An old rusted rocket which was found in a resident’s backyard in Seattle has been identified as an inert nuclear missile. 

The missile was offered as a donation to a Ohio military museum which then contacted authorities in Bellevue.

A bomb squad was sent to the man’s home to check out the device he was offering and found it was an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kiloton nuclear warhead.

But there was no warhead attached which meant it posed no threat to the community. 

The man who discovered the missile in his backyard wants to remain anonymous as he is ‘extremely irritated’ by media coverage and was surprised the museum reported his donation offer to the police.

An old rusted rocket which was found in a resident’s backyard in Seattle has been identified as an inert nuclear missile

A bomb squad was sent to the man’s home to check out the device and found it was an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kiloton nuclear warhead

The Bellevue Police Department said the weapon is ‘in fact a Douglas AIR-2 Genie (previous designation MB-1), an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kiloton W25 nuclear warhead’.

A spokesman added that it is ‘just basically a gas tank for rocket fuel’, while describing the discovery as ‘not serious at all’.

‘In fact, our bomb squad member asked me why we were releasing a news release on a rusted piece of metal,’ he said. 

The National Museum of the US Air Force reported the resident’s donation offer to authorities and he ‘was not expecting a call from us’, the police said. 

‘He was gracious enough to let us have a look at it and we determined that it was safe,’ a police spokesman said. 

The man told police it belonged to a neighbor who recently died and was originally bought from an estate sale. 

Authorities in Bellevue received a phone call from the National Museum of the US Air Force in Ohio to report the offer of an unusual donation it received

There was no warhead attached which meant it posed no threat to the community. Pictured: Similar AIR-2 Genie rocket with a replica nuclear warhead attached

It was then found to be an ‘artefact with no explosive hazard’.

‘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 police said.  

There was never any suspicion the missile would have a nuclear warhead attached so there was no need for the city, which has a population of 150,000 people, to be evacuated. 

The Genie rocket was used by the US and Canada during the Cold War, according to the Seattle Times. 

It was only fired once in 1957 and the production was stopped in 1962.

DailyMail.com has contacted the Bellevue Police Department and National Museum of the US Air Force for comment.