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Revealed in upcoming episodes of this program are the contents of a recently

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unearthed repository classified by the secret government, the Phenomenon Archives.

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How can you lose something as conspicuous as an atomic bomb?

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Despite white-knuckle standoffs between the US and Russia, the Cold War's 40 years of high-stakes

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cat and mouse miraculously never reached the devastating reality of a nuclear war. Perhaps

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the real triumph of the Cold War wasn't who prevailed, but that neither country incinerated

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millions of its own citizens.

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In the 1950s we thought if it was nuclear it was great. We took our troops out into

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the trenches in Nevada, we'd set off a nuclear bomb, boom, that would go off, and they'd

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stand up and look at the cloud and then wham the shockwave would come over them. It was

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risky, it was naive, but those were the practices of the 50s.

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SAC was the aggressor, and the air defense command was of course the defender. These were very

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realistic exercises. Of course the only thing that had practice was our own bombers, and

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sometimes things happen.

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When these started as a May Day, it appears that we had just had our mid-air collision,

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so we decided to go out over the ocean and drop that Mark 15 nuclear weapon.

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One pound of plutonium, it's enough to give every single person on Earth lung cancer.

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We are talking about a time bomb here.

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It was just a nuclear weapon after all, they could always get more of them from the atomic

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energy commission. A little remarkable, I mean you would go to greater lengths if you

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dropped something down the sewer or you know lost something in your garden.

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On February 13th, 1950, America loses its first nuclear bomb. A B-36 bomber halfway

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through its training mission discovers fire in three of its engines. The pilot opens his

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bomb bay and ejects a 40,000 pound atomic bomb into the Pacific, just west of Fugit

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Sound, Washington. In 1961, a B-52 carrying two hydrogen bombs develops a fuel leak, catches

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fire and explodes. Both bombs are thrown clear as the plane crashes into open farmland. One

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bomb is recovered, but the thermonuclear secondary of the other is never found. In 1956, four

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B-47s take off for Van Guerre Air Force Base in Morocco. One carries two nuclear capsules.

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Preparing for mid-air refueling, it disappears mysteriously into a layer of clouds. A land

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in sea search begins over the Sahara Desert, but no trace of the bomber, its crew or its

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nuclear cargo, is ever found. These are a few among the dozen documented incidents of

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the Cold War wherein the U.S. military, either through mishap or human error, lost or abandoned

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armed nuclear weapons. On February 4th, 1958, over Savannah, Georgia, the pilot of a strategic

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air command B-47 bomber armed with a nuclear weapon faces the ultimate in military decisions.

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Should he or should he not drop an atomic bomb? Confounding the pilot's decision is the reality

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that he is neither over a remote testing facility nor enemy territory, but flying slightly offshore

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of a thriving American city. His bomb, a Mark 15, is a relatively new, lightweight design.

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Eleven feet in length, three feet around and 7,600 pounds, the Mark 15 is half the weight

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of earlier bombs, yet 500 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima 13 years

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earlier. Halfway across the globe, fleeing to the

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banks of the Savannah River, lies Savannah, Georgia. In 1733, British General James Edward

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Oglethorpe charters the 13th and final crown colony, calling it Georgia, in honor of King

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George II. He designates Savannah as its capital. General Oglethorpe creates a master plan for

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the city, marking out a grid of broad thoroughfares, lavish squares and ornate fountains. In 1793,

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Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin in Savannah, revolutionizing the large-scale cultivation

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of cotton and sparking an economic boom for the South. Savannah becomes a prosperous industrial

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center and port. During the Civil War, Union General William

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Tecumseh Sherman leads his legendary march from Atlanta to the sea, burning everything

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in his path. In December 1864, he and his 70,000 Union troops arrive in Savannah. Falling

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prey to its charm, Sherman spares this city from flames. That Christmas, he sends a telegram

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to President Lincoln, quote, I beg to present to you as a Christmas present, the city of

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Savannah. Although 15 miles inland from the Atlantic

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Ocean, Savannah is nevertheless considered a coastal town. The region, shaped more by

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water than land, is traversed by a labyrinth of small rivers and meandering streams, criss-crossing

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their way to the Atlantic. One of America's best kept secrets of the Cold

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War is that the world's largest nuclear bomber force was circling the skies of major U.S.

