Lost H-bomb off Georgian coast

[Swagerman]

We still have a lost H-bomb off the coast of Georgia...since 1958

Air dropped H-bomb from an Airforce B-47 bomber when a mid-air collision occured. It fell somewhere near Tiddey Island in the ocean. (not sure about the spelling on that one)

I seen this on my Sattilite station, Science Channel last night, couldn't believe they've never been able to locate or find it. The waters there are very silty, no visability, the bottom is mucky with silt.

The H-bomb had no detonation device, the ball that gets inserted into ignition chamber...so claims the Science Channel narrator as he reported the history on the lost bomb and its unknown whereabouts.

They have run repeated test for radiation leaks for the last 40 years but claim nothing has shown itself as a hazard to the folks in Georgia coastal waters.

I wonder how long the casing on the H-bomb will hold out in thte salt water, 40 years is a long time to be burried in the bottom silt. But so far there has been no radiation leaks from it.

This is the fifth nuclear bomb to be loose from aircraft accidents.

Don't forget those H-bombs lost in the deep water trench from the Russian sub we partially recovered, the Glomar drilling platform ship that Howard Hugues built. We don't know how well the Russians made those bomb casings either.

Jim

[Scrounger]

Google knows about it: http://www.google.com/search?q=Lost+H-bomb+off+Georgian+coast&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS228US233

[grumpy one]

There are some mysteries associated with why it hasn't been recovered, given the estimated cost of "only" $5-11 million. When four hydrogen bombs were dropped off Spain following another mid-air collision in 1966, a major recovery operation followed at a cost of US$182 million:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/09/13/lost.bomb/

Two of the Spain bombs detonated on impact (i.e. the conventional explosives in the triggers ignited, scattering fissionable material over a wide area), resulting in considerable compensation costs.

The article says 11 of the nuclear bombs lost by the US through accidents during the cold war were never recovered.

[Swagerman]

Well, those above links tell a lot more to that lost H-bomb story off Georgia coast.

I didn't realize the B-47 crew were given permission to air drop the bomb into the ocean...I thought it just fell out of the aircraft and landed where it did by mere chance.

Wasn't there anyway to get a better fix on its drop position back in 1958??? There should have been other aircraft monitoring that location as well, but guess they were all afraid of the big bad nuke.

What a shocker to learn we lost 11 nukes during the cold war, not counting the Russians crap. :coffee:

Jim

[454PB]

Great!

Now I have to worry about this and global warming too!

[grumpy one]

The 11 lost nukes reported appear all to have been aerial bombs. Lost naval nukes are additional to this. For example, both the nuclear-powered attack submarines Thresher and Scorpion were carrying nuclear-armed torpedoes when they were lost at sea with all hands. Both vessels were in deep water and any resulting nuclear hazard seems to me to be entirely trivial compared with the immediate tragedies of crew loss.

How important the unrecovered loss of nuclear devices is, in my opinion depends on two issues: the risk of contamination, and the risk of the devices being later recovered by the wrong people. In other words, it's all about where they ended up. The two that contaminated Spanish farmland were the first kind of problem, and the one from the same set that went missing in shallow water in the Mediterranean for three months would have been the second kind, if the US hadn't eventually recovered it undamaged.

[scrat]

:coffee: cant believe we lost 11 nukes. thats like for sure job elimination.


the more i read this thread the more one thing comes to mind
:coffee: :coffee: :coffee: :coffee:

i think im going to make me a nice cup of coffee and read the paper.

:coffee: :coffee: :coffee:

[BD]

The H-Bomb dropped near Tybee Island is somewhere within 15 miles of where I'm sitting. This is pretty well known locally and where it may be is subject to plenty of speculation. I have a hard time believing that it's not emiting enough radiation by now to be located using current technology. Tybee is just to the south of the ship channel coming out of Savannah in the Savannah river, and that ship chanel is really the only water over 10 or 12 feet in depth around there. A lot of the area is "pluff" mud estuary and the most likely senerio is that the bomb is buried in the sand bottom or the estuary mud. I was hunting with a guy this weekend who worked for the federal sea turtle nesting project on Tybee out of college and he assured me that nobody fools around with any suspicious objects found sticking out of the sand near Tybee. They find the odd civil war era shell there from time to time as well. It wasn't too long ago I read in the paper that the disposal squad from Paris Island was over on Tybee recovering something which turned out to be civil war era ordinance.
BD

[JeffinNZ]

If you think this is scary consider how many "might" have been "misplaced" in the former Soviet Union. Hell, they didn't even tell us a nuke reactor had blown up. That's more of a concern ah?

[armoredman]

Broken Arrow. Yikes. Makes the hair on the back of the neck stand up.