Posted on 06/17/2005 9:35:00 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAVANNAH, Ga. - The first government search in decades for a hydrogen bomb lost off the Georgia coast in 1958 found no trace of the sunken weapon, the Air Force said Friday.
The report — issued nine months after scientists tested radiation levels off Tybee Island — concluded that there is no danger of a nuclear blast from the 7,600-pound bomb and that the weapon should be left where it is, buried somewhere in the muck.
"We still think it's irretrievably lost. We don't know where to look for it," said Billy Mullins, an Air Force nuclear weapons adviser who led the search.
A damaged B-47 bomber jettisoned the Mark-15 bomb into Wassaw Sound about 15 miles from Savannah after colliding with a fighter jet during a training flight.
The military soon gave up the search for the bomb, but decided to look again last year, after a retired Air Force pilot claimed his private search team had detected unusually high radiation levels in the sound.
"I'll have to agree with them," said Derek Duke, who has spent more than five years searching for the bomb. "Whatever we thought we saw maybe wasn't anything at all."
Government scientists took radiation readings and soil samples Sept. 30 from an underwater area the size of four football fields. The report said varying radiation levels were detected, but they were from natural elements in the sediment on the sea floor.
"The best course of action in this matter is to not continue to search for it and to leave the property in place," said the report by the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency.
The Air Force has said the bomb contains uranium and about 400 pounds of conventional explosives, but lacks the plutonium capsule needed to trigger a nuclear blast. The amount of uranium was undisclosed.
In 2001, the Air Force declared the bomb "irretrievably lost" and said it lies buried beneath 8 to 40 feet of water and 5 to 15 feet of mud and sand.
City officials on Tybee Island, a beach community of 3,400 residents, urged the government four years ago to recover the lost nuke. After hearing the Air Force report Friday, City Manager Bob Thomson agreed it is best left alone.
"I'm not saying it's a good thing that we have a warhead out there," Thomson said. "But I believe the greatest danger is it being disturbed from its watery grave."
Hey, everyone loses things once in awhile. What's the big deal?
No. 47782 is a hydrogen bomb, a Mark 15, Mod 0, one of the earliest thermonuclear devices (Castle Nectar / Zombie) developed by the United States.
It has rested off Savannah since 1958.
SciScoop Forum - Link - The Lost H-Bomb Of Tybee Island
http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/5/3/72022/88347
Thunderball...
How long can the 'conventional weapons' be potent?
'biological hazard' should actually be 'environmental hazard'
I seem to recall a recent movie with a similar plot. Only the nuke was found in the middle east desert due to an Israeli plane crash. Thought movie plots followed reality not the other way around.
Get a metal detector for these guys.
Ah, the playing out of the Sum of All Fears.
If ya know someone who has a BBQ shaped like a Mark15 in their backyard , Please call the Air Force toll FRee number.
1-800-where'ditgo
Broken Arrow?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/09/13/lost.bomb/index.html
The United States lost 11 nuclear bombs in accidents during the Cold War that were never recovered, according to the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
An estimated 50 nuclear warheads, most of them from the former Soviet Union, still lie on the bottom of the world's oceans, according to the environmental group Greenpeace.
One of the most celebrated accidents took place over Palomares, Spain, in January 1966 when a U.S. B-52 collided with a KC-135 tanker during midair refueling and released all four of its hydrogen bombs in the ensuing explosion. Seven of the 11 crewmen aboard both planes were killed.
The high explosive igniters on two bombs detonated on impact, spreading radioactive material, including plutonium, over a wide area of the Spanish countryside. A third bomb landed relatively intact and was recovered.
The fourth bomb landed in the Mediterranean Sea, and U.S. military searchers took nearly three months to find and recover the device intact.
Well, if it could not be found, it follows that there never was one.
Remember the Al Qa Qaa affair? This was what those explosives were for...the Iraqi A bomb.
"...and a quantity of bomb-grade uranium."
Iraqi nuclear scientists were performing separation techniques exactly the way we did to produce the fissile material used in our bombs.
After 47 years of hurricanes, it likely is buried, but maybe they need to also look a little further north.
The Spanish recovery, clean up, and legal settlements cost us $182 million in 1966 dollars.
Maybe we ought to leave this one lost.
No. I think it was the Ben Afleck (remember I just think it was).
He always runs while others walk
He acts while other men just talk.
He looks at this world, and wants it all,
So he strikes, like thunderball.
He knows the meaning of success.
His needs are more, so he gives less.
They call him the winner who takes all.
And he strikes, like thunderball.
-
Any woman he wants, he’ll get.
He will break any heart without regret.
His days of asking are all gone.
His fight goes on and on and on.
But he thinks that the fight is worth it all.
So he strikes like thunderball
John Travolta was in "Broken Arrow" and Ben Afleck was in "Sum of All Fears".
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