Lost Payload: The Cold War Mystery of the Tybee Island Bomb

During the height of the Cold War paranoia, the United States Strategic Air Command kept nuclear-armed bombers in the sky constantly. It was a strategy fraught with the risk of human error. In February 1958, an F-86 fighter jet accidentally collided with a B-47 bomber during a training mission off the coast of Georgia. To safely land his severely damaged bomber, the pilot was forced to jettison his payload into the shallow, muddy waters of the Wassaw Sound near Tybee Island. That payload was a 7,600-pound Mark 15 thermonuclear bomb. Despite a massive, frantic, months-long search by Navy divers using sonar and dragging cables through the swamps, the weapon was never found. It remains buried in the silt to this day. This book investigates the terrifying logistics of the military's "e;Broken Arrow"e; incidents. We analyze the controversial, heavily redacted government reports regarding whether the lost bomb contained a fully active plutonium capsule capable of a nuclear detonation, or just conventional explosives. Explore one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the atomic age. A chilling reminder that the U.S. government permanently lost a weapon of mass destruction in a popular fishing spot.