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towns and cities 24 hours a day. In 1956, President Eisenhower clandestinely approves

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a policy enabling American air defense forces to carry and use nuclear weapons. This new

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special arm of the Air Force is named the Strategic Air Command, or SAC. During the

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course of the Cold War, SAC operates with near total autonomy. At any given moment of

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any day or night, bombers are in the air, prepared to attack Soviet targets at a moment's

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notice. Some 3,100 different Strategic Air Command aircraft are flown during this period.

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Over 2,000 of these are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Essentially, America is at

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war, but the American public knows little about it.

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No man can know at what hour, if ever, our defensive organization may be put to the ultimate

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test. Because our purpose is entirely defensive, we must be ready at the earliest possible

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moment. Only an aggressor, a good name the day and hour of attack.

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The Strategic Air Command runs training missions constantly, using American cities as mocked

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Soviet targets. In these war games, SAC bombers attack cities like Baltimore, New York, and

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Chicago. During a one-month period, SAC bombers fly 600 missions against the city of San Francisco

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alone. To inject realism into the training operations, bombers flying these mocked strikes

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are frequently armed with nuclear weapons. This maintains preparedness in the event of

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a surprise Soviet attack. Time is of the essence in the nuclear age, where cities, even civilizations,

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can be wiped out in a matter of seconds.

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Their nuclear-equipped bombers patrol daily the very edges of the H-hour control line,

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the fail-safe point, a frightening imaginary line drawn in the sky. The point of no return

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before nuclear Armageddon would begin.

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If U.S. citizens had known just how aggressive their military forces had grown, high-risk

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SAC practices like 15-minute ground alerts and 24-hour aerial missions with nukes over

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native soil, they would have been halted immediately.

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Nine o'clock p.m., Homestead Air Force Base, Florida. Major Howard Richardson, first Lieutenant

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Robert Lagerström and Lieutenant Leland Willard of Strategic Air Command's 19th Bomb

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Wing, scrambled into their B-47 bomber, not knowing if tonight is a genuine Soviet attack

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or just another drill.

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You live down in that alert shack for, say, 10 days at a time. You just about had to sleep

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with your flying suit on because you had 15 minutes to get dressed, get out to the aircraft

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as fast as possible.

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And all the pilots and crew have to do is get into their positions. Their helmets are

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in place. The parachutes are ready to snap on. Their flight plans, maps, everything is

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in position.

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Fifty-fifteen minutes was the time it would take for the missile to leave in Russia to

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hit the United States. All ready you had to do was hit the switch to sock the engines.

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And you were off.

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During World War II, Major Howard Richardson flew 35 B-17 bombing missions over Nazi Germany.

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He piloted the Mississippi Miss, not unlike the Memphis Bell, popularized in the Hollywood

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movie. With over 3,000 hours of flying time, he is one of the most experienced pilots in

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the wing. But when they scramble into their B-47 on the night of February 4, 1958, no

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one aboard imagines what an important role that experience will play in determining their

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survival.

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Richardson and his co-pilot, Robert Leigerstrom, ready their bomber for departure as they taxi

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out under the runway in formation with other B-47 crews from their unit. Richardson pushes

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all six engines to full power. Once airborne, Major Richardson is joined by a second B-47

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bomber. Tonight, Major Richardson and his crew are taking part in a complex military

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training mission. Their orders are to zigzag over the continental United States, then bear

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down on their war game target, the small town of Radford, Virginia. Their B-47 is playing

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the role of an attacking Russian bomber and a training U.S. airspace. Between Richardson

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and his target is a defensive screen of F-86 Sabre jet fighter planes and assorted air

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defense missile batteries, each with orders to shoot his bomber down.

