Nuclear Planet

[SeriousMoney]

TANSTAAFL & BOHICA! Any update on this Savannah nuclear payload?

"A thermonuclear bomb was lost in 12 feet of water and lies buried under a little sand within 1 mile of the beach. Is it armed? The Air Force is betting your life that it isn't." - Name Withheld

Founded in the colonial era, Savannah is a stately city with a warm heart - aptly termed the Hostess of the South. Designated by Conde' Nast Traveler as one of the top ten U.S. cities to visit, Savannah is a stroll back in time with hidden charms that could not help but entice the most jaded sophisticate. Porticoed mansions, moss-draped oaks, and churches nearly as stern as they are inviting, give Savannah a unique flavor found nowhere else in the world.

Twelve miles east of Savannah, beneath shallow layers of sand and water, an abandoned 7,600 pound nuclear bomb is biding its time, waiting to rain death and destruction on the southern Atlantic coastline. If not disarmed, perhaps some sleepy Sunday morning an atomic fireball will erupt on picturesque Wassaw Sound, shooting along nearby heavily traveled Interstate 80 with the force of a hundred hurricanes, instantly vaporizing tidal wetlands, and brutally firestorming a vibrant, thriving metropolis - women, children, more than 200,000 people instantly incinerated - into a crumbling, deserted heap of radioactive rubble.

A cold, calculated act of terrorism? Not quite. It's simply that the United States Air Force isn't in the habit of picking up after itself.

In February 1958, a B-47 Stratojet bomber had a midair collision with an F-86 Saberjet fighter southeast of Savannah and had to jettison the bomb in order to land safely. It was dumped in the dead of night somewhere along the southern shore of uninhabited Little Tybee Island. After a cursory search failed to reveal its whereabouts, the military threw up its hands and abandoned the search.

According to the Air Force, this rusting relic of the Cold War, designated No. 47782 Mark 15 Mod 0, contains decaying radioactive uranium and a detonator packing the wallop of 400 pounds of high explosive. The Deputy Director of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Proliferation Center, Major Don Robbins, thinks the Tybee bomb lies at least 5 miles from shore beneath 20 feet of water and 15 feet of sand and silt. If the bomb exploded, it "would create maybe a 10 foot diameter hole and shock waves through the water of approximately 100 yards . . . boats going over it would not even notice. They might see some bubbles coming out around them." According to the Air Force, there is no chance of a nuclear explosion because the Tybee bomb lacks a key plutonium capsule.

Derek Duke, a former Air Force pilot who has been researching the matter for several years doesn't agree. "It's a nuclear bomb...it's like if I take the battery out of your car, then I try to convince you it's not a car." Duke points to an April 1966 letter to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy from W.J. Howard, who was then the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense. Howard wrote that four nuclear weapons had been lost and never recovered. Two were "weapons-less capsules," assumed to be incapable of a nuclear blast, but the Savannah bomb and a device lost in the western Pacific Ocean in 1965 are listed as being "complete."

But the Air Force says that Howard got it wrong. Speaking in an official capacity, Major Cheryl Law reiterated the Air Force's stock statement concerning unrecovered nuclear devices, "the bomb off the coast of Savannah is not capable of a nuclear explosion." What about the ton or so of enriched uranium encased in the bomb? "To have that hurt you, you would actually have to ingest it."

Let's see, that means that Howard was either a "complete" idiot (no pun intended) or he intentionally lied in writing to Congress and signed his name at the bottom. I wonder if Howard, analyzing the incident eight years after it happened, might have had access to information not available today. Although he now says that he may have made a mistake, it seems likely that the Department of Defense coerced Howard into changing his story.

Howard H. Dixon, a former crew chief who loaded nuclear weapons onto planes at Hunter Field, Georgia, from 1957 to 1959, claims the bombs were always armed. "Never in my air force career did I install a Mark 15 weapon without installing the plutonium capsule," he insists.

A local resident, Donald Ernst, runs a website about the bomb called Tybeebomb.com. Ernst says that "if all accounts of the bomb are correct, as far as the make and model, it is 20 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima . . . . I believe, using common sense, that if the bomb were to detonate, it would crack the Floridian aquifer. This aquifer is the source of drinking water for four-plus states. Why not take something that is inherantly dangerous and remove it? Sometimes the government really amazes me."

At a special hearing called by Mayor Walter Parker, the City Council of Tybee Island approved a resolution which urged the Department of Energy and the Air Force to locate the bomb and give residents a "realistic assessment of potential dangers" to address local concerns "about the safety, health and peace of mind and economic livelihood of residents of the city and its visitors."

Could it be that the Air Force weighed the cost of conducting another search ($1 million or more) against the risk and Tybee Island/Savannah came out the loser? Even with 20/15 hindsight into the survival-of-the-fittest mindset of the Air Force in that era, it beggars the imagination to envision a nameless, faceless staff functionary cavalierly mumbling "So long, Savannah!," as he stamps the report "TOP SECRET" and returns to business as usual.

http://www.fdungan.com/savannah.htm