When We Almost Nuked
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Counter Punch
May 15-17, 2009
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair05152009.html
Things go missing. It's to be expected. Even at the
Pentagon. Last October, the Pentagon's inspector general
reported that the military's accountants had misplaced a
destroyer, several tanks and armored personnel carriers,
hundreds of machine guns, rounds of ammo, grenade
launchers and some surface-to-air missiles. In all,
nearly $8 billion in weapons were AWOL.
Those anomalies are bad enough. But what's truly
chilling is the fact that the Pentagon has lost track of
the mother of all weapons, a hydrogen bomb. The
thermonuclear weapon, designed to incinerate
been sitting somewhere off the coast of
greater lengths to conceal the mishap than to locate the
bomb and secure it.
On the night of February 5, 1958 a B-47 Stratojet bomber
carrying a hydrogen bomb on a night training flight off
the
at 36,000 feet. The collision destroyed the fighter and
severely damaged a wing of the bomber, leaving one of
its engines partially dislodged. The bomber's pilot,
Maj. Howard Richardson, was instructed to jettison the
H-bomb before attempting a landing.
the bomb into the shallow waters of Wassaw Slough, near
the mouth of the
city of
be swiftly recovered.
The Pentagon recorded the incident in a top secret memo
to the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. The
memo has been partially declassified: "A B-47 aircraft
with a [word redacted] nuclear weapon aboard was damaged
in a collision with an F-86 aircraft near
attempted three times unsuccessfully to land with the
weapon. The weapon was then jettisoned visually over
water off the mouth of the
Soon search and rescue teams were sent to the site.
Wassaw Slough was mysteriously cordoned off by Air Force
troops. For six weeks, the Air Force looked for the bomb
without success. Underwater divers scoured the depths,
troops tromped through nearby salt marshes, and a blimp
hovered over the area attempting to spot a hole or
crater in the beach or swamp. Then just a month later,
the search was abruptly halted. The Air Force sent its
forces to
had been accidentally dropped by a B-47. The bomb's 200
pounds of TNT exploded on impact, sending radioactive
debris across the landscape. The explosion caused
extensive property damage and several injuries on the
ground. Fortunately, the nuke itself didn't detonate.
The search teams never returned to
affair of the missing H-bomb was discreetly covered up.
The end of the search was noted in a partially
declassified memo from the Pentagon to the AEC, in which
the Air Force politely requested a new H-bomb to replace
the one it had lost. "The search for this weapon was
discontinued on 4-16-58 and the weapon is considered
irretrievably lost. It is requested that one [phrase
redacted] weapon be made available for release to the
DOD as a replacement."
There was a big problem, of course, and the Pentagon
knew it. In the first three months of 1958 alone, the
Air Force had four major accidents involving H-bombs.
(Since 1945, the
weapons.) The
the AEC acknowledged in a June 10, 1958 classified memo
to Congress: "There exists the possibility of accidental
discovery of the unrecovered weapon through dredging or
construction in the probable impact area. ... The
Department of Defense has been requested to monitor all
dredging and construction activities."
But the wizards of Armageddon saw it less as a security,
safety or ecological problem, than a potential public
relations disaster that could turn an already paranoid
population against their ambitious nuclear project. The
Pentagon and the AEC tried to squelch media interest in
the issue by a doling out a morsel of candor and a lot
of misdirection. In a joint statement to the press, the
Defense Department and the AEC admitted that
radioactivity could be "scattered" by the detonation of
the high explosives in the H-bombs. But the letter
downplayed possibility of that ever happening: "The
likelihood that a particular accident would involve a
nuclear weapon is extremely limited."
In fact, that scenario had already occurred and would
occur again.
That's where the matter stood for more than 42 years
until a deep sea salvage company, run by former Air
Force personnel and a CIA agent, disclosed the existence
of the bomb and offered to locate it for a million
dollars. Along with recently declassified documents, the
disclosure prompted fear and outrage among coastal
residents and calls for a congressional investigation
into the incident itself and why the Pentagon had
stopped looking for the missing bomb. "We're horrified
because some of that information has been covered up for
years," said Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican.
The cover-up continues. The Air Force, however, has told
local residents and the congressional delegation that
there was nothing to worry about.
"We've looked into this particular issue from all angles
and we're very comfortable," said Major Gen. Franklin J.
"Judd" Blaisdell, deputy chief of staff for air and
space operations at Air Force headquarters in
heavy metal contamination."
The Air Force even has suggested that the bomb itself
was not armed with a plutonium trigger. But this
contention is disputed by a number of factors. Howard
loading nuclear weapons onto planes, said that in his 31
years of experience he never once remembered a bomb
being put on a plane that wasn't fully armed. Moreover,
a newly declassified 1966 congressional testimony of
W.J. Howard, then assistant secretary of defense,
describes the
bomb with a nuclear capsule." Howard said that the Tybee
Island bomb was one of two weapons lost up to that time
that contained a plutonium trigger.
Recently declassified documents show that the jettisoned
bomb was an "Mk-15, Mod O" hydrogen bomb, weighing four
tons and packing more than 100 times the explosive punch
of the one that incinerated
first thermonuclear weapon deployed by the Air Force and
featured the relatively primitive design created by that
evil genius Edward Teller. The only fail-safe for this
weapon was the physical separation of the plutonium
capsule (or pit) from the weapon.
In addition to the primary nuclear capsule, the bomb
also harbored a secondary nuclear explosive, or
sparkplug, designed to make it go thermo. This is a
hollow plug about an inch in diameter made of either
plutonium or highly enriched uranium (the Pentagon has
never said which) that is filled with fusion fuel, most
likely lithium-6 deuteride. Lithium is highly reactive
in water. The plutonium in the bomb was manufactured at
the
be the oldest in the
Plutonium gets more dangerous as it ages. In addition,
the bomb would contain other radioactive materials, such
as uranium and beryllium.
