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40 Years Ago, the US Lost a Nuclear Bomb
Hugh Pickens writes "A BBC investigation has found that in 1968 the US abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland after a nuclear-armed B52 crashed on the ice a few miles from Thule Air Base. The Stratofortress disintegrated on impact with the sea ice and parts of it began to melt through to the fjord below. The high explosives surrounding the four nuclear weapons on board detonated without setting off the nuclear devices, which had not been armed by the crew. The Pentagon maintained that all four weapons had been 'destroyed' and while technically true, investigators piecing together fragments from the crash could only account for three of the weapons. Investigators found that 'something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary.' A subsequent search by a US submarine was beset by technical problems and, as winter encroached and the ice began to freeze over, the search was abandoned. 'There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components,' said a former nuclear weapons designer at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory. 'It would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn't find them.'"
Operation Thunderball is a success.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Wonder if Sarah Palin can see it from her house.
I think I meant precious. Previous bodily fluids are creepy.
From a unnamed news source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tybee_Bomb
And it's far more conveniently located (somewhere off the coast of Georgia). No need to go diving somewhere in the Arctic!
Nonsense.
But, of course, this means that Greenland possesses WMDs and must be destroyed.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And AGAIN the US knows this because they left them there themselves ;).
It's only a matter of time before Al-Qaida finds the lost bombs.
Perhaps this can somehow be used to demonstrate that nuclear waste can be safely disposed of in the ocean floor? There have been serious proposals for disposing of waste in holes drilled hundreds of feet beneath the seabed in especially deep water.
I know this is unpopular with the anti-nuclear crowd, but a "real demo" may provide useful data.
John
In 1966, a nuclear armed B52 crashed over Palomares Spain, scattering radioactive material from multiple bombs, each 100 times more powerful than those which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
you had me at #!
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room!
Of Code And Men
5 February 1958: An Air Force B-47 Stratojet from Homestead AFB was on a simulated combat mission when the plane collided with an F-86 Sabre near Savannah, Georgia. The B-47 was carrying one Mk 15 hydrogen bomb without its core at the time of the accident. The plane made three unsuccessful landing attempts at Hunter Air Force Base before the weapon was jettisoned over the Atlantic Ocean to avoid the risk of a high explosive detonation at the base. The bomb was dropped several miles from the mouth of the Savannah River in Wassaw Sound off Tybee Island. Though an intensive nine-week search was launched using divers and sonar equipment, the weapon was never found. Another unsuccessful search was mounted in 2001, and reports of radiation detected less than a mile from shore led to speculation of the bomb's discovery in 2004. Further investigation concluded the radioactivity was naturally occurring and the weapon remains missing. http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/weapons/q0268.shtml
Gjordzilla??
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
Just send in Christian Slater to recover it. It'll only take him a few hours, with the additional bonus that movie footage of the recovery mission will make for a great action movie once the evil John Travolta tries to steal it.
Hey, cut John Travolta some slack. He just wants to get his hands on a thermonuclear weapon so he can give Xenu a taste of his own medicine.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yes, because everybody knows Clinton was in power in 1968.
Don't be so quick to dismiss this, after all Obama was involved with a terrorist group back in the '60s.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
No, they invaded Afghanistan because they knew if they didn't a bunch of religious nutbars would take over. That was the only thing keeping the fundamentalist terrorists in check.
Of course the Regan administration saw this as 'godless commies repressing religious freedom' and started training and passing arms to the Afghan rebels to fight the communists. Russia eventually saw this as an unwinnable war and pulled out.
That provided the path for the religious nutbars to take over Afghanistan which brings us to the modern day mess we have there.
Good job Republicans!
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
To this day, the USA alone have admitted losing 92 nuclear bombs.
This doesn't count those that were recovered in sometimes very expensive operations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palomares_hydrogen_bombs_incident
Republicans? Last I checked Carter was a Democrat. Half of our unbelievably disasterous foreign policy started with that clown. Not that I have much love for Republicans, but at least let's be honest here. Carter is the one that started the crap in Afghanistan in '79. Reagan continued it, but he didn't start it.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Yes Carter started it, but it was mainly a CIA operation. It took Reagan to dramatically increase funding and US involvement:
From http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Afghanistan/Afghanistan_CIA_Taliban.html
In March 1985, the Reagan administration issued National Security Decision Directive 166,29 a secret plan to escalate covert action in Afghanistan dramatically: Abandoning a policy of simple harassment of Soviet occupiers, the Reagan team decided secretly to let loose on the Afghan battlefield an array of U.S. high technology and military expertise in an effort to hit and demoralize Soviet commanders and soldiers....
...
By 1987, the annual supply of arms had reached 65,000 tons, and a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon officials were visiting Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters in Rawalpindi and helping to plan mujahideen operations
...
As well as training and recruiting Afghan nationals to fight the Soviets, the CIA permitted its ISI allies to recruit Muslim extremists from around the world. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid reports: Between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan mujahideen. Tens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new madrassas [religious schools] that Zia's military government began to fund in Pakistan and along the Afghan border. Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced by the jihad [against the USSR]
Like I said - Good job Republicans!
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Link The one under the wetlands in NC is probably the most recoverable. All you have to do is move 5-600 tons of sand and silt while keeping the groundwater under control, and hope that the safety shielding hasn't been compromised from impact and exposure. A separate article I can't dig up right now tells the story of the guy that found it (recently, within the last 10 years). He was able to deduce the location by taking and graphing hundreds (thousands?) of radiation measurements. He wrote the air force and they said "No, it's fine where it is."
Really? The "main international aggressor for the past 60 years"?
Yeah. I can't think of a single instance of any other nation doing anything aggressive over the past sixty years.
And we all know about those massive amounts of territory the US has added to its borders since 1948.
All you have to do is move 5-600 tons of sand and silt while keeping the groundwater under control, and hope that the safety shielding hasn't been compromised from impact and exposure.
My god... the terrorists could get it! They're already experts in sand!
Well as your other responder posted the charge was led by a DEMOCRAT. Again, I have no love for Republicans, especially the modern neocon type. However, your mindless hatred is getting in the way of your judgement of the truth and that kind of "oh it's all their fault" behavior is what dooms us to continue to elect the same idiot assholes to run the show based on what letter they tack on to their name. So yes...let us all run out and vote for the other idiot assholes because they have a different letter. Pay no attention to the fact that they have just as much of a nightmarish track record.
Eisenhower and Truman were two of our greatest presidents. A Republican and a Democrat.
Bush Jr and Carter have been two of our worst presidents. A Republican and a Democrat.
Thomas Jefferson was one of our greatets politicians and presidents. A Democratic-Republican (Holy shit! Both letters!?)
Can we please get over this party line bullshit now?
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.