Seven times the US military lost its nuclear weapon and never found it four times

Although the nuclear program is designed to be ‘defect free’, here are seven examples of lost US military nuclear weapons, four of which have never been found.

A US Air Force B-52 bomber in 1957. Photo AP 1. 1956: The B-47 disappears with two nuclear “capsules” The first story on the list is also one of the most mysterious because nothing like the wreckage of a plane, a weapon or a crew has been found. A B-47 Stratojet bomber with two nuclear weapons took off from MacDill Air Force Base, Florida on March 10, 1956, towards Morocco. It was scheduled for two aerial refuels but did not show up at the second refuel point. An international search team was dispatched to search but found nothing. The US military had finally stopped searching. 2. 1958: Nuclear bomber damaged near Tybee Island, Georgia On February 5, 1958, the B-47 bomber left Florida with nuclear weapons on a training mission to simulate the bombing of a Russian city and evade the subsequent interceptor missiles. On the Georgia coast, bombers and interceptors (red troops) collided. The interceptor pilot parachutes, the bomber crew tries to lower the same bomb but fails. They dropped bombs into the sea before they landed safely. Because the plutonium pores were changed to lead holes during training, the missing bomb had only uranium-235 mass below the threshold and could not cause a nuclear explosion. 3. 1961: Two nuclear bombs nearly turn North Carolina into a bay On January 24, 1961, a B-52 carrying two Mark 39 bombs, each 253 times more powerful than the one Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima, shattered in a storm and released two bombs. A pilot who survived the crash warned the US Air Force of the incident. The first bomb was found hanging from a tree with a parachute, upright, nose plunged close to the ground. It went through six of the seven steps needed to explode. Fortunately, the safety switch, due to the malfunction, was in place and the bomb “landed safely”. “Now you can have a very large North Carolina Gulf if that goes away,” said Jack Revelle, who was in charge of locating and removing the two bombs. The bomb’s switch has changed to ‘weapon’ mode, but for whatever reason no one knows, it still cannot explode, saving tens of thousands of lives. 4. 1965: Loss of naval aircraft, pilot and B43 nuclear bomb A US Navy A-4 Skyhawk was being carried aboard the USS Ticonderoga during a December 5, 1965 exercise when it slipped off the lift floor while on board a pilot and a nuclear bomb B43. The plane quickly sank 5,300 meters deep. The status of this bomb is still unknown. The pressure at that depth would have been enough to detonate the weapon and the water was so deep that it would be difficult to detect. If the weapon was still intact, it would be nearly impossible to find because very few submarines were able to reach that depth. 5. 1966: Aircraft -52 crashes into KC-135, four thermonuclear bombs are dropped on Spain On January 17, 1966, a B-52 was approaching an KC-135 to refuel when a collision occurred, causing the KC-135 crew and 3 people on the B-52. network. B-52s and 4 B28 thermonuclear bombs fell near a small fishing village in Palomares, Spain. Three bombs were found within the first 24 hours after the crash. One landed safely while the other two exploded but with conventional explosives. The explosions burned and dispersed the plutonium in the bomb, contaminating an area of ​​two square kilometers. The fourth bomb fell into the sea. It took the US Navy almost 100 days to locate and recall it. 6. 1968: The B-52 crashes and a nuclear weapon is lost under the Arctic ice Like the Palomares crash, the January 21 crash of a B-52 resulted in four B28 bombs being released. This time they fell over Greenland and at least three of the bombs were broken. Investigators recovered most of these ingredients before realizing they could find nothing of the fourth bomb. The recovery team speculates that the bomb started burning after the crash and thawed. The remains of the bomb then fell to the bottom of the Arctic sea. The weapon is missing, said to be irrevocable. 7. 1968: The sinking of the USS Scorpion USS Scorpion, a nuclear-powered attack submarine, was declared missing on June 5, 1968. The loss was especially difficult for the US Navy, as the ship followed a Russian research group just before disappearing. At the time of his disappearance, the Scorpion was carrying two Mark 45 anti-submarine torpedoes (ASTOR). It was not until October 1968 that the debris was found. The USS Scorpion is located on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 3,000 meters and the cause of the sinking is unknown. The torpedo compartment appears to be intact with two nuclear torpedoes, but the US Navy cannot say for sure. Retrieving torpedoes will be extremely difficult, so the US Navy will monitor radiation levels in the area. So far, there has been no sign of leakage from a torpedo or reactor, according to the statement of the US Navy.