Uranium-Filled 'Lost Nuke' Missing Since 1950 May Have Been Found (bbc.com)

Although the U.S. government "does not believe the bomb contains active nuclear material," schwit1 shares this report from the BBC: A commercial diver may have discovered a lost decommissioned U.S. nuclear bomb off the coast of Canada. Sean Smyrichinsky was diving for sea cucumbers near British Columbia when he discovered a large metal device that looked a bit like a flying saucer. The Canadian Department of National Defence believes it could be a "lost nuke" from a US B-36 bomber that crashed in the area in 1950.... The plane was on a secret mission to simulate a nuclear strike and had a real Mark IV nuclear bomb on board to see if it could carry the payload required...

The American military says the bomb was filled with lead, uranium and TNT but no plutonium, so it wasn't capable of a nuclear explosion... Several hours into its flight, its engines caught fire and the crew had to parachute to safety... The crew put the plane on autopilot and set it to crash in the middle of the ocean, but three years later, its wreckage was found hundreds of kilometers inland.
The crew says they dumped their bomb-like cargo into the ocean first to avoid a detonation on land.

Comments

WTF?

[YuppieScum]

You fly a test mission, and do it using a "dummy" bomb that contains TNT and uranium???

Is it just me, or does this sound like complete bollocks?

Of course, actually telling everyone, "Oopsy, we *lost* a live nuke" would be quite embarrassing...

Re:WTF?

[blindseer]

Ever think WHY the engines caught fire?

This was a B-36, those things would sometimes catch on fire because the radio operator farted. These aircraft were notorious for engine fires. A lot of this was because of it being a first of its kind, no one built an airframe that large before. It was put in service in spite of its problems because there were people that feared the Russians more than this aircraft.

In 1950 the B-36 was still new and not all of its problems were discovered yet. No doubt they learned a few things from this crash. This aircraft was designed to carry a much heavier load than this, but whether the design, or perhaps this specific airframe, met those design specs can certainly be disputed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Poor summary and incomplete story

[mykepredko]

I don't know why the poster/editor put in the last line "The crew says they dumped their bomb-like cargo into the ocean first to avoid a detonation on land" as it adds confusion to the story. If you read TFA, it seems like the bomb was dropped into the water to avoid the problems of the TNT exploding and not the BOMB detonating (which doesn't seem possible).

I'd be interested in finding out why the USAF didn't try to recover the bomb if they thought they knew where it was.

Trusted source?

[ebonum]

Do you actually trust the U.S. government to be honest? It may have been a complete weapon - plutonium and all. They simply made something up to make sure people wouldn't panic (or the real motivation to lie: people would criticize the government for f'ing up. Again.). No one outside a select few has the ability to find out if it had been loaded with plutonium. If they were actually worried about safety, there would not be any TNT or uranium in it. They would have filled the bomb with something inert to give it the same mass, center of mass and maybe even moment of inertia. Nuclear bombs don't go off unless properly triggered, so the risk of a full explosion is about zero. There is a very real risk of it potentially becoming a dirty bomb.

Lying and deception are completely legit when keeping Americans safe. Doubly so for anything classified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: Broken Arrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the 25% of nuclear reserves Hillary's allies lost to Russia; or the US nukes that were lost from never being made due to the agreement Democrats sighed that stopped us production while allowing foreign countries to keep making nukes.