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2004-09-14 Home Front: Tech

Lost nuclear bomb possibly found [1958 Broken Arrow]

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Posted by Zenster 2004-09-14 1:57:08 AM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I believe it is the legendary lost bomb of the Confederacy.

Posted by Shipman 2004-09-14 9:43:18 AM|| 2004-09-14 9:43:18 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 *Wheels out chalkboard and podium*

Let's look at a couple details that the article most convienently doesn't bring up.
The reason the crew never saw an explosion is that the chute deployed on the bomb when it was jettisoned. (Chute-deployed bombs - and until the 70s, most were - deploy as soon as they leave the plane, whether they're dropped or jettisoned.) The bomb had a reasonably soft landing, but through sheer weight alone (the Mk15 weighed nearly four tons)would have sunk into the muck down there off Tybee - I've been within sight of where it went in several times, it's pretty much marsh/bog/God only knows all the way around. This sucker is not only easily fifty feet or so under the mud, it's going to stay there for a while.
Secondly, the biggest hazard is an uncommanded detonation of the conventional explosives inside the bomb. Obviously, you can't get a nuclear yield, because there's nothing nuclear about this thing. But why in God's name anyone wants to make a Titanic - level recovery operation just to pull up what is for all practical purposes a fairly small conventional weapon (there's roughly the saem amount of explosives in it as in a standard Mk82 500-lb weapon) is beyond me. The problem here is that after almost fifty years underwater, the explosives have probably deteriorated to the point where they couldn't go off if they had to, though in all honesty that possibility cannot be ruled out.
Another question that needs to be answered is one that Ship inadvertantly brought up. This thing is roughly the size of a Volkswagen, and it is some distance (perhaps as much as 50 feet) under the mud. Compare it to CSS Hunley, the Confederate sub raised off Charleston in 2000. Hunley is about the same weight, but almost forty feet long, about three feet across, and was only a foot or so beneath the mud of Charleston Harbor. Yet she evaded detection for more than one hundred and thirty years, including some very high tech searches. And we are to believe that LTC Duke found a 'radioactive object' (with no radioactive material in it) with what he had on his dive boat? The only 'radioactive' material aboard the weapon would POSSIBLY be deuterium (heavy water), and I guarantee he didn't pick that up.
My conclusion: LTC Duke is looking for a financial killing and a book contract by using existing documentation to claim there's a nuclear weapon where everybody already knows there's one. The USAF is in a no-win situation: if they find it, they get bitched at for leaving it there, if they don't; they're covering it up. Believe me, if anybody here has a vacation scheduled for Tybee Island, take it. It'll still be there.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2004-09-14 10:32:00 AM|| 2004-09-14 10:32:00 AM|| Front Page Top

Wrongo!
That deep sea glow comes from a bioluminescent shark!

Posted by BigEd 2004-09-14 12:42:51 PM|| 2004-09-14 12:42:51 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 Big Ed-
No, those are the secret NAVY experiments...let's keep our consipracy theories straight here, shall we?*S*

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2004-09-14 1:05:17 PM|| 2004-09-14 1:05:17 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 Mike, the AF is getting ready to remove an F-15 which crashed in the muck off St. George Island FL a year or so ago, it's been under 24/7 guard ever since. I was hoping for souvenirs but wasn't allowed to get close enough for a peek.

Posted by Shipman 2004-09-14 1:46:08 PM|| 2004-09-14 1:46:08 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Deuterium isn't radioactive. You are thinking about Tritium which is used as a booster inside plutonium cores.(Implosion causes some fusion which gives off neutrons which causes more fission in the plutonium)
Even without the plutonium trigger though, the Nuke might contain uranium 238 as a jacket as in three stage weapons (plutonium trigger, fusion package, surrounded by U238 jacket which releases more energy from fissions from high neutron flux)
Dirty as all getout.
Anyone know what type of fusion weapon a Mk15 is?

Posted by Aussie Mike 2004-09-14 6:35:36 PM|| 2004-09-14 6:35:36 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Mike Kozlowski, you mentioned how:

Obviously, you can't get a nuclear yield, because there's nothing nuclear about this thing.

Yet the article states:

The 7,600-pound, 12-foot-long thermonuclear bomb contained 400 pounds of high explosives as well as uranium. The Air Force insists the bomb was being used for practice and did not contain the plutonium trigger needed for a nuclear explosion.
EMPHASIS ADDED

Even if it's just a U-238 jacket, isn't this a significant chunk of radioactive material? The article and your post don't seem to match up.

Posted by Zenster 2004-09-14 6:52:12 PM|| 2004-09-14 6:52:12 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 The hydrogen bomb

Yeah, I'm not going to Savvanah anytime soon.

Posted by Charles 2004-09-14 8:12:29 PM|| 2004-09-14 8:12:29 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Zenster -
Sir, my bad entirely. Let me explain. Without the plutonium core - IIRC called the 'pit', the weapon cannot go nuclear in any way. WHat you have - at worst - is a 'dirty bomb', but underwater and under the ocean floor, even if the conventional explosives went it's a whole lot better than having it happen up top. Aussie Mike is also right - my mistake was in that I was working from memory and when you get to the advnaced age of 44, it gets ugly. My sincerest apologies to everybody on this one for the technical errors, but my basic point does still stand: without the pit, no nuclear yield, just a conventional explosion that scatters whatever radioactive material might be inside the casing.

Best regards,
Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2004-09-14 10:57:00 PM|| 2004-09-14 10:57:00 PM|| Front Page Top

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23:52 Zenster