USA loses an atomic bomb and can't find it

[Modelworks]

I was watching the science channel last night and this program comes on "Americas lost h-bomb".

I was shocked.
I had never heard of this story before.

In 1958 a bomber on training run, carrying a 1.5megaton h -bomb, had a mid air collision with another plane, so they ejected the bomb off the coast of Georgia. The military tried to find the bomb later and couldn't. So they just gave up, figure it was buried in the sea bed.

Does this seem like an idiotic idea or what ?

So 50 years later a retired colonel is trying to find the bomb fearing that it might be found by terrorist. They tried and haven't been able to locate it.
They also said shrimp boats in the area have marked spots where the nets get hanged up on the bottom . It could be where the bottom of the bomb is exposed.

The government says its not possible for it to detonate because the batteries are probably dead by now. But it still has 350 pounds of plastic explosives and several hundred pounds of uranium , that if exploded would leak radiation all along the coast of Georgia, aka dirty bomb.

The governments attitude is "were not looking for it , but if you find it, let us know"

WTF ? with all the terrorist threats, don't you think we should send at least one navy ship to canvas every freaking inch of the bottom till its found ?

http://www.tybeetyme.com/tb/index.htm

Website covering the bomb.

 

[SLCentral]

*puts on tinfoil hat*

 

[PottedMeat]

I guess it's just a lot of trouble to go dig it up. Either you leave it there where you know it is and it's probably stable or you can dig it up and risk the bomb disintegrating and spreading out over the ocean floor. It's probably easier for a terrorist to go out and buy nuclear material than dredge that thing up - the Navy is probably watching that area 24/7 for weird activity.

 

[Modelworks]

Forgot to mention that they did a study on the metals the bomb was made out of to see how sea water corrosion would affect the casing. They found that if it is actually buried in the bottom that it is likely still completely intact , because the mud would decrease the corrosion rate.

With all the technology we can use to find sunken ships, we can't find a lost H-bomb.

 

[ultimatebob]

I guess that they didn't have someone like Jack Bauer around back then. If they did, he would have found the bomb within 24 hours. His technique would probably would have involved screaming "WHERE IS THE BOMB! WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!" at every fisherman and sailor in Georgia

 

[K1052]

The Mark 15 thermonuclear weapon that was jettisoned from the B-47 was without its fission primary stage. The only material of any concern is the highly enriched uranium in the second stage of the weapon.

Given that is is probably pretty deeply buried in silt it would be more dangerous to go poking around for it than leaving it be.

 

[Hyperlite]

where is Dirk Pitt when you need him!

 

[The Boston Dangler]

Here's a great big list of accidental nukings, and that's just what the public knows. Never mind Russian and Chinese losses.

 

[BrownTown]

Meh, I brought up this fact in the previous thread about atomic bombs being flow over the US. These bombs are NOT gonna jsut blow up on their own, even if somehow a voltage is induced in the wiring it takes a precise sequence of events to yield an atomic explosion. All current US weapons are verified to be "one point safe" which means that a detonation of the explosives starting from any one point will not initiate the device, all the detonators have to go off simultaneously to get proper detonation. The danger from this bomb has nothing to do with it exploding, but it COULD be dissembled and the nuclear materials made into a NEW bomb if the people who found it had the technical skills to do so.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Forgot to mention that they did a study on the metals the bomb was made out of to see how sea water corrosion would affect the casing. They found that if it is actually buried in the bottom that it is likely still completely intact , because the mud would decrease the corrosion rate.

With all the technology we can use to find sunken ships, we can't find a lost H-bomb.

I think that ships are just a littttttle bit bigger than H-bombs, and even then, it isn't easy to find those ships. As far as detecting radiation (some of you are probably thinking this), the water would block that. i.e. water absorbs gamma and x-ray radiation. Both types may be able to penetrate through water to some degree, but certainly no where near the surface.

 

[alien42]

Originally posted by: The Boston Dangler
Here's a great big list of accidental nukings, and that's just what the public knows. Never mind Russian and Chinese losses.

WOW, i had no idea there were so many close calls.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

http://www.globalsecurity.org/...tems/nuclear-intro.htm scroll to the bottom for the chart

Safety

Eight of the nine weapons in the current stockpile are not as safe and secure as they could be made. Only the W84 nuclear warhead is equipped with all of the safety and surety features available. The other eight designs do not incorporate all of the safety and surety features that are available. The W62, in fact, does not have any safety features.

 

[Tobolo]

Originally posted by: Hyperlite
where is Dirk Pitt when you need him!

Heck yeah! This would have been licked and terrorism would be erradicated!

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: K1052
The Mark 15 thermonuclear weapon that was jettisoned from the B-47 was without its fission primary stage. The only material of any concern is the highly enriched uranium in the second stage of the weapon.

Given that is is probably pretty deeply buried in silt it would be more dangerous to go poking around for it than leaving it be.

Actually they addressed that in the program.
The original report said that the plutonium core was not present.
Then a report 10 years later said that it was present.

