A good interview here with a Chinese pilot who, in 1971, couldn't get a test H Bomb to leave his aircraft, and decided to return to base with the dangerous load still attached. The reaction at the base was slightly comic, in retrospect:
There were 10,000 people on the airbase, although only a few knew about
the mission I was on. If anything went wrong, thousands would lose their
lives. The bomb under the fuselage would be hanging just ten
centimeters (four inches) above the ground as I landed....No one could be sure whether or not the bomb would explode if it
touched the runway, but I was confident that I could set the airplane
down gently. So I landed with the H-bomb hanging under me. It was a
perfect landing. When I shut down the engine, there was total silence; I
was completely alone. The airfield was deserted. All 10,000 personnel
were sitting in tunnels under the ground. I could not leave the cockpit:
there was no ladder for me to climb down from the fuselage that was
high above the ground.I called the tower and asked for help. The tower told me to work my
And I had caused a big mess. When I notified the tower that I was
way back to the tail and jump. The people in the control tower were
angry; in their eyes I had put 10,000 lives at risk.
returning with the bomb, the evacuation siren went off. It was lunchtime
at the airbase; everyone was sitting down and eating. They had to rush
out, put on gas masks and scramble into the tunnels. A big rice cooker
caught fire because there was no one left to take care of the kitchen.
Everyone there then still remembers my name: I could have brought them
their Judgment Day.It took a long time for anyone to come near my aircraft. Our
procedures for dealing with the H-bomb meant we had to wear rubber shoes
and clothing that would not create static electricity. No metal was
allowed in the area of the bomb. In the nuclear weapons storage bunker,
all steel columns were wrapped in copper. Now that I had unexpectedly
brought the H-bomb back, there were no service vehicles equipped with
the required shielding. I sat out on the field for a long while.
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