Tybee Folk n’ Lore - The Tybee Bomb
On February 5th, 1958, a B-47 Bomber left Homestead Airforce Base on a combat training mission that would quickly turn into a very real fight for
survival. The B-47’s only payload was an Mk 15 nuclear bomb, weighing in at 7,600 pounds and measuring in at 12ft long. At about 2am that morning,
diaster struck when an F-86 fighter collied with the B-47. The F-86 pilot ejected out and the plane crashed into the sea, while the B-47 lost 20,000 feet
in altitude before the pilot regained flight control. Fearing the bomb might detonate on emergency landing and to reduce weight, the crew jettisoned
the bomb while at 7,200 ft., landing somewhere in Wassaw Sound.
The bomb, which contained 400 pounds of conventional explosives and highly enriched uranium, may or may not have contained its nuclear capsule,
depending on whose testimony you choose to believe. While the Air Force maintains that the bomb’s nuclear capsule was removed before the B-47
ever took off, the Assistant Secretary of Defense at the time, W.J. Howard, said that the the bomb was “a complete weapon, with the nuclear capsule
intact.” With a possible fireball with a 1.2 mile radius and thermal radiation for ten times that distance, let’s hope that the Air Force’s story is the
correct one.
Search efforts for the bomb started February 6th, 1958, but by April 16th the search had been announced by the military as a failure. The bomb faded
from the news until 2004, when retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Derek Duke thought he narrowed down the area of the bomb’s resting place to roughly
the size of a football field, by using a boat with a Geiger counter attached. This also proved to be a failure because the radioactivity he thought was
being caused by the bomb was actually a naturally occuring deposit of monazite crystals. Then in 2015, a satirical news site put out an article that
said Canadian divers here on vacation found and removed the bomb, which although false, the story ran wild on social media. Don’t believe everything
you read on the internet kids.
To this day the location of the bomb remains a mystery. So if you happen to be diving in the middle of Wassaw Sound and you see a 12ft long metal
object, its probably in everyone’s best interest if you swim away slowly and contact the proper authorities.
TYBEE BEACHCOMBER | SEPT 2018 9
By Andrew Galipeau