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Like a hundred American cities before her, the sleepy berg of Radford, Virginia was the

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unwitting center of this exercise, the surrogate test target for the destruction of a parallel

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Soviet city. The citizens of Radford knew nothing about this nuclear-armed chess game

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being played out over their heads. In the game, a B-47 would drop its fully armed Mark

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15 atomic bomb on Radford. The B-47 was a ground-breaking airplane. Every airliner you

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see today looks like a B-47. Swept wings, swept tails, pods for engines, a very sleep-licking

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airplane. They were real fast aircraft and I had to have some experience before you could

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really do what it was a matter of fact. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Tony Race has flown nearly

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6,500 hours in a B-47, more than anyone else in the history of the aircraft. It was an

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unforgiving airplane. If you made a mistake, you could be in big trouble. There were many

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restrictions that you had to keep in the back of your mind, especially when something went

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wrong with the airplane. You were doing something that wasn't normal. And we had quite a few

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emergency procedures that we had to go through in the course of all that flying time. Once

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out over the Gulf of Mexico, they refuel from a KC-135 tanker. One of the most difficult

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things you can do is air-refuel an airplane. As you watch it from the ground, it couldn't

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look simpler. I mean, you see two airplanes aligned in the sky and they hardly seem to

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move. You had to fly formation with this guy up there and he's trying to fly straight

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as he can. You lose about 10 or 15 pounds in one refueling. That took about 20 minutes

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to take on fuel. And we'd usually take on 50, 60, 70 thousand pounds. I went out over

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the Gulf of Mexico and flew up towards Minneapolis, St. Paul. And flying just about to the Canadian

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border because we wanted a mission, simulated mission, just like it would be going to Russia.

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It would take quite a number of hours to get over there. And then we'd turn southeast

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and go toward our target. Nearby, at Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina, another klaxon

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sounds, alerting a squadron of F-86 Sabrejet fighters to intercept incoming Soviet bombers.

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Just as sack bombers were always at the ready for a retaliatory bombing strike against the

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Soviet Union, the tactical air command, or TAC, was charged with defending the United

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States against an invasion. In these training missions, sack would target a site for simulated

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bombing and TAC would attempt to shoot the bombers down. Piloting one of TAC's F-86

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Sabrejets is 24-year-old First Lieutenant Clarence Stewart.

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My primary job was to defend the U.S. against foreign bombers, aggressors, and at that time,

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of course, it was the Russian, it was the main threat.

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Tonight, it is Stewart's mission to find Richardson's B-47 and shoot it down. Stewart's F-86

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is a magnificent piece of technology, a proven midkiller during the Korean War.

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The F-86 was our main air-to-air interceptor, and in the 50s, we were starting to attach

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radar to fighters. It was a great advantage to the pilot to be able to see a target well

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ahead of his own visual range, but it was hard to use.

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You've got your head down in a scope and you're steering a dot, which is telling you which

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way to steer. And so you're flying the airplane to the dot.

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Pallets don't like to put their heads in hoods. Pallets like to have their heads up

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and looking out of the cockpit. All the while, and he's moving through the sky at 3, 400

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knots, they like to keep their eyes out, they call it.

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Major Richardson accelerates his B-47 bomber to maximum cruising speed.

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While the B-47s and the B-52s are out there flying their bombing mission, F-86s are up

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trying to intercept them, trying to attack them. Both units are being graded on how well

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they do.

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Our guys trained in defensive measures. The copilot whipped around with his remote-controlled

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20s, and he was ready to blast anybody that came close.

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SAC wanted everything to be as realistic as possible. The time in the air, the distance

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flown, the fuel burn, the number of air refuelings, almost everything a pilot had to do to fly

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a real mission against the Soviet Union. A B-47 or B-52 would fly its combat mission,

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and oftentimes end up over an electronic bombing range.

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After successfully throwing off two enemy fighters, Major Richardson starts down the

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checklist in preparation to simulate dropping his bomb.

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You think of just dropping a bomb as pulling the lever and now it goes, but it was surprisingly

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hard and complicated to ready a nuclear bomb and drop it. You had to pull the lanyard,

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to pull the safety and switches out. You had to select between an air burst or a ground

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burst. You had an error and a war option switch that the commander of the aircraft, the front

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cedar or the left cedar, had to activate. Of course you had the codes that had to be

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authenticated. There were just a lot of things to do.

