The US has a total of six missing nuclear warheads out of 32 known Broken Arrow accidents – with each powerful enough to obliterate a city and kill millions
The US has lost 6 weapons over the years(Image: US AIR FORCE/AFP via Getty Image)
The formidable nuclear arsenal of the US has seen some of its weaponry scattered across the globe, with atomic bombs lost to the ocean depths – potentially for anyone to discover.
As Donald Trump threatens to unleash “Death, Fire and Fury” on Iran, concerns are mounting once more regarding nuclear capabilities in the Middle East.
The US has adopted the position that if it cannot locate their missing bombs, or “Broken Arrow” incidents, then neither can their adversaries. To date, the US has a total of six unaccounted-for nuclear warheads from 32 documented Broken Arrow accidents.
Given that the detonation of any single one of these warheads could annihilate a city and claim millions of lives – this appears to present a significant concern.
One incident in 1958 involved a fully-armed B-47 carrying a Mark 15 hydrogen bomb near Tybee Island, which dropped its nuclear bomb following a mid-air collision. The weapon was never retrieved despite initial assertions it was a dummy, according to National Interest, reports the Mirror US.
The B-47 was transporting a 7,600-pound Mark 15 hydrogen thermonuclear bomb. The Mark 15 possessed an explosive yield of 3.8 megatons, 190 times more devastating than the Fat Man bomb, which flattened Nagasaki and compelled Imperial Japan’s surrender.
The F-86’s wing was severed, but the pilot ejected safely whilst the B-47 sustained damage and the pilot worried the bomb might explode.
Therefore, the pilot released the Mark 15 into the waters of Wassaw Sound, near Tybee Island.
Utilising sonar, over 100 Navy personnel searched for the jettisoned Mark 15. The search continued for two months, and they discovered nothing.
The Air Force informed the public that the bomb’s plutonium warhead had been removed before the flight and replaced with a lead substitute.
However, decades later, in 1994, documents released from a 1966 Congressional testimony revealed the Tybee Mark 15 was actually an intact nuclear weapon.
In 1966, a B-28 thermonuclear bomb was lost in the Mediterranean Sea following a collision between two U.S. military aircraft, and its warhead remains missing.
One Spanish shrimp fisherman witnessed the misshapen white package descend. It was one of four B28 thermonuclear bombs that had been dispersed after two US military aircraft collided over the Mediterranean.
Three of the B-28s were recovered on land but the warhead has never been located.
Tybee, and the Mediterranean incident, are merely two of 32 recorded “broken arrow” accidents. Broken Arrow is military terminology for an accidental event involving nuclear weapons, such as the loss of a nuclear weapon, or the unintended detonation of a nuclear weapon.
Whilst Iran’s nuclear programme appears to have been substantially destroyed by US strikes and a previous targeted US-Israel operation, some fear it may only be a matter of time before they rebuild their capabilities.
Global security expert Jeffrey Lewis said: “If the strike does not succeed in removing a regime there remain thousands of people in Iran capable of reconstituting a programme like this.
“The technology itself is decades old, and a vengeful Iran is likely to reach the same conclusion that North Korea reached – that it’s a dangerous world with the United States, and it’s better to go nuclear.”
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