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NOT since the great Siberian blast of 1908 or the flash recorded over the South Atlantic by a Defense Department satellite in 1979 has there been an explosive event as stubbornly mysterious as the mushroom cloud that appeared over the sea 200 miles east of Japan shortly before midnight April 9, 1984.
It was so close to cargo-laden Flight 36 of Japan Airlines that the plane's commander, Capt. Charles H. McDade, swerved away from it, began a rapid descent, ordered his crew to put on oxygen masks and radioed a ''May Day'' distress call.
''Looks like a nuclear explosion, only there was no fireball,'' he told flight controllers in Alaska. His plane was slightly jostled. ''I turned tail and ran,'' he said later.
The crews of KLM and Flying Tiger airliners, also headed toward Alaska, saw the cloud too. All were flying above a 14,000-foot cloud deck from which a bulb appeared, soaring at an estimated 500 miles an hour. The bulb rapidly expanded to a diameter of 200 miles - the distance between New York and Washington - then thinned and disappeared above 65,000 feet.
originally posted by: pfishy
Thanks. I haven't heard of this before. Though the other two mentioned in the article are quite familiar.
I wonder if there is anything else available about this? Definitely going to have to start digging now.