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In an actual attack, the peaceful city of Radford would be incinerated. As the bomb

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bay doors snap shut, the B-47 speeds away at 450 miles per hour to avoid the concussion

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created by the exploding bomb. Major Richardson directs his aircraft into safe territory,

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crossing over an imaginary line that signifies the end of the mock war, or so he believes.

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Richardson instructs navigator Willard to turn off the electronic detection gear. With

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their mission accomplished, the crew can enjoy a leisurely flight homeward.

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It was sort of a relaxed feeling once we got back to friendly territory and we were just

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waiting. The crew is on down to homestead.

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But first Lieutenant Clarence Stewart is still on the attack. Pressing his face into his

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radar hood, Stewart sees a blip on his radar screen reading three miles, dead ahead.

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I had developed a technique where I climbed a little bit higher and converted the altitude

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and speed. The airplane, sure enough, when we turned in on it, turned away from us. When

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I realized that I was extremely close to the airplane, I felt the wash from the airplane,

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the turbulence that came out of him, and looked up and there was a sky full of airplanes.

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Rather Lieutenant Clarence Stewart was staring directly into the exhaust nozzle of one of

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the bomber's six engines. All Stewart could do was quickly jerk his F-86 fighter into

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a wing over and pray that he would miss hitting the B-47. A B-47 bomber carrying a fully

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armed nuclear bomb. Stewart didn't miss.

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It was a time when technology was young and theories of aerodynamics were still evolving.

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It was a time when the promise of the jet age was tempered by the harsh reality of flawed

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aircraft designs and sudden crashes. Strategic air command bombers crashed, burned, broke

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in the sky, spiraled into the ground, lost wings and tails and suffered every manner

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of pilot error imaginable. But some crashes were different. Some involved nuclear bombs.

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We'd been running the exercises all day and thought the exercise had terminated.

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We were supposed to be in friendly territory. Our fighters weren't supposed to be making

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passes at us at this time. But we did see some fighters. They were going underneath us,

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going eastward and then some were going west above us. We didn't think much of it.

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Stewart's radar indicates he is still a safe distance away when his F-86 jet fighter suddenly

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slams into the right wing of Richardson's B-47 bomber.

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I was taking a field reading, so I was facing kind of that direction to the right and we

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got hit. And then all of a sudden the copilot myself

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saw a flash of light to our right. So we knew what would happen. We knew it had to be a

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fighter that hit us. You can see the engine was hanging 45 degrees

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nose up. The crash is knocked off the bomber's right wing

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tank, gouging large holes in its fuselage and tail.

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Then it was a matter of reactions. We were all prepared to leave the airplane if we had to.

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He started as a May Day. I was a procedure May Day, May Day. He got in contact with Hunter,

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told him to advise the SAC headquarters that it appears that we just had a mid-air collision.

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My airplane had exploded and had blown the right wing off the airplane. So two other

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flight members reported that I went down with the aircraft.

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In the aftermath of the collision and explosion, the other pilots in his squadron failed to

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notice Clarence Stewart eject from his aircraft.

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Managed to get the shoot open shortly after I got clear of the seat. Took about 32 minutes

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I think to get on the ground. The ground temperature of that night was minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Then I landed in a clearing in this big wooded area.

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I spent the next about 35 days in a hospital. Frostbite.

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Which is, you don't see many cases of frostbite in South Carolina.

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Richardson's B-47 bomber makes an emergency divert to the nearest landing field. The wounded

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bomber presents its captain with not only a near impossible landing, but with another

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even more troubling challenge. What to do with the nuclear bomb?

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We had that left wing tank still on. We had to get rid of that. So I told an navigator

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to tell me when we were over a wooded area and not close to the house. He gave me the

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go ahead on that. I dropped the left wing tank.

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We configured the airplane for a landing to see how it would react. Because we knew that

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because of the damage done to the airplane we were going to have to land at a higher speed

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than normal. We descended to 20,000 feet. Put the gear down in the flaps and I wanted to see

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what speed I could get because I figured if I could get close to 210, 205 I could land

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the aircraft safely. Ligersturm radios Hunter and requests clearance for an emergency landing.

