The cases of the atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Japanese cities of Hiroshima And Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Far fewer people, however, know that in the decades that followed, during the Cold War and beyond, at least 32 incidents involving atomic bombs (defined as Broken Arrow“broken arrow”), some of which have gone disperse – yes, you read that right, missing. Among these, at least six US bombs have not yet been found and recovered, and the same goes for numerous former Soviet weapons. Let’s understand where the atomic bombs went missing, how they could have been lost, and delve into some famous cases.
The 32 cases of Broken Arrow
Broken Arrow (in Italian “broken arrow”) is the term used in the military to indicate an accident involving nuclear weapons without triggering a nuclear explosion or an atomic war. In particular, from 1950 to today there have been at least 32 The accidents documented involving atomic bombs, some of which have gone missing and some have not yet been recovered. According to theAtomic Archive and a BBC investigation, at the moment there would be at least 6 US atomic bombs missing, but there is no complete list that also includes other countries since there is no official information on China, Russia, United Kingdom and France.
On the other hand, it is known that during the Cold War several atomic bombs of theSoviet Union have gone missing (for example the case in October 1986, when a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine with 34 atomic missiles on board sank off Bermuda), but being missions carried out mainly with submarines Their exact location is neither known nor easily accessible today.
Incidents during the operation Chrome Dome
Chrome Dome was the code name of a program developed by the 1958 to 1968 by the U.S. Air Force that envisaged conducting “airborne alert” missions using Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers armed with nuclear bombs, as a deterrent against the Soviet Union. The potential threat of nuclear war between the two countries led to round-the-clock air patrols over specific routes that could be strategic points for a nuclear attack on the USSR.
Among the various cases of atomic bombs that have been lost throughout history, three well-known episodes occurred during the operation Chrome Dome and involved the U.S. Air Force.
One is the Mark 15 thermonuclear bomb Missing on February 5th 1958 off the island of Tybeein Georgia (the American state, not the one straddling Europe and Asia). During a training mission, a collision occurred by mistake between two military aircraft, during which the B-47 bomber which carried the nuclear bomb Mk 15 was damaged and the pilot decided to drop the weapon in waterfall to lighten the weight of the plane, before making an emergency landing. The bomb fell off Tybee Island, ending up in the sea, without however causing any detonation.
A second nuclear bomb was dropped in Philippine Sea on December 5, 1965, about 70 km from the Japanese island of Kikaijima. A Douglas A4E Skyhawk aircraft, carrying a B-43 nuclear bomb, was scheduled to take off from the US aircraft carrier Ticonderoga for a test flight. But during taxiing, due to human error by the pilot who was moving the aircraft from a lifting platform to the deck of the aircraft carrier, the aircraft, along with the pilot and the bomb, fell into the sea, at a depth of 4,900 m, and were never recovered.
A third accident occurred in Greenlandabove the air base ThuleThe January 21, 1968when an accidental fire on a B-52 aircraft departing from New York caused the plane’s crew to abandon it before it crashed, burning southwest of the runway at Thule Air Force Base. four nuclear bombs Mark 28 that the plane was carrying were destroyed by fire from the crash, contaminating a large surrounding glacier with radioactive material (but without a nuclear explosion). The United States, in the aftermath of the incident, with the Danish government monitoring, conducted an operation to remove the contaminated ice, snow and water and transport it to a storage site in the United States.
The Palomares accident in 1966
Another of the most well-known accidents involving nuclear devices was the one that occurred in Spain in the town of Palomareson the coast of the southern province of Almeria, in Andalusia, the January 17, 1966Two US military aircraft collided in mid-air and one of the two, a B-52 bomber, crashed, scattering four B28 thermonuclear bombs of 1.5 megatons each and weighing 800 grams, on the Spanish town of Palomares. Of the four bombs, one ended up in the water: a was started recovery mission on the seabed which saw the use of approximately 12,000 men and which brought 80 days after the recovery of the bomb (there were several failed attempts). The device was located at 869 m in depth at a distance of approximately 5 miles from the coast.
As for the three bombs which fell on the mainlanddue to the violent impact with the ground one broke dispersing its radioactive material and contaminating the soil. Since then Palomares has been sadly nicknamed “the most radioactive city in Europe“. Even today, numerous environmental and ecologists associations are carrying out protest and awareness campaigns, especially against the will of a British company to create a holiday resort on the site.
Could the scattered bombs explode?
Two questions you might ask yourself at this point are: why do accidents they did not cause nuclear explosions? And there is the risk that, at some point, they can cause them? The answer should reassure everyone. During some of the air missions we have mentioned, for example, the protocol provided that the capsule containing plutonium was added to the device at the last momentonly in case of attack. Therefore, during a normal reconnaissance flight, even if a bomb had exploded on board, a nuclear explosion would not have occurred.
Furthermore, even in the case of different protocols, i.e. in the presence of fissile material in the device – usually plutonium or uranium – to trigger the nuclear reaction a series of precise chemical and physical steps starting from very stable traditional explosives. So it is almost impossible for the chain of events that leads to fission to occur in a casual and spontaneous. All this without mentioning hydrogen bombs, where nuclear fission in turn triggers nuclear fusion and therefore the process is even more complex.
In absolute terms, therefore, it is true that the danger of explosion it’s nothingbut in the case of devices containing plutonium or uranium, an explosion could eventually lead almost only to a dispersion of radioactive material. However, this eventuality is also very remote and, even if it were, the scattered bombs are fortunately found in places far from humans.
At present, therefore, the bombs that have been dispersed they are not something actually dangerous. Furthermore, the possibility that some malicious state might try to take possession of them is also very remote. In fact, beyond the fact that at the moment such bombs will presumably be uselessfinding and recovering them would be possible very complicated. Especially in the event of loss at sea, in fact, the nuclear weapons of the Cold War were not equipped with black box as today and therefore are first of all very difficult to identify.
Furthermore, even in the case of devices that have already been identified, their position, perhaps at the bottom of the ocean, often makes them substantially irretrievableboth for the lack of means to reach them and bring them to the surface safely for both the costs that would have such an initiative. An example is the bomb that fell near Tybee Island, Georgia, in 1958: the weapon remained unexploded under a layer of silt between 1.5 and 4.6 m thick on the ocean floor and will probably remain there.
