For several hours on June 7, 1960, the world held its breath as one of the 56 Bomarc missiles carrying a nuclear warhead caught fire inside its concrete coffin in Plumsted Township off Route 539 in the Jersey Pines. As far away as Australia, the Canberra Times reported, “State Police, sounding the initial alarm, flashed a message over their New Jersey teleprinter circuit that there had been an atomic explosion.

“However, the U.S. Defence Department announced that there had been ‘no explosion of any kind’ and ‘there is no…