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But Hunter has more disturbing news for the crew of the B-47. They're extending the runway

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at Hunter and there was about a one foot lip, deep lip at the end of the runway. We'd probably

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wipe out the gear and be then in a crash landing situation.

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So we figured if the aircraft had a jolt and that weapon would have come out from the

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bomb bay and just gone right through just like it's going through a gun barrel.

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It would mean certain death for the entire crew and a potential nuclear catastrophe for Savannah.

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Ligersturm contacts air traffic control at strategic air command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.

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We told them we were going to jettison hot cargo and it got rather quiet on the radios and in fact

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the remark I heard was standby.

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The procedure in case you had an emergency like that the first priority was the safety of the crew

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so we decided to go out over the ocean and drop that Mark 15 nuclear weapon.

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Major Richardson and co pilot Ligersturm execute the weapon release checklist for the second time this day.

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Earlier it had been an exercise. The bomb bay doors snap open. The bomb falls away.

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They feel a slight jump. The recoil of releasing 7,600 nuclear pounds.

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It was part of the World War II mentality to drop a bomb if you had an emergency.

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It was called salvoing the bomb. You wanted to get the explosives off the airplane before you attempted the landing.

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The worst thing that could happen would be that you'd skid down the runway being golfed in flames

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and you would cook off, it's called, you'd cook off the bombs on board.

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And while you might have survived the accident, the bombs on board would kill you.

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Holding it level and keeping it straight ahead was really a problem.

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We got the speed up to 220 knots and we made the approach at that.

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When we hit the wheels on the runway we were a little fast so we just skipped up.

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And then when we came back down I pulled the brakes.

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With their shredded craft now on the ground, the crew learns only after the crash

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how close their B-47 had come to breaking apart.

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And you just know you're in serious trouble. And you know it might be the end.

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But we got the dog gone busy. That's what saw us calm things.

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You just got too much to do to even think about getting too scared.

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They did find me guilty and they were hand rubbing the gallows to hang my young ass.

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And we got a call from the sheriff of the county that my airplane had landed in.

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And he said, hey, we found a black object in the back of the canopy.

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I said, hold it, that's it right there.

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And we got the Nader can and it viewed it and it verified everything that I'd said.

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It was later discovered that Lieutenant Stewart and his F-86 fighter jet

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was flying under different rules of engagement than those given to Major Richardson

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in the B-47 bomber.

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This was not unconventional. This was a total breach of military protocol.

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The F-86 fighter was told that the bomber was still in hostile territory

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and so was open for attack.

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The B-47 bomber, according to its orders, had entered friendly airspace

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and so had relaxed its vigil.

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The Air Force investigation that followed would exonerate the F-86 fighter pilot,

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Clarence Stewart, because of his faulty radar.

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Major Howard Richardson was praised and officially commended for his extraordinary flying

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and for keeping a cool head under conditions of battle.

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Their ordeal was over, but for Savannah, the problems were just beginning.

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The Navy immediately started a sea search for the lost bomb, a fully armed nuclear weapon.

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The bomb jettisoned off the coast of Savannah was a Mark 15.

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The design was first built in 1953 and test-fired on Bikini Atoll on May 14, 1954.

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Its yield was 1.4 megatons.

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This is about the size of the manaputonium that destroyed Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

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And what this represents basically is a sphere of plutonium.

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And this was also the same kind of configuration that was used at the Trinity device that was detonated in July 1945.

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And around this sphere, you have layers of high explosives, high explosives,

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that's a TNT essentially, in the early years.

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Configured in such a way as to compress this into something maybe the size of a tennis ball.

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And that's when it ignites.

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On the morning of February 5, 1958, Savannah unexpectedly finds itself party to an Air Force recovery operation.

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Offshore, a Navy destroyer prowls the Atlantic waters while Army and Navy personnel comb the beaches and surrounding marshland.

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They drag the waters near the Savannah beach and divers from rubber boats search along the river bottom.

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On February 12, 7 days after the accident, the Air Force finally issues this press release.

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The story emphasizes that the jettisoned object presents no risk to the community and that it is completely harmless.

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On March 11, another nuclear bomb falls from yet another SACB-47.

