Honey, Did A Tomahawk Missile Just Spill Out Onto The Cross-Bronx?

Well now that’s odd:

Some would argue that there is nothing scarier than morning rush hour on the New England Thruway passing through the Bronx.

Throw a Tomahawk missile in the mix and you make it even scarier.

It happened to New Yorkers Friday when they found themselves nose to nose with a missile — that’s right, a missile — fell off a flat-bed truck on the thruway.

There was never any danger, however, as the missile wasn’t really a missile, just an inert, 18-foot long, 2,900 pound replica of the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile.

The real McCoy carries can hold a nuclear warhead and got rave reviews when it was first used — sans the warhead, of course — in Operation Desert Storm, in 1991.

The replica, it can now be told, is capable of slowing the morning rush hour to a crawl, as it did Friday.

The 4:47 a.m accident sent the NYPD Bob Squad racing to the scene, fearing the worst. But police quickly realized they were dealing with a replica.

“It just resembles a missile,” said Lt. John Gay, spokesman for the U.S. Navy. “It’s the same size,the same shape as a missile. We use it to train personnel how to load missiles onto submarines.”

By midday, the dupe was on its way to the police facility at Randalls Island. A Naval representative will arrange for transport to its home, a naval station in Norfolk, Va.

It had been at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a Research and testing facility in Newport, Rhode Island.

Its trip back south was scheduled to go through New York City, but as it neared the Hutchinson River Parkway entrance ramp the trailer carrying the missile stalled in the center lane and was rear-ended by a truck, police said.

The trailer then jackknifed and the case in which the missile was stored fell onto the roadway.