Washington state authorities recently discovered an inert Cold War-era rocket in the garage of a deceased resident.
The military rocket, designed to carry a nuclear warhead, was discovered by Bellevue Police Department officers on Thursday.
Police said they received a call Wednesday from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, saying they had been offered the item. Neighbors reported that the locket was purchased at an estate sale.
This rocket was a McDonnell Douglas AIR-2 Genie (formerly known as MB-1) and was designed to carry a W25 nuclear warhead. An unguided air-to-air rocket.
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Images provided Thursday by the Bellevue Police Department show an inert rocket in the garage of a home in Bellevue, Washington. (Bellevue Police Department, Associated Press)
Police said the item “was a man-made object with no explosive risk.” The rocket had no fuel and no warhead attached.
“As the items were inert and the military did not request their return, police entrusted the items to a neighbor to be restored for display in a museum,” police said.
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Bellevue police responded to a report of a military-style rocket fired into the garage of a deceased resident. (Bellevue Police Department, Associated Press)
Bellevue police joked to X, “I think it will be a long time before we get another call like this.”
According to the Air Force Weapons Museum Foundation, the McDonnell Douglas AIR-2 Genie was used by both the U.S. and Canadian Armed Forces. Production of this weapon ended in his 1962 year, with approximately 3,000 rockets produced.
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A McDonnell Douglas Air 2A Genie rocket on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. (U.S. Air Force)
“Intercepting Soviet strategic bombers was a major military concern in the late 1940s and 1950s,” the museum said on its website. “The machine guns and artillery armaments of World War II-era fighter planes were insufficient to stop attacks by massed formations of fast bombers.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
