Big Miss at Bikini

After years of training and practice in accuracy bombing, a red-faced Air Force last week gave itself low marks in its biggest test since the Korean war. The H-bomb dropped from a B-52 over Bikini on May 21, said Air Force Secretary Donald A. Quarles, missed its aiming point by "somewhat less than four miles."

The big miss, Quarles added, was the result of "human error." For months before the drop the B-52's crew, drawn from the elite special-weapons test group at Kirtland Air Force Base, had made practice runs over the target. But when the time came for the actual firing pass, the crew, probably jittery over the effect the multimegaton burst might have on the bomber itself, failed to correct a navigation error that threw the plane off course.

The bomb exploded far enough away from the target to render useless some of the elaborate instrumentation set up at the test site. But the Air Force sturdily maintained that the drop had successfully proved something far more important: the B-52 can deliver the H-bomb and get away intact.

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