Police in the US were left stunned when an old rusted rocket found in a man’s garage turned out to be an inert nuclear missile.
Last month, the National Museum of the US Air Force in Ohio called local police in the city of Bellevue to report an unusual item a person wanted to donate to the institution.
Bellevue Police Department sent a bomb squad to the man’s home, where they found out the item was actually a Douglas AIR-2 Genie rocket designed to carry a “1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead.”
Sharing the bizarre callout on X, the police department referenced Elton John’s classic song ‘Rocket Man’ as they wrote: “And we think it’s gonna be a long, long time before we get another call like this again.”
No warhead was attached to the rocket so there was no danger to the community.
A spokesman for Bellevue Police Department told the BBC that the device was “just basically a gas tank for rocket fuel”.
The owner of the rocket, who was “extremely irritated” by the media coverage surrounding his donation, said it had initially belonged to a neighbour.
The neighbour had originally purchased the item from an estate sale, but when they died the man phoned the museum to ask if the rocket could be donated.
The Genie model was used by the US and Canada during the Cold War, but the only live firing of the model took place in 1957. Production of it ended in 1962.
At no point did officials suspect a nuclear warhead would be attached to the old rocket, and once it had been deemed safe it was left with the man so it could be restored for display in a museum.
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