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The TNT portion explodes on impact, lasting a crater 75 feet wide and 35 feet deep.

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This event completely overshadows the Savannah story.

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With public interest in the Savannah accident waning, the government sees a way out.

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After searching only three square miles of coastal waters over a period of two months,

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the military informs the press that the search is at an end.

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The fact that it's in the Savannah River does pose a bit of concern.

295
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I mean, it's not sitting out somewhere where it's not populated.

296
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But I don't know exactly what was going through the government's mind.

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All we have to go on are the few memos that we've been able to obtain that have been declassified

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that suggest that they felt they did everything they could and decided in the interests of cost effectiveness,

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apparently, that it just wasn't worth the further effort to try.

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If it was just a nuclear weapon after all, they could always get more of them from the

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Atomic Energy Commission.

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After three weeks, the military's search activity dried up.

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The story just ended.

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There were no protests, no investigative reports.

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The military's claim that the loss of an a bomb was harmless soon became the official story,

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helped along by an obliging media and a Pentagon trying to avoid further embarrassment.

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Many bombs that were presumed lost have reappeared over the years.

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In 1988, on the North Shore of Martha's Vineyard, on a beachfront formerly used by the military as a bombing and target range,

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heavy storms forced dozens of artillery shells, bombs and rockets on to shore.

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Though they've been submerged for nearly 40 years, one shell spontaneously explodes.

311
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In 1997, early morning joggers on Cocoa Beach, Florida come upon an object that is washed ashore during the night.

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After careful examination, the object is revealed as part of the remains from the tragic explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

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Astonishingly, the Challenger incident happened 22 miles away from Cocoa Beach and over a decade earlier.

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Along the western coast of Scotland, incendiary shells work their way out of an abandoned World War II munitions dump and wash ashore.

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Although submerged for over 40 years, several shells ignite, injuring an unwary beach walker.

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From these examples, it becomes exceedingly clear that a submerged bomb lying on the ocean's floor is not something to be ignored.

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For the most part, the ocean bottom around Savannah, Georgia is smooth and sandy.

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Rudy Anderson, a shrimp boat captain, has been fishing off Savannah all his life, but every once in a while, Rudy hits a snag.

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It's constantly talk about it. We're kind of sure we know exactly where it's at.

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And sometimes some boats that drag in there, they'll hang out really hard in there.

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Could Rudy's big snag be the lost bomb? Some of the coordinates obtained from the accident indicate that possibility.

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The shallow waters of Wasa Sound rarely exceed 30 feet.

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Fast-moving 8-foot tidal surges swell on these shores twice a day, wreaking havoc along the coast of the frequent hurricanes for which this area has become infamous.

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One can only imagine what such storms can do to the ocean floor and how they might affect the location and integrity of a lost nuclear device like the Mark 15 bomb.

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When contacted, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration claim to have no knowledge of the lost bomb in Wasa Sound.

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Even the Navy's elite explosive ordinance disposal unit, a team specializing in finding and disarming underwater munitions and the very team that surveyed the area for the 1994 Olympic sailing events, claims ignorance.

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Outside of Washington, D.C., this bomb simply does not exist.

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If you look for a lost bomb as the United States Navy and don't find it, what do you do? What do you say to the community? I can't find your bomb?

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And if you do find it, do you tell everybody they have to leave their homes while you pull a nuclear bomb out of their backyard? It's a tough dilemma.

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Lost for over 40 years, the truth about the lost bomb laying at the bottom of Wasa Sound is that no one can speak to either its location or its condition.

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It takes two more frightening incidents before the government revokes the right for the Air Force to fly practice missions with live nuclear weapons.

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On January 16, 1966, a B-52 bomber on a routine airborne alert mission collides with the fueling boom of a KC-135 tanker above the coast of Spain.

333
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The tanker explodes, instantly killing its four crewmen. Four of seven crew members from the B-52 parachute to safety, leaving four B-28 hydrogen bombs to free fall from the sky.

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Three land near the small farming community of Palomarra, Spain. The detonation ordinance in two of the bombs explodes, digging huge craters and scattering plutonium everywhere.

