One of Iran’s newest warships capsized in port over the weekend while undergoing repairs, an incident that could damage key warfighting systems and put the ship out of commission for up to half a year, a naval analyst said.
The 311-foot-long frigate Sahand was at a dock in the port of Bandar Abbas when it “lost its balance” after water leaked into its tanks, according to a report from the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
A photo from the semi-official Tasnim News Agency showed the warship, with a displacement of about 2,000 tons, resting on its left side in the Bandar Abbas port.
The ship, which Tasnim said entered service in December 2018, is one of the bigger vessels in Iran’s fleet, equipped with antiship cruise missiles and an electronic warfare system.
There are multiple incidents that kind of fit, but I think you are talking about this one: Wiki article
Information declassified since 2013 has shown that one of the bombs was judged by nuclear weapons engineers at the time to have been only one safety switch away from detonation, and that it was “credible” to imagine conditions under which it could have detonated.
That’s the one
Parker F. Jones, a supervisor at Sandia, concluded in a reassessment of the accident in 1969 that “one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe” He further suggested that it would be “credible” to imagine that in the process of such an accident, an electrical short could cause the Arm/Safe Switch to switch into the “Arm” mode, which, had it happened during the Goldsboro accident, could have resulted in a multi-megaton detonation.
Bill Stevens, a nuclear weapon safety engineer at Sandia, gave the following assessment in an internal documentary film produced by Sandia in 2010: “Some people can say, ‘hey, the bomb worked exactly like designed.’ Others can say, ‘all but one switch operated, and that one switch prevented the nuclear detonation.’”[34]
Charlie Burks, another nuclear weapons systems engineer for Sandia, also added: “Unfortunately, there have been thirty-some incidents where the ready/safe switch was operated inadvertently. We’re fortunate that the weapons involved at Goldsboro were not suffering from that same malady.”[35]
The bomb was about 250 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. I don’t know exactly how it works, but if it’s simple multiplication, then you could say that everything for 480 miles in any direction would have been more or less destroyed.