The bomb is also charged with 400 pounds of TNT,
designed to cause the plutonium trigger to implode and
thus start the nuclear explosion. As the years go by,
those high explosives are becoming flaky, brittle and
sensitive. The bomb is most likely now buried in 5 to 15
feet of sand and slowly leaking radioactivity into the
rich crabbing grounds of the Wassaw Slough. If the
Pentagon can't find the Tybee Island bomb, others might.
That's the conclusion of Bert Soleau, a former CIA
officer who now works with ASSURE, the salvage company.
Soleau, a chemical engineer, said that it wouldn't be
hard for terrorists to locate the weapon and recover the
lithium, beryllium and enriched uranium, "the essential
building blocks of nuclear weapons." What to do? Coastal
residents want the weapon located and removed.
"Plutonium is a nightmare and their own people know it,"
said Pam O'Brien, an anti-nuke organizer from
eyes, your bones, your gonads. You never get over it.
They need to get that thing out of there."
The situation is reminiscent of the Palomares incident.
On January 16, 1966, a B-52 bomber, carrying four
hydrogen bombs, crashed while attempting to refuel in
mid-air above the Spanish coast. Three of the H-bombs
landed near the coastal farming
One of the bombs landed in a dry creek bed and was
recovered, battered but relatively intact. But the TNT
in two of the bombs exploded, gouging 10-foot holes in
the ground and showering uranium and plutonium over a
vast area. Over the next three months, more than 1,400
tons of radioactive soil and vegetation was scooped up,
placed in barrels and, ironically enough, shipped back
to the
remains. The tomato fields near the craters were burned
and buried. But there's no question that due to strong
winds and other factors much of the contaminated soil
was simply left in the area. "The total extent of the
spread will never be known," concluded a 1975 report by
the Defense Nuclear Agency.
The cleanup was a joint operation between Air Force
personnel and members of the Spanish civil guard. The
for radiation exposure, but similar precautions weren't
taken for their Spanish counterparts. "The Air Force was
unprepared to provide adequate detection and monitoring
for personnel when an aircraft accident occurred
involving plutonium weapons in a remote area of a
foreign country," the Air Force commander in charge of
the cleanup later testified to Congress.
The fourth bomb landed eight miles offshore and was
missing for several months. It was eventually located by
a mini-submarine in 2,850 feet of water, where it rests
to this day.
Two years later, on January 21, 1968, a similar accident
occurred when a B-52 caught fire in flight above
Greenland and crashed in ice-covered
the
in all four of the plane's H-bombs, which scattered
uranium, tritium and plutonium over a 2,000-foot radius.
The intense fire melted a hole in the ice, which then
refroze, encapsulating much of the debris, including the
thermonuclear assembly from one of the bombs. The
recovery operation, conducted in near total darkness at
temperatures that plunged to minus-70 degrees, was known
as Project Crested Ice. But the work crews called it
"Dr. Freezelove."
More than 10,000 tons of snow and ice were cut away, put
into barrels and transported to
Ridge for disposal. Other radioactive debris was simply
left on site, to melt into the bay after the spring
thaws. More than 3,000 workers helped in the
recovery effort, many of them Danish soldiers. As at
Palomares, most of the American workers were offered
some protective gear, but not the Danes, who did much of
the most dangerous work, including filling the barrels
with the debris, often by hand. The decontamination
procedures were primitive to say the least. An Air Force
report noted that they were cleansed "by simply brushing
the snow from garments and vehicles."
Even though more than 38 Navy ships were called to
assist in the recovery operation, and it was an open
secret that the bombs had been lost, the Pentagon
continued to lie about the situation. In one contentious
exchange with the press, a Pentagon spokesman uttered
this classic bit of military doublespeak: "I don't know
of any missing bomb, but we have not positively
identified what I think you are looking for."
When Danish workers at
slate of illnesses, ranging from rare cancers to blood
disorders, the Pentagon refused to help. Even after a
1987 epidemiological study by a Danish medical institute
showed that
develop cancers than other members of the Danish
military, the Pentagon still refused to cooperate. Later
that year, 200 of the workers sued the
under the Foreign Military Claims Act. The lawsuit was
dismissed, but the discovery process revealed thousands
of pages of secret documents about the incident,
including the fact that Air Force workers at the site,
unlike the Danes, have not been subject to long-term
health monitoring. Even so, the Pentagon continues to
keep most of the material on the
including any information on the extent of the
radioactive (and other toxic) contamination.
These recovery efforts don't inspire much confidence.
But the
situation. The presence of the unstable lithium
deuteride and the deteriorating high explosives make
retrieval of the bomb a very dangerous proposition--so
dangerous, in fact, that even some environmentalists and
anti-nuke activists argue that it might present less of
a risk to leave the bomb wherever it is.
In short, there aren't any easy answers. The problem is
exacerbated by the Pentagon's failure to conduct a
comprehensive analysis of the situation and reluctance
to fully disclose what it knows. "I believe the
plutonium capsule is in the bomb, but that a nuclear
detonation is improbable because the neutron generators
used back then were polonium-beryllium, which has a very
short half-life," said Don Moniak, a nuclear weapons
expert with the
in
grade plutonium won't blow. However, there could be a
fission or criticality event if the plutonium was
somehow put in an incorrect configuration. There could
be a major inferno if the high explosives went off and
the lithium deuteride reacted as expected. Or there
could just be an explosion that scattered uranium and
plutonium all over hell."
This essay is featured in the forthcoming book, Loose
Nukes published by Count Zero Press.
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It
Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and
Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad
Sky, is just out from AK Press / CounterPunch books. He
can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.
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