335
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For the three months that follow, nearly 2,000 U.S. and Spanish personnel work to decontaminate the area.

336
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The fourth bomb sinks off the coast of Spain and isn't recovered until three months later when it is located five miles offshore by the one man submersible, Alvin.

337
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The sub is piloted by the son of the famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh.

338
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An international furor erupts as Spanish citizens violently protest the U.S. practice of flying over Allied airspace armed with nuclear weapons.

339
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Almost 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and plant matter is excavated. This is shipped to the U.S., where it is disposed of, ironically, at the Savannah River Plant.

340
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:41,440
On January 21, 1968, a B-52 bomber on a secret early warning mission crashes into the ice near Tule Air Force Base in Greenland.

341
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Six of the seven crew members eject safely, but the bomber smashes into the ice-covered North Star Bay at 560 miles per hour.

342
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The crash ignites the plane's 35,000 gallons of jet fuel and detonates the TNT fuses in all four of its atomic weapons.

343
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Bomb debris and plane wreckage are consumed in flames, creating a volcanic furnace of molten metal and scattered radioactivity.

344
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The heat melts the surrounding ice, which, after the fire, refreezes.

345
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Against impossible below-zero weather conditions and arctic darkness, a Herculean cleanup effort results in the collection of 10,500 tons of contaminated snow and debris.

346
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This debris is shipped in barrels to, where else, the Savannah River Plant.

347
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The Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and the Air Force state in a joint report in the case of the Savannah Bomb, quote, no nuclear capsule was involved.

348
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But existing government documents seem to contradict this official story.

349
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Congress convened a meeting, a secret meeting, of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and called the Pentagon on the carpet and said,

350
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fellas, tell us the truth. How many bombs have we really lost?

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This letter, authored by the Secretary of Defense, states in answer to congressional inquiry that of all remaining lost bombs, only two are, quote, complete nuclear weapons.

352
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The first incident occurred in 1965.

353
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There was an A4 plane on an aircraft carrier that fell off of the loading area with a nuclear weapon, fell off the aircraft carrier and sank off the coast of Japan.

354
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The second and only other lost bomb listed as a, quote, complete nuclear weapon is the one sitting in Wasa Sound, just off the coast of Savannah.

355
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Yes, the Savannah Bomb is a live, armed, complete nuclear bomb.

356
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Tragedy of it all is that nobody knows anything about these bombs whatsoever. Nobody can tell you or me anything more than they're gone.

357
00:37:54,440 --> 00:38:08,440
They can't tell you whether we're one gate away from a nuclear detonation. They can't tell you the Savannah Bomb has had five of those gates open up and an unlucky lightning bolt could set off a nuclear bomb near Savannah, Georgia.

358
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But it is radioactive material that's sitting out there underneath or on the ocean floor.

359
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A lot of stuff is just toxic and not things that you just, you don't want to be aware of.

360
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The casings on this weapon are metal. Over time, the water and the salt are going to start working away at the seals and any welds that are in this material.

361
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And slowly but surely this material is going to start moving into the environment because we live on a planet that cycles everything.

362
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:51,440
Not even knowing what's in a nuclear bomb, the EPA would never allow somebody to dump a bomb into groundwater or into a river like the Savannah River or a water area like the Savannah Low Country.

363
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The bomb in Wasa Sound is likely to contain uranium-238, an element with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

364
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As every school child knows, uranium is radioactive. It can make human beings very, very sick.

365
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One alpha particle delivers a dose equivalent to a thousand X-rays. There is no safe dose.

366
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The United States Environmental Protection Agency recognizes this in their radiation standards.

367
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The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the international bodies all say there is no threshold below which radiation is safe.

368
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Because in plain language, nuclear radiation will kill you if you get too much of it.

369
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In a Pentagon study, 32 major nuclear incidents were recorded between 1950 and 1980, averaging approximately one per year.

370
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Since 1980, the Pentagon has been conspicuously silent about incidents involving nuclear weapons.

371
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Considering this record, it is easy to understand why.

372
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I think a lot of these incidents, as with a lot of the information that remains classified today, remains classified because of its embarrassment value, which is not a legitimate means for classification.

