So there's a thermonuclear bomb lost off the coast of Savanah, Ga?

[Skip Intro]

Am I the only one who has never heard of this before?

I saw a Discovery or History channel report on this while spending Easter at a family member's house. Had never heard of this before. Kind of forgot about it until this evening, and went searching for the story. This one's from AlterNet:

The Case of the Missing H-Bomb: The Pentagon Has Lost the Mother of All Weapons

60 years have passed since a damaged jet dropped a hydrogen bomb near Savanah, Ga. -- and the Pentagon still can't find it.

Things go missing. It's to be expected. Even at the Pentagon. Last October, the Pentagon's inspector general reported that the military's accountants had misplaced a destroyer, several tanks and armored personnel carriers, hundreds of machine guns, rounds of ammo, grenade launchers and some surface-to-air missiles. In all, nearly $8 billion in weapons were AWOL.

Those anomalies are bad enough. But what's truly chilling is the fact that the Pentagon has lost track of the mother of all weapons, a hydrogen bomb. The thermonuclear weapon, designed to incinerate Moscow, has been sitting somewhere off the coast of Savannah, Georgia for the past 40 years. The Air Force has gone to greater lengths to conceal the mishap than to locate the bomb and secure it.

On the night of February 5, 1958 a B-47 Stratojet bomber carrying a hydrogen bomb on a night training flight off the Georgia coast collided with an F-86 Saberjet fighter at 36,000 feet. The collision destroyed the fighter and severely damaged a wing of the bomber, leaving one of its engines partially dislodged. The bomber's pilot, Maj. Howard Richardson, was instructed to jettison the H-bomb before attempting a landing. Richardson dropped the bomb into the shallow waters of Warsaw Sound, near the mouth of the Savannah River, a few miles from the city of Tybee Island, where he believed the bomb would be swiftly recovered.

The Pentagon recorded the incident in a top secret memo to the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. The memo has been partially declassified: "A B-47 aircraft with a [word redacted] nuclear weapon aboard was damaged in a collision with an F-86 aircraft near Sylvania, Georgia, on February 5, 1958. The B-47 aircraft attempted three times unsuccessfully to land with the weapon. The weapon was then jettisoned visually over water off the mouth of the Savannah River. No detonation was observed."

more here: http://www.alternet.org/environment/140060/the_case_of_the_missing_h-bomb%3A_the_pentagon_has_lost_the_mother_of_all_weapons/

[Ikonoklast]

1. No nuclear pit was carried.

Those guys trying to find that thing are wasting their time.

Their 'experts' are not nuclear weapons experts, just some retired military crackpots.

[Skip Intro]

3. Not according to the article:

The Air Force even has suggested that the bomb itself was not armed with a plutonium trigger. But this contention is disputed by a number of factors. Howard Dixon, a former Air Force sergeant who specialized in loading nuclear weapons onto planes, said that in his 31 years of experience he never once remembered a bomb being put on a plane that wasn't fully armed. Moreover, a newly declassified 1966 congressional testimony of W.J. Howard, then assistant secretary of defense, describes the Tybee Island bomb as a "complete weapon, a bomb with a nuclear capsule." Howard said that the Tybee Island bomb was one of two weapons lost up to that time that contained a plutonium trigger.

Recently declassified documents show that the jettisoned bomb was an "Mk-15, Mod O" hydrogen bomb, weighing four tons and packing more than 100 times the explosive punch of the one that incinerated Hiroshima. This was the first thermonuclear weapon deployed by the Air Force and featured the relatively primitive design created by that evil genius Edward Teller. The only fail-safe for this weapon was the physical separation of the plutonium capsule (or pit) from the weapon.

In addition to the primary nuclear capsule, the bomb also harbored a secondary nuclear explosive, or sparkplug, designed to make it go thermo. This is a hollow plug about an inch in diameter made of either plutonium or highly enriched uranium (the Pentagon has never said which) that is filled with fusion fuel, most likely lithium-6 deuteride. Lithium is highly reactive in water. The plutonium in the bomb was manufactured at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State and would be the oldest in the United States. That's bad news: Plutonium gets more dangerous as it ages. In addition, the bomb would contain other radioactive materials, such as uranium and beryllium.

The bomb is also charged with 400 pounds of TNT, designed to cause the plutonium trigger to implode and thus start the nuclear explosion. As the years go by, those high explosives are becoming flaky, brittle and sensitive. The bomb is most likely now buried in 5 to 15 feet of sand and slowly leaking radioactivity into the rich crabbing grounds of the Warsaw Sound. If the Pentagon can't find the Tybee Island bomb, others might. That's the conclusion of Bert Soleau, a former CIA officer who now works with ASSURE, the salvage company. Soleau, a chemical engineer, said that it wouldn't be hard for terrorists to locate the weapon and recover the lithium, beryllium and enriched uranium, "the essential building blocks of nuclear weapons." What to do? Coastal residents want the weapon located and removed. "Plutonium is a nightmare and their own people know it," said Pam O'Brien, an anti-nuke organizer from Douglassville, Georgia. "It can get in everything--your eyes, your bones, your gonads. You never get over it. They need to get that thing out of there."

[Confusious]

15. That hollow plug only goes off

If the primary explodes. You might look at wikipedia on the workings of a hydrogen bomb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller%E2%80%93Ulam_design

It needs the primary to create a compression wave in the secondary, otherwise, poof, no big bang.

So if there was no primary plug, the secondary can't go off making a thermo explosion.



It's also been 60 years, with lots and lots of people looking for that bomb, even a massive search by the government. If they haven't found it, what magical powers do the terrorists have to find the bomb?

A scrying orb? "Madame tusard will help you explore the MYSTERIES of the UNIVERSE. All that for 20 bucks."

