Military officials have revealed the Air Force mistakenly flew a B-52 bomber loaded with five nuclear warheads across part of the country last week. Each of the five nuclear warheads has about 10 times the destructive force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The B-52 took off from the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and landed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. It took the military hours to realize the nuclear weapons were missing. The incident was first reported in the Navy Times.

Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell: “Well, I think as you all know it’s longstanding policy of this department not to talk about nuclear weapons, so I can’t confirm or deny that indeed nuclear weapons were involved in the incident which you relay to me. I can, however, tell you that the Air Force is currently investigating an error made last Thursday in the transfer of munitions, as you mentioned, from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base aboard a B-52 Stratofortress.”

Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) said the incident was absolutely inexcusable. Markey said: “Nothing like this has ever been reported before, and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible.” Since the 1960s, the U.S. military has transferred nuclear weapons aboard cargo planes, not on the wings of bombers.