373
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It would be nice for the government to come clean, as it has in other areas of nuclear weapons, nuclear radiation experiments, for example, and say, yeah, we had some mistakes at the time.

374
00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:30,440
During the 1950s, the technology for underwater search and rescue was primitive.

375
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In recent years, the development of new undersea technologies has resulted in the location and exploration of Titanic in its watery grave three miles beneath the sea.

376
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:51,440
In 1999, astronaut Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell Space Capsule, an object no larger than a telephone booth, is recovered hundreds of miles off the Florida coast.

377
00:40:51,440 --> 00:41:02,440
Dave Warford, an expert in undersea search and discovery, who played a key role in both the Titanic and Liberty Bell expeditions, talks about the Savannah bomb.

378
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Is it buried in the mud? Has the current pushed it around? There's a lot of involving factors that you have to take into consideration when you set up to do a search like that.

379
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I can tell you now that the way technology is going with leaps and bounds, that nothing's impossible these days.

380
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:30,440
In 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and sister-in-law tragically crash in a private plane off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.

381
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An unprecedented search ensues through the joint effort of the Coast Guard and Navy.

382
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Miraculously, the wreckage is found and recovered only several days later.

383
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With this kind of technology available, couldn't the same be done to recover the Savannah bomb?

384
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:55,440
Many questions remain about the lost nuclear weapon lying at the bottom of Wausau Sound near Savannah, Georgia.

385
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Could the metal housing of the weapon have remained intact after falling thousands of feet from the sky?

386
00:42:00,440 --> 00:42:05,440
Is the toxic cocktail of radioactive elements still contained?

387
00:42:05,440 --> 00:42:15,440
With the Cold War long over and strategic air command dissolved, perhaps it is time for the U.S. military to pick up the pieces of its broken past.

388
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If not for the sake of the environment or the people of Savannah, then to honor the service of brave aviators like Howard Richardson,

389
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Robert Leigerström and Clarence Stewart, who heroically, visionally protected America's skies from invasion during the dark and ominous years of the Cold War.

390
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These pilots of the Cold War, the SAC pilots and the TAC pilots were nothing short of heroes.

391
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:47,440
In fact, the Cold War is over and we can now talk freely about this stuff and say,

392
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what the heck is that doing in my backyard instead of, well, I'm glad they're up there protecting my freedom.

393
00:42:51,440 --> 00:43:00,440
I can't understand why it hasn't been recovered, but that's a question that I'm sure a lot of people have.

394
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:05,440
A nuclear bomb shouldn't be in a river near Savannah, Georgia.

395
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:12,440
A nuclear bomb shouldn't be in a farm field in North Carolina or off the coast of Puget Sound or near Cape Main, New Jersey.

396
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:20,440
The United States government, the Department of Defense, the explosive ordinance, the disposal of people ought to go in and get them out.

397
00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:32,440
If we were told that there was an atomic bomb off the coast of the United States and they needed someone to go get it, could we do it? Absolutely.

398
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:41,440
Twelve atomic bombs. That's all that the United States admitted to losing and that was back in the 60s.

399
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:49,440
Russian aircraft probably flew a comparable number of missions during the Cold War and never admitted to losing one.

400
00:43:49,440 --> 00:43:56,440
NATO allies armed with U.S. warheads patrolled Europe for all the years of the Cold War. Did they lose any?

401
00:43:56,440 --> 00:44:02,440
How many lost nukes can we suppose are out there? Twenty-five? Fifty.

402
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:12,440
Well, if you'd like, here's an open invitation to join me here in the catacombs below the fallout shelter of the Phenomenon Archives.

403
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:49,440
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

404
00:44:49,440 --> 00:45:19,440
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

405
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:49,440
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

406
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:55,620
Mantis

407
00:45:55,620 --> 00:45:57,200
and

408
00:45:57,200 --> 00:46:00,200
chons

409
00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:07,460
and

410
00:46:07,460 --> 00:46:11,740
chons

411
00:46:11,740 --> 00:46:14,820
and

412
00:46:14,820 --> 00:46:16,880
you