Police officers in northwestern Washington investigated a Cold War-era rocket found in a garage previously owned by a deceased individual, according to a statement.
Bellevue Police Department (BPD) officers responded Thursday to a call from an Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio concerning the rocket. The officers inspected it in the garage of a resident who wanted to donate it to the museum, according to the statement from the BPD. The resident reportedly received the rocket from his deceased neighbor, who had bought the item from an estate sale.
BPD bomb squad members determined after the inspection the rocket was “a Douglas AIR-2 Genie (previous designation MB-1), an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead,” the statement noted. The rocket, however, was not found to be carrying any nuclear warhead and therefore was merely an artifact which posed no explosive hazard, according to the outlet.
“Because the item was inert and the military did not request it back, police left the item with the neighbor to be restored for display in a museum,” the BPD said in the statement. (RELATED: West Point Time Capsule Yields Small Treasure After All)
And we think it’s gonna be a long, long time before we get another call like this again 🚀https://t.co/QePBTkDVFk pic.twitter.com/YXslykeOIT
— Bellevue, WA Police (@BvuePD) February 2, 2024
The AIR-2 Genie was designed to function against enemy bomber formations, according to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. An AIR-2 Genie was launched 18,000 feet above the ground from an F-89J interceptor aircraft on July 19, 1957 and was detonated over Yucca Flats, Nevada in what was the only test detonation of a U.S. nuclear-tipped air-to-air rocket, the museum noted. The AIR-2 Genie was last produced in 1962 and last used in the mid-1980s, according to the museum.
The BPD shared a picture of the rocket, tweeting, “And we think it’s gonna be a long, long time before we get another call like this again.”