In June 1960, the people of the eastern United States, especially those in Ocean County, breathed a sigh of relief after a possible nuclear accident apparently had been avoided. Earlier, a Bomarc missile, one of 56 armed with a nuclear warhead, had caught fire. According to The New York Times, it had “melted under an intense blaze fed by its 100 pound detonator of TNT. … The atomic warhead apparently dropped into the molten mass that was left of the missile, which burned for forty-five minutes.