On Feb. 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber dropped a 7,000-pound nuclear bomb into the waters off Tybee Island, Ga., after it collided with another Air Force jet. Fifty years later, the bomb — which has unknown quantities of radioactive material — has never been found. And while the Air Force says the bomb, if left undisturbed, poses no threat to the area, determined bomb hunters and area residents aren’t so sure. The bomb found its hidden resting place when the B-47 pilot, Air Force Col. Howard Richardson, dropped it into the water after an F-86 fighter jet accidentally collided with him during a training mission. Richardson, carrying a two-man crew, was afraid the bomb would break loose from his damaged plane when he landed, so he ditched the bomb in the water before landing the plane at Hunter Air Force Base outside Savannah. Stewart ejected and eventually landed safely in a swamp.
The Navy searched for the bomb for more than two months, but never found it, and today recommends it should remain in its resting place. In a 2001 report on the search and recovery of the bomb, the Air Force said that if the bomb is still intact, the risk associated with the spread of heavy metals is low. If it’s left undisturbed, the explosive in the bomb poses no hazard, the report said. It went on to say that an “intact explosive would pose a serious explosion hazard to personnel and the environment if disturbed by a recovery attempt.”
I did some work as a Coastie with the Navys’ EOD (Explosives Ordinance) teams many years ago, recovering old WWII mines off the east coast, and towing them back to shore for disposal. Glad we never ran into anything like this.
Well, sometimes it’s harder than one might think to find a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Some dude from Miami found it a long time ago while fishing for skate and sold it to an arms dealer from Qatar. It’s been reconstructed into a bomb the size of a household dehumidifier.
Or maybe I’ve been reading too much Clancy.
FWIW, that’s my answer for all nuclear waste, such as spent fuel rods from nuke plants. Encapsulate them in teflon, find a super-deep trench in the South Pacific and dump the stuff.
2: That’s it! Go ahead and ruin the ocean’s ecosystem with teflon for future generations. 😉
Maybe the alternative is that plastic used to make Little Tykes toys.
Nevermind !!!
Big Bro says, you will be OK.
Hey, Ma! Look at what I found Fishin’. And it glows, too!
People have been trying to find this thing for decades. The problem is the muddy bottom. The thing is not only under water but embedded in mud and silt. If they do find it, the government doesn’t begin to know how to safely recover it. They’ll end up spending a billion or two on the recovery, and take a decade to do it.
Looks a lot like the one Homer Simpson sat on and waved his imaginary cowboy hat from.
It probably landed in an economically depressed part of Georgia. So there’s never been any political pressure to have it removed from the backyards of some well connected occupants. Those training missions typically take place over waste land and poorer communities. That’s because their occupants don’t have the glout to effect gov’t policy. Soon as Walmart decides to build a new store there, you can bet the US military will suddenly have an interest in recovering the weapon.
So if a treasure hunter finds it, can we keep it?
It wasn’t a thermonuclear weapon; it was an old “Fat Man” style fission device, it was lost in the ocean, and the physics package (the plutonium “pit”) wasn’t installed when it was lost, so there never was a danger of a nuclear detonation.
The media rolls this same tired story out every few years when there is nothing else to report.
I’ve lived near the sound containing the bomb for years. I assure you there is nothing to wor
This was in the news years back when the Summer Olympics were held in Atlanta, because the sailing events were held in the waters off Tybee Island. It only took eight years to get here…
This explains the resemblance between late night Wal*Mart shoppers and the “Hills have eyes” people ….
#13 Richard – Now that was funny.
Gimme a break, Big Bro.
Today’s Ultra-Sophisticated sonar can’t find it??? They can find oil deposits with such equipment and not this BIG ole solid bomb? They just don’t want to fool with it…just a matter of time ’til a commercial salvager gets a line on it, THEN Homeland Security will throw him in the clink for his patriotic/capitalistic efforts.
#10 wins the thread.
Don’t forget when we dropped nuclear bombs on Spain. That is the other trivia answer to who the US has dropped nu8ukes on.
Actually it wasn’t a “fat man” device because that particular bomb was phased out years before. The bomb dropped by the plane was a real thermonuclear 10+ megaton bomb and to this day the government has been wishy washy about whether it was armed or not.
Frankly I suspect it was, because back then we never flew bombs around unless they were armed and ready to go. The cold war was very hot and at one point it got so bad that the USAF was putting pilots in 4 hour shifts sitting in B-47’s with the engines running all day just in case…
Were if not for “if” and “but,” we should all be rich for ever.