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Today is the anniversary of the Tybee Bomb Incident, a mid-air collision that caused the crew of a B-47 Stratojet to drop a 7600-lb. hydrogen bomb in the waters of Wassaw Sound near Tybee, Georgia. In the early morning hours of February 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber from Florida's Homestead Air Force Base (AFB) collided with an F-86 Sabre while on a training mission near Savannah, Georgia. The pilot of the F-86 bailed out of his burning fighter jet, but the crew of the B-47 determined that their aircraft was damaged but still flyable. After three failed landing attempts at nearby Hunter AFB, the bomber crew requested permission to jettison the B-47's payload – a Mark 15, Mod 0, transportation-configured hydrogen bomb. "I thought that if we landed short", recalled B-47 pilot Howard Richardson, "the plane would catch the front of the runway and the bomb would shoot through the plane like a bullet through a gun barrel".
Traveling at 200 knots (230 mph), Richardson's aircraft dropped the unarmed hydrogen bomb from 7200 ft. above Wassaw Sound. The crew did not witness an explosion, and managed to land the B-47 at Hunter AFB without further incident. On February 6, 1958, the United States Air Force (USAF) dispatched the 2700th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Squadron to recover the missing bomb. Over 100 U.S Navy (USN) personnel also joined in the hunt for the "broken arrow", using sonar equipment and galvanic drag-and-cable sweeps over a three square-mile area where water depths ranged from 8 to 40 feet. On April 16, the Air Force concluded its nine-week search and declared that the 12-ft. hydrogen bomb was irretrievably lost. During the recovery efforts near Tybee, another B-47 from Hunter AFB accidentally dropped an unarmed nuclear weapon near Florence, South Carolina.
In August 2000, Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) asked the Air Force to reopen its investigation of the Tybee Bomb Incident. The USAF agreed and worked with experts from the USN, the Department of Energy (DOE), the Savannah District of the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Skidaway Oceanographic Institute. In a report dated April 12, 2001, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency reported that engineers from Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) had performed various aerodynamic and hydrodynamic trajectory calculations, but could only provide "reasonable estimates" of the Tybee bomb's location and condition. The Navy's Supervisor of Salvage was also cautious, reporting that even the use of side-scan sonar and magnetometers offered only "a very low probability of successfully locating the bomb". Sub-bottom profiling could use acoustic imaging to identify content below the seafloor, but would cost $10,000 per day.
As part of its final report, the Air Force also attempted to allay citizen concerns that the B-47 Stratojet may have carried a "live" Mark 15 hydrogen bomb. "There is no current or future possibility of a nuclear explosion", the Air Force reported, since records from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) indicate that the bomber's Mod 0 weapon had not been upgraded to a Mod 2 device, a "self-contained fully functional nuclear bomb". Furthermore, because the B-47 was on a training mission, "it was common practice to train with transportation configured bombs" - not live ones. As for the Tybee bomb's 400 lbs. of conventional explosives and metallic components, the Air Force reported that the "the risk associated with the spread of heavy metals in the bomb is low; and undisturbed, the explosives in the bomb pose no hazard".
Although Congressman Kingston told reporters he was "confident that the experts did their job", retired USAF Colonel Derek Duke remained unconvinced. In 2004, Duke claimed that he had used a Geiger counter to find the Tybee bomb in just twelve feet of water less than one mile from shore. "If we're so worried about terrorists getting a hold of nuclear weapons", Duke warned, "why aren't we doing anything about this? Right down there, somewhere, is the material to make a dirty bomb."
Resources:
http://www.tybeetyme.com/tb/airforce_leave_bomb.htm
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,868306,00.html
http://www.milnet.com/clearwat/inchart.htm
Editor's Note:
Like this story? See also January 17, 1966: The Palomares Incident
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Re: February 5, 1958: The Tybee Bomb Incident
