Interest in lost H-bomb resurfacesBy Larry Copeland, USA TODAYTYBEE ISLAND, Ga. — This seaside resort town 18 miles east of Savannah is the very personification of "laid back." The primary pursuits seem to be sunbathing and people-watching. Islanders tend to ignore hurricane evacuation orders, and the city manager wears shorts and sandals to work.So folks here aren't about to fret over a hydrogen bomb that might — or might not — be buried off their coast, left there since a crippled Air Force bomber jettisoned it in 1958.Wassaw Sound, about 10 miles south of Tybee Island City Hall, is the latest likely site of the long-lost bomb. Late last month, a federal government team of 20 experts spent two days searching a football-field-sized area in Wassaw Sound. The team collected water and sand samples and radiation readings and took them to Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories in New Mexico for analysis, says Lt. Col. Frank Smolinsky, an Air Force spokesman.The Air Force estimated in 2001 that it would take up to five years and cost $5 million to $11 million to recover the bomb.The military searched for the bomb for more than nine weeks in 1958 before declaring it irretrievably lost.Several years ago, Derek Duke, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who lives in Statesboro, Ga., about 90 miles northwest of here, asked the military to search again.The Air Force said in a July 2001 report that the bomb, likely buried beneath 6 to 40 feet of water and more than 5 feet of mud, posed little threat if left undisturbed.The 7,600-pound bomb is about 12 feet long and about 1½ feet in diameter. It contains about 400 pounds of conventional explosives plus an undisclosed amount of uranium. It is incapable of a nuclear explosion because it does not have the plutonium capsule necessary to trigger an atomic blast, the Air Force says.If it were armed, the bomb's destructive power would be 100 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 — strong enough to incinerate almost everything within a 5-mile radius. It would produce a 160-mile radius of deadly radioactive fallout.The bomb was dumped into the Atlantic Ocean off the Georgia coast the morning of Feb. 5, 1958. A B-47 bomber on a simulated combat mission from Homestead Air Force Base near Miami collided with an F-86 fighter jet. The F-86 pilot bailed out, and his jet crashed. The crew of the damaged B-47 attempted three landings at nearby Hunter Air Force Base with the bomb onboard.Crewmembers then were given permission to jettison the bomb offshore, dropping it from an altitude of about 7,200 feet. They did not see an explosion when the bomb hit the water, and they later landed safely at Hunter."We've always been fairly laid back, and we're not all that concerned," says Parker, 69 and in his 15th year as mayor. "I have not heard one person on Tybee Island say they're concerned. We've been assured there's no chance of a nuclear explosion at all. "The only concern some people might have is that it might deter some tourists, but we have not seen or heard anything to support that."Louie Williford, 59, is nursing a beer at Doc's and not pondering the bomb. "I don't really think about it," he says. "If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. Ain't nothing I can do about it."
