The attempt to have an American plane to lose an atomic bomb

In 1958, a B-47 long range bomber crashed in the air, causing the pilot to drop the atomic bomb that he carried into the sea. This deadly weapon didn't explode and disappeared since then.

One winter night in early February 1958, the Mark 15 atomic bomb fell into the waters off Tybee Island, near Savannah, Georgia.

That day, the B-47 came from the Homstead base in Florida, carrying the only weapon that was a 7,600-pound (3,400kg) nuclear bomb.

A B-52 from the US Air Force.

In the darkness at about 2 am, this strategic bomber was struck by a secret F-86 fighter. The F-86 fell, the pilot turned the seat off the plane to escape death. Meanwhile, the large B-47 remained in the air, but fell from a height of 12,000 meters to 5,500 meters while Captain Richardson tried to regain control.

To protect the crew from a possible explosion after the collision, the B-47 pilot decided to drop the "hot item" into the sea. The release of the giant bomb helped reduce the aircraft's load and also prevented the bomb from exploding during the emergency landing. With permission from the headquarters, the captain of the B-47 quickly pressed the bomb while flying at a speed of 370km / h. The crew did not see the explosion when the bomb hit the sea surface. They then landed safely at the nearest base, Hunter Air Base.

After the incident, the pilot of the B-47, Colonel Howard Richardson was also awarded the Elite Flying Flying Medal.

The atomic bomb Mark 15 was America's strategic weapon in the 1950s, with about 1,200 produced. This is a transitional bomb between fission and fusion weapons. Each fruit is 3.65 m long, weighs 3,400 kg and uses fuel as a highly enriched uranium. Moderate weight and size are Mark 15's advantages over contemporary atomic bombs.

Shortly after the accident, the US Air Force mobilized a large force to find the bomb with code 47782, containing 180kg of traditional high-explosive explosives and high-enriched uranium. The two-month search effort is not effective because of bad weather, cold water and underwater visibility is too limited. On April 16, 1958, the US military was forced to declare the Mark 15 disappear forever under the seabed.

US authorities insisted the bomb did not endanger the people living around the area. They believed that the thick metal shell would prevent radioactive fuel inside Mark 15 from leaking. However, this statement is not enough to reassure the American people. Terrors from a bomb longer than 3.5 meters far surpass the fear of sharks eating poisonous human or jellyfish.

60 years after the rare incident, the lost Mark 15 was marked with a sign with scribbled handwriting despite its growing obsession. In thousands of reports, only a single version of the US Air Force confirmed that the bomb no longer has the value of a nuclear weapon and it cannot explode because of its nuclear cavity, used to activate nuclear reactions , was removed before the flight. Historian Douglas Keeney called the report "absurd" while documenting the hearing in 1966 before Congress that Mark 15 not only contained uranium but also plutonium. At the hearing, Deputy Defense Secretary WJ Howard said that the bomb dropped near Tybee Island was a "full weapon, a bomb with a nuclear cavity" . If a nuclear explosion occurs, its destructive power will be 100 times greater than the US bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

Mark 15 atomic bomb.

Although the US government has stopped searching for the bomb, it still haunts local people. They feared that Mark 15 was washed ashore, or fell into the hands of terrorists.

In 2004, retired Lieutenant Colonel Derek Duke led a team looking for a nuclear bomb. His team discovered high levels of radioactivity in shallow waters off Savannah. However, in-depth investigations conclude that this phenomenon is normal, and high levels of radiation are caused by natural minerals in the area.

Concerns continue, but by 2007, authorities still failed to detect any unusual levels of radioactive contamination in the Upper Florida aquifer.

In February 2015, there appeared information in a newspaper that the bomb was found by Canadian divers and then moved from the bay. This fake information quickly spreads throughout social networks. So far Mark 15 bomb traces are still a mystery.