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. It's not the danger of a thermonuclear explosion; though the plug does appear to have been there

according to the DoD testimony to Congress, which described the weapon as 'complete': http://media.npr.org/documents/2008/feb/1966bombdoc.pdf

A quote in the article points out the neutron generator would have had a short half-life, so the chances of nuclear detonation are probably over. But the fissile material itself is still a radiological hazard, or might be used in other weapons.

[izquierdista]

21. "wouldn't be hard".....

Something tells me that ol' Bert hasn't worked at a PUREX (plutonium recovery) facility.

[AverageJoe90]

23. I do worry about domestic terror groups being able to get ahold of this shit.

[Kaleva]

2. Heard about that many years ago.

What I heard, and I may be wrong on this, is that the weapon is considered to be safe as it wasn't armed when dropped.

[Poll_Blind]

4. Skip, I love ya but you REALLY have to brush up on your freaky facts.

Quickest way for someone who has not bathed in esoteric effluvia their entire lives, as I have, to catch up is to read Cracked.com lists (specifically the lists) until you start noticing them recycling facts in the new lists.

There is a whole world of weird out there that you're missing out on!

I recommend cleansing your palette from time to time with the wonderful articles on Damned Interesting.

PB

[Skip Intro]

5. danke

[PoliticAverse]

6. "The Cold War's Missing Atom Bombs"

In a 1968 plane crash, the US military lost an atom bomb in Greenland's Arctic ice. But this was no isolated case.
Up to 50 nuclear warheads are believed to have gone missing during the Cold War, and not all of them are in unpopulated areas.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,590513,00.html

[freshwest]

7. Hum, either radiation is good for us or the MIC is better than we thought. Nothing has blown up yet.

I do feel much, much better.

[pa28]

8. Be sure to check out Peter Kuran's "Nuclear 911" Documentary.

He details plenty of "broken arrow" nuclear mishaps including the one you mentioned. Even more chilling was an accidentally dropped bomb in North Carolina where a fully armed device fell and 5 of the 6 safety devices failed.

[TheMastersNemesis]

9. I Used To Play Golf With Two Friends Who Were Nuclear Chemists

I live near Rocky Flats and two friends of mine were nuclear chemists. One worked in the lab. The other worked in nuclear production making plutonium triggers. One of the main buildings reportedly had 62 lbs of plutonium in its sealed vents and air ducts when they closed the plant and dismantled the building. The government says it is safe on the old site, but there are supposedly traces of plutonium on the land.

Plutonium is the most poisonous and dangerous thing on the planet. It is dangerous for millions of years. One atom of it can kill you. And it burns in the presence of oxygen. That is why it is stored in airtight containers filled with beryllium gas. And beryllium gas itself is very dangerous.

A hydrogen bomb is much worse than an atom bomb. Atom bombs work on fission or splitting of atoms. Hydrogen bombs are fusion bombs and act like the explosions that power the sun. They are hugely more powerful. The Soviets were testing 50 megaton bombs in the 1950's in the open air. I do not know if they ever did a 100 megaton bomb but they were at least planning it.

I think the famous picture of the bomb tested in the Pacific with the ships was a hydrogen bomb.

[Confusious]

12. One atom can kill you?

Really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium

The guys who took these pictures should have been knocked dead, and on fire.

One atom of anything won't kill you.

"And it burns in the presence of oxygen." Maybe you meant water vapor or magnesium? Oxygen seems to have a different effect.

Plutonium is a reactive metal. In moist air or moist argon, the metal oxidizes rapidly, producing a mixture of oxides and hydrides.[5] If the metal is exposed long enough to a limited amount of water vapor, a powdery surface coating of PuO2 is formed.[5] Also formed is plutonium hydride but an excess of water vapor forms only PuO2.[32]

With this coating, the metal is pyrophoric, meaning it can ignite spontaneously, so plutonium metal is usually handled in an inert, dry atmosphere of nitrogen or argon. Oxygen retards the effects of moisture and acts as a passivating agent.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivation

[Angleae]

19. The famous picture you refer to was a fission device.

It was at Bikini Atoll in 1945, well before hydrogen bombs.

The Soviets tested one and only one 50MT bomb in 1961. No device larger has ever been tested.

[sylvi]

10. "misplaced a destroyer"

Geez, did they check the sofa cushions? I'm losing shit down there all the time.

[jtuck004]

11. That thing is part of pickup trucks, tractors, and 100 illegal stills. /nt

[Bolo Boffin]

13. "No detonation was observed."

Well, obviously.

[twitcher]

14. 5 nukes burned and buried in Indiana

Just 60 miles from my home, a B-58 skidded off a runway, and burned in 1964 with 5 nukes that melted and burned, leaking some radioactive contamination. My sense is that most people who live around here are completely unaware of this story.
Here is the Air Force document from 2000:

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA387061

[Kennah]

16. About a dozen incidents of lost U.S. nuclear weapons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents

[unc70]

17. I remember the one of Georgia and several others

Those crashes made the news back then. Those, combine with the arms race in general and things like "On the Beach" (book and movie) were touchstones of my youth. Along with likely fallout patterns based on prevailing winds, and of course "duck and cover".

Grew up not thinking any if us would make it to the year 2000.

[onethatcares]

18. well it's not like they were flying

nuclear weapons over the good old U. S. of A. or anything. They were over water and as for me,

I'm gonna just believe what the government says because they certainly would let us all know if

there was any kind of problem.

[unc70]

24. Not like it was over Georgia or anywhere

Sylvania GA isn't exactly over the ocean. Used to go through a lot back then on 301 heading to Statesboro.

[sorcrow]

22. I'm surprised no one has mentioned Palomares

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash

Four bombs.

Crow