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WASSAW ISLAND, Ga. - A group says it might have discovered a missing hydrogen bomb that the Air Force accidentally dropped off the Georgia coast more than 45 years ago.
Derek Duke, a retired Air Force colonel, and others used equipment that detects radiation and large metal objects Tuesday to scour an area the size of a football field in Wassau Sound, a shallow area near Tybee Beach.
Duke said that radiation levels were seven to 10 times greater than normal at one spot. The group then detected a massive underwater object, he said.
"It might be nothing," Duke said. "Our big question now is, 'What do we do next?'"
Billy Mullins, associate director of Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency, said that the bomb is best left alone.
The bomb is probably entombed in 20 feet of mud, he said.
"If you want to determine for sure that it was the (nuclear bomb), you would have to dig it up with a big dredging type of operation," Mullins said.
He said that presents two risks: The dredge could hit the bomb and detonate the high explosives, threatening the salvage crew, and an explosion might blow a hole in a clay layer protecting an aquifer that supplies drinking water to Savannah.
"We really don't think it's in the best interest in the safety of Savannah to be digging around there when it's perfectly safe where it is," Mullins said.
The bomb contains uranium and 400 pounds of explosives, but doesn't have a plutonium capsule, Mullins said. With no capsule, the bomb is incapable of creating a nuclear explosion.
Duke and others remain concerned that the plutonium capsule is in the bomb.
"If this is indeed the spot where the bomb is, the Air Force needs to come in and come clean," Duke said.
The crew of a B-47 accidentally dropped the 7,600-pound H-bomb in 1958 after it collided with another jet fighter. The military searched for the bomb for three months.
Duke said he plans to take the results of the search to labs for analysis. He is considering whether to hand over his findings to the Air Force or Georgia environmental officials.
Missing H-Bomb off Georgia Coast found?
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MKSheppard
- Ruthless Genocidal Warmonger
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Missing H-Bomb off Georgia Coast found?
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
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Stormbringer
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Uraniun235
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Thinkmarble
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No, because it's --Thinkmarble wrote:Because the plutonium would still be highly toxid ?Uraniun235 wrote:Why is this such a concern? By now it wouldn't be able to support a nuclear explosion.Duke and others remain concerned that the plutonium capsule is in the bomb.
I kid; I couldn't resist....available in every corner drugstore!
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Darth Raptor
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I sure as hell would. Unlike the God the majority of Georgian's worship, I'm not too keen on taking out the likes of Joe and Mayabird along with the likes of Zell Miller.JME2 wrote:If it were to go off and wipe Georgia off the face of the map -- well, I'll be frank; no one would notice nor would they care.
And I'm aware it was a joke, but it was in horrible, vindictive, non-funny taste.
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Uraniun235
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