We recently wrote about bombs on a sunken ship near Londonthat could blowany time. Now an officer whose plane crashed in 1958 haslocated the lost hydrogen bomb that was aboard?it’s off thecoast of Savannah, Georgia.
Good Morning American reports that when Air Force lieutenantcolonel Derek Duke had to crash land his B-47 at Hunter AirForce Base in Georgia, he first jettisoned the nuclear bombit was carrying into the Atlantic Ocean. After searching fornine weeks, the Air Force declared the bomb “irretrievablylost,” but Duke never stopped looking for it?and now he’sfound it.
Duke eventually narrowed his search to the area aroundWassaw Sound, which connects the Wilmington River to theAtlantic Ocean. He began trolling the area in a boat,dragging a Geiger counter behind him and finally located anarea off Tybee Island where readings are suspiciously high.It’s only a mile offshore and in only 12 feet of water. Dukesays, “Amazingly, they never looked at this spot.” Ifdetonated, the bomb could poison the drinking water supplyfor the entire southeast coast of the United States.
Can the bomb be removed? “You certainly don’t want todetonate it,” says Duke. “But you try to protect it as youinvestigate it. We could even build a case around it andpump the water out and make it a dry land recovery.”
The Air Force thinks it’s better to leave it where it is,but Duke says, “It just shouldn’t be there. Nuclear weaponshave their place in this world, unfortunately, but this onedoesn’t belong here.”
One way to find things? Use yourintuition.
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