In 1958, a B-47 carrying a Mark 15 hydrogen bomb near Tybee Island released its nuclear weapon after a mid-air collision, multiple reports indicate. The B-47 was transporting a 7,600-pound Mark 15 hydrogen thermonuclear bomb, which had an explosive yield of 3.8 megatons, 190 times more destructive than the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The pilot of the B-47 dropped the Mark 15 into the waters of Wassaw Sound near Tybee Island, but the bomb was never retrieved. Over 100 Navy personnel searched for the discarded Mark 15 using sonar for two months but found nothing, according to multiple reports. The Air Force publicly announced that the bomb's plutonium warhead had been removed before the flight and replaced with a lead substitute. However, declassified documents from 1966 Congressional testimony revealed in 1994 that the Tybee Mark 15 was a fully intact nuclear weapon, multiple reports indicate.
In 1966, a B-28 thermonuclear bomb was lost in the Mediterranean Sea after a collision between two US military aircraft, multiple reports indicate. The warhead from the 1966 Mediterranean incident has never been recovered, though three of the four B-28 thermonuclear bombs from the incident were retrieved on land. A Spanish shrimp fisherman witnessed the misshapen white package fall into the sea during the 1966 Mediterranean incident, according to multiple reports. The Tybee Island and Mediterranean incidents are two of 32 documented Broken Arrow accidents, which is military jargon for an accidental event involving nuclear weapons, such as loss or accidental detonation, multiple reports indicate.
Death, Fire and Fury
The US has adopted the position that if it cannot locate its missing bombs, then neither can its adversaries, according to US sources. This stance comes amid rising geopolitical tensions, with former US President Donald Trump threatening to unleash 'Death, Fire and Fury' on Iran in a public speech. Fears are mounting over nuclear capabilities in the Middle East, multiple reports indicate.
Key unknowns persist, including the exact current locations of the six lost US nuclear warheads and whether any are still functional or pose an immediate detonation risk. It is also unclear if any adversaries or non-state actors have attempted to search for or locate these lost warheads, and the specific identities or details of the other 30 documented Broken Arrow accidents beyond Tybee Island and the Mediterranean remain undisclosed. The current US government's official assessment of the security threat posed by these lost warheads has not been publicly confirmed.