- We're not so sure if these things are better off lost or found.
Everybody loses something sometimes. That said, there are important things that you really should keep in their places.
We’re talking about things like important documents, house keys, your phone… Oh, and your nukes.
Yet, the world’s militaries lose their nuclear weapons shockingly often. For instance, the U.S. military (which keeps excellent tabs on its nukes, by the way) has had 32 incidents of “broken arrows” — that is, nukes that launched, fired, detonated, or went missing by accident.
The good news is, most of the cases have been resolved. The bad news is that six haven’t, and no one knows where the bombs are.
Here are America’s six missing nuclear weapons, from the oldest to the latest.
1. February 13, 1950
The oldest missing American nuke was lost already back in 1950. The incident happened during a training mission, when an Air Force B-36 Peacemaker bomber (what an ironic name) was practicing how to conduct a nuclear strike.
However, on its way from Alaska to Texas, the plane’s engines began malfunctioning over the Pacific Ocean. Not wanting to deal with the backlash of a nuclear bomber possibly crashing onto American soil, the military brass ordered the flight crew to dump their payload into the ocean.
And down it went. A 30-kiloton nuke dropped into the Pacific and has never been found.
As a silver lining, the bomb wasn’t armed with the plutonium core that’s required for detonation. It still had plenty of uranium in it, though.
2. March 10, 1956
Six years later, a next-generation B-47 strategic bomber was journeying from the MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to Morocco. Aboard the plane were two Mark 15 nuclear weapons.
Neither the plane nor the bombs ever arrived in Morocco.
No one has ever figured out what happened to the plane. In all likelihood, it experienced some kind of malfunction and crashed into the ocean, taking its crew and deadly payload with it.
Fortunately, the Air Force stated after the incident that the bombs didn’t have their cores and couldn’t cause a nuclear explosion. That was until 1966, when a Congressional testimony revealed that the bombs were indeed fully functional nukes.
3. February 5, 1958
Fast-forward two years, and we have another B-47 bomber carrying yet another Mark 15 nuke. This time, the plane was performing a training mission around Savannah, Georgia, when it had a mid-air collision with an F-86 Sabre fighter.
The fighter went down in flames, but the bomber stayed in the air. However, it was damaged in a way that made it difficult to land.
After multiple failed attempts to get the plane on the ground, the crew was told to drop the nuke to prevent it from exploding in a controlled crash landing. The bomb was jettisoned into the Wassaw Sound, around 13 miles from Savannah.
As far as anyone knows, the bomb is still lost somewhere in there. Probably.
4. January 24, 1961
Similarly to the nuke in the Wassaw Sound, we know where this bomb is. That is, we know its location in the vaguest possible sense.
A B-52 bomber was taking off from Goldsboro, North Carolina, with two nukes on board. However, it crashed right after takeoff, and one of the bombs fell out.
The nuke ended up in a batch of swampy land near the air force base. Despite an exhaustive search operation that scoured the swamp 50 feet deep, they never found the thing.
What’s worse, the other bomb that they managed to recover had three of its four arming mechanisms activated. Is it the same with the one in the swamp?
No one knows. That’s why the Air Force bought out the swamp from the federal government and prohibited digging at the site.
5. December 5, 1965
On this date, the pilot of a U.S. A-4E Skyhawk was waiting to take off from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga. The attack aircraft was loaded with a one-megaton nuke.
Then the plane rolled off the deck into the sea and sank, taking the pilot and the bomb with it.
The Nave never found the nuke. Scratch that, they didn’t even admit the whole thing had happened until 1980.
At that time, the Navy claimed the incident happened in the middle of the ocean, 500 miles from the nearest land. That, however, was a lie, and the real location was only 80 miles away from a Japanese island.
And this is why Japan banned the U.S. from ever bringing another nuclear weapon into its territory.
6. May 1968
In May 1968, the U.S. submarine USS Scorpion was on its way to observe Soviet naval activity. On board the vessel were two 250-kiloton nuclear weapons.
At some point between May 21 and 27, USS Scorpion vanished. No one knew what had happened until a research ship discovered the submarine’s wreckage southwest of the Azores — at a depth of 9,800 feet.
The Navy has performed dives to the wreckage, but the Scorpion’s sinking is still shrouded in mystery. It’s unknown what happened, as is the fate of the submarine’s nukes.
The USS Scorpion’s sinking was only one of the four tragic submarine accidents that happened in 1968. If you want to read about the rest, check out our article on the worst year for submarines.