The Tybee Bomb - Lost in 1958 and never found.

An incident occurred in the skies over Georgia on the 5th February 1958, in the USA named the ‘Tybee Island Mid-Air Collision’. Two aircraft - an F-86 Fighter jet on a night practice exercise collided with a B-47 bomber. The bomber was carrying a large, 3,400kg (7,600 pound) Mark 15 nuclear bomb measuring 12 feet (3.7m) in length which was jettisoned into the Wassaw Sound off Tybee Island. After several searches the weapon was declared lost and to this day has never been found.

A Mark 15 bomb of the same type lost in the Wassaw Sound. US Atomic Energy Commission, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Luck was, oddly, on the side of all involved during the incident, the pilot of the fighter jet, Lt. Clarence Stewart was able to eject and parachute to safety, and the bomber remained airborne. Although damaged and plummeting sharply for thousands of feet, the pilot, Col. Howard Richardson regained control and landed the plane safely at Hunter Air Force Base (and was later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross). The crew requested permission to jettison the bomb to avoid an explosion on the emergency landing and to reduce weight, it was granted and the bomb was offloaded during the decent at 7,200 feet into the ocean.

The following day, a search and recovery mission was started with 100 Navy personnel and the Air Force 2700th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Squadron. They were equipped with handheld sonar and cable sweeps but on April 16th the search was called off after no evidence was found. In 2001 a hydrographic survey revealed that the 3.8 megaton bomb was likely to be buried under 5-15 feet of silt on the bottom of Wassaw Sound, and a report from the Air Force concluded if the bomb was still in one piece, the explosive contained within would pose no hazard.

More recently in 2004, retired Lt. Colonel Derek Duke conducted his own search and claimed to have narrowed down the site to the size of a football field by searching the area with a boat towing a geiger counter. Although he reported radiation readings 7-10 times higher than normal in the area, an Air Force nuclear weapons adviser said it was from a natural mineral source.

Opinions have differed as to whether the bomb was functional or not when it was jettisoned from the B-47, if it was fitted with a plutonium core it would be a fully-functioning nuclear weapon, likewise if it had a dummy core it would not be a nuclear weapon but would still be capable of causing a normal explosion.

After the incident, the Air Force put out assurances that the nuclear capsule was removed before the flight, and this put the public’s collective minds at rest until 1994 when documents were released from a Congressional Testimony in 1966 which stated that it was indeed a fully functional bomb complete with a nuclear capsule...and it was one of two weapons that could not be accounted for that contained a plutonium trigger. 

The second was lost in 1965 in the Western Pacific when a plane went overboard from an aircraft carrier - the plane, pilot and bomb were never found. The US apparently has six nuclear bombs missing to date … not at all worrying!

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