A damaged bomber deliberately jettisons its nuclear weapon into coastal waters so it can land safely. The recovery operation never recovers it.
The mission was an exercise. The missing weapon was not.
Early on Wednesday, 5 February 1958, a U.S. Air Force B-47 bomber was flying a simulated combat mission carrying a Mark 15 nuclear weapon.
Near Savannah, Georgia, it collided in mid-air with an F-86 fighter participating in the exercise.
The fighter pilot ejected.
The damaged bomber remained airborne.
Now its crew had another problem.
Landing with the weapon aboard created a risk that its conventional explosives could detonate if the damaged aircraft crashed.
The crew attempted three landings at Hunter Air Force Base. Because the B-47 could not reduce its airspeed enough for a safe approach, Major Howard Richardson requested permission to get rid of the weapon first.
Permission was granted.
At approximately 7,200 feet, the bomber released the Mark 15 over Wassaw Sound near Tybee Island.
No explosion was observed.
The B-47 then landed safely.
The military began searching.
It did not find the weapon.
After weeks of work by Air Force and Navy personnel, the search ended. The weapon was classified as irretrievably lost and presumed buried in sediment beneath the coastal waters.
The precise nuclear configuration has produced a lasting documentary complication.
The official accident narrative states that the nuclear capsule was not aboard the aircraft, making a nuclear detonation impossible. The Air Force has continued to cite that account. Later-released 1966 Defense Department correspondence, however, described the Tybee weapon as complete and has kept the capsule question disputed.
The careful conclusion is therefore narrower than the most sensational retellings.
The weapon was nuclear by design and carried hundreds of pounds of conventional explosive. Whether its nuclear capsule was present is not settled consistently across the surviving official record.
None of that changes the operational sequence.
A bomber collided with another military aircraft during an exercise. Its crew deliberately dropped a 7,000-pound-class weapon into coastal water so the airplane could land.
The airplane landed.
The weapon did not come back.
More than six decades later, the official practical solution remains the same:
leave it where it is—wherever that is.
The safest solution to one military emergency was deliberately losing a nuclear weapon—and the subsequent recovery operation never reversed that decision.
The Air Force successfully saved the bomber by losing the bomb. It remained lost.
Evidence status
Sources
Official military accounts
U.S. Air Force — Interagency Team Checking for H-Bomb Lost in 1958
U.S. Marine Corps — Tybee Island bomb still rests in Wassaw Sound
Original language: EnglishDeclassified and independent documentation
Department of Defense accident summary — 5 February 1958
The Washington Post — Hunt May Be Renewed for Long-Missing A-Bomb · 14 January 2001
Original language: English