-grade rocket within the storage of a house of a deceased resident within the metropolis throughout Lake Washington from Seattle.(Bellevue, Wash. Police Division through AP)
BELLEVUE, Wash. (AP) — An inert rocket of the kind used to hold a nuclear warhead has been discovered within the storage of a house of a deceased resident in Washington state, police stated.
Bellevue police responded Thursday to a report of a military-grade rocket within the storage of a house within the metropolis throughout Lake Washington from Seattle. Police stated an Air Drive museum in Dayton, Ohio, had known as Wednesday night to report a suggestion to donate the merchandise, which a neighbor stated had been bought at an property sale.
Bomb squad members inspected the rusting object and located it was a Douglas AIR-2 Genie (earlier designation MB-1), an unguided air-to-air rocket that’s designed to hold a 1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead. There was no warhead connected and there was no rocket gasoline — “primarily which means that the merchandise was an artifact with no explosive hazard.”
“As a result of the merchandise was inert and the army didn’t request it again, police left the merchandise with the neighbor to be restored for show in a museum,” police stated.
In keeping with the Air Drive Armament Museum Basis, the unguided air-to-air rocket was utilized by the U.S. and Canada throughout a interval of the Chilly Struggle when interception of Soviet strategic bombers was a serious army concern. In July 1957, a Genie was launched at 18,000 toes (about 5,500 meters) from an F89J interceptor and detonated over Yucca Flats, Nevada, the primary and solely check detonation of a U.S. nuclear-tipped air-to-air rocket.
“And we predict it’s gonna be an extended, very long time earlier than we get one other name like this once more,” police stated on Twitter, including a rocket emoji.