The colonel in the program made a good point.
The plutonium cores and all nuclear material is heavily cataloged , if the core was not in the bomb, how come the air force was unable to locate it, and to this day has no idea where it is. I hope they aren't misplacing plutonium cores as well .

One of the problems they are having is that the water off the coast has radioactive elements naturally and gives off lots of false positives. The water is not that deep, average of 18 feet, its just cloudy.

Still I think it would be worth the effort to find it, especially if all the components are in the bomb. It wouldn't take much to make a dirty bomb or with proper knowledge make a real nuke.

 

[marvdmartian]

Don't sweat over the terrorists finding it, guys......I think I know who has that nuclear material:

where's the kaboom?? :laugh:

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: K1052
The Mark 15 thermonuclear weapon that was jettisoned from the B-47 was without its fission primary stage. The only material of any concern is the highly enriched uranium in the second stage of the weapon.

Given that is is probably pretty deeply buried in silt it would be more dangerous to go poking around for it than leaving it be.

Actually they addressed that in the program.
The original report said that the plutonium core was not present.
Then a report 10 years later said that it was present.

The colonel in the program made a good point.
The plutonium cores and all nuclear material is heavily cataloged , if the core was not in the bomb, how come the air force was unable to locate it, and to this day has no idea where it is. I hope they aren't misplacing plutonium cores as well .

One of the problems they are having is that the water off the coast has radioactive elements naturally and gives off lots of false positives. The water is not that deep, average of 18 feet, its just cloudy.

Still I think it would be worth the effort to find it, especially if all the components are in the bomb. It wouldn't take much to make a dirty bomb or with proper knowledge make a real nuke.

If there was an actual primary in the weapon the military would be a LOT more interested in recovering it. They usually go through quite a bit to recover an operational weapon unless it is lost in extraordinarily deep water.

 

[Modelworks]

They had the former secretary of defense Robert McNamara on the program and he said that one of the reasons it wasn't high on the governments list was 1.) They didn't want to draw attention to the incident 2.) all the experts said that detonation was impossible because the batteries would be long dead and that the bomb would require precise detonation to actually cause a nuclear explosion.


I'm more concerned that something like this could lead to a dirty bomb.

I wouldn't be giving the program much credit, but they had actual people involved with this stuff, like the former Secretary of Defense, USMC nuclear experts, the pilot of the bomber, retired nuclear engineers, etc. It wasn't one of those doom and gloom programs filled with conspiracy nuts.

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
They had the former secretary of defense Robert McNamara on the program and he said that one of the reasons it wasn't high on the governments list was 1.) They didn't want to draw attention to the incident 2.) all the experts said that detonation was impossible because the batteries would be long dead and that the bomb would require precise detonation to actually cause a nuclear explosion.


I'm more concerned that something like this could lead to a dirty bomb.

Any terrorist would be better off going to Russia and getting something hugely radioactive from them, they have a lot of such materials scattered throughout their country.

 

[BoomerD]

http://www.history.com/tdih.do...rticleCategory&id=6779

 

[The Boston Dangler]

just a couple weeeks ago

"I can also tell you that it's important enough that President Bush was notified of it."

oh, thank god for that

 

[BCYL]

Doesn't this sound like the movie Sum of All Fears? Except in the movie it was Israel who lost the bomb, not the US...

 

[RU482]

There is another a-bomb that was accidentally "put" in a swamp near greensboro, NC

 

[slpaulson]

January 23, 1961
A B-52 bomber carrying two 24 megaton bombs crashes at Goldsboro, North Carolina. On one of the bombs, five of six interlocking safety devices fail, and a single switch prevents detonation. The explosion would have been 1,800 times more powerful than the bomb exploded at Hiroshima.

Yikes...

 

[Mark R]

I'm not so worried about it going off. That's highly unlikely. However, it does contain lots of uranium and plastic explosives, so would be an attractive target for terrorists. It would be an awful dirty bomb - Uranium isn't near toxic enough - but it could provide nuclear material.

And here's the catch: This was a very early hydrogen weapon - an early prototype in fact. The engineers didn't really know huge details about the theory of hydrogen bomb operation, and these bombs were needed quickly - so rather then research exactly what was needed, the 'overkill' approach was taken. Completely over-engineer the bomb so that it can't fail. That's exactly what they did - Not knowing exactly how much uranium would be required to ignite the hydrogen component, they guessed high - by building the entire bomb casing out of uranium (in addition to the uranium core). And although not actually necessary, but 'just to be sure', they built the entire 1 tonne bomb casing out of pure weapons-grade uranium.

The lucky finder of this treasure trove of nuclear goodness, would have enough weapons uranium to build 20 more conventional nukes. Nice.

 

[oogabooga]

Originally posted by: slpaulson

January 23, 1961
A B-52 bomber carrying two 24 megaton bombs crashes at Goldsboro, North Carolina. On one of the bombs, five of six interlocking safety devices fail, and a single switch prevents detonation. The explosion would have been 1,800 times more powerful than the bomb exploded at Hiroshima.

Yikes...

[homer]
(chuckles) boy would our face have been red.
[/homer]

Thank God for switch number 6? Or whichever one didn't fail.