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Missing for 50 years - US nuclear bomb - BBC News

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Missing for 50 years - US nuclear bomb

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Colonel Howard Richardson ditched
the bomb off Tybee Island


More than 50 years after a 7,600lb (3,500kg) nuclear bomb was dropped in US waters
following a mid-air military collision, the question of whether the missing weapon still
poses a threat remains.

In his own mind, retired 87-year-old Colonel Howard Richardson is a hero responsible
for one of the most extraordinary displays of aeronautic skill in the history of the US
Air Force. His view carries a lot of weight and he has a large number of supporters -
including the Air Force itself which honoured his feat with a Distinguished Flying Cross.

But to others, he is little short of a villain: the man who 50 years ago dropped a nuclear
bomb in US waters, a bomb nobody has been able to find and make safe.


'Top-secret flight'

Shortly after midnight on 5 February 1958, Howard Richardson was on a top-secret training
flight for the US Strategic Air Command. It was the height of the Cold War and the young
Major Richardson's mission was to practise long-distance flights in his B-47 bomber in case
he was ordered to fly from Homestead Air Force Base in Florida to any one of the targets
the US had identified in Russia.

The training was to be as realistic as possible, so on board was a single massive H-bomb
- the nuclear weapon he might one day be instructed to drop to start World War III. As he
cruised at 38,000 feet over North Carolina and Georgia, his plane was hit by another military
aircraft, gouging a huge hole in the wing and knocking an engine almost off its mountings,
leaving it hanging at a perilous angle.

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At his home in Mississippi, Colonel Richardson said: "All of a sudden we felt a heavy jolt
and a burst of flame out to the right. "We didn't know what it was. "We thought maybe it
was something from outer space, but it could only be another plane."

The colonel thought his number was up. His bomber started plummeting to earth and he
struggled with the flight deck to get any kind of response. "We had ejection seats - I told
'em: 'Don't hit the ejection seats just yet. I'm gonna see if we can fly.'" As he dropped to
20,000 feet, he somehow got the damaged craft under control and levelled out.

He and his co-pilot then made a fateful decision which probably saved both their lives and
the lives of countless people on the ground. Colonel Richardson told me that the decision
was instantaneous - and he still has no doubt it was the right thing to do. They would ditch
their nuclear payload as soon as possible in order to lighten the aircraft for an emergency
landing and also to eliminate the danger of an enormous explosion when they made their
unsteady arrival at the nearest available runway.

"The tactical doctrine for Strategic Air Command gave me the authority to get rid of it (the
bomb) for the safety of the crew - that was the number one priority," Colonel Richardson said.
He managed to direct the B-47 a mile or two off the coast of Savannah and opened the bomb
doors, dropping the bomb somewhere into the shallow waters and light sand near Tybee Island.
He then managed a perfectly executed descent from which he and his crew walked away unscathed.

The pilot of the other aircraft, an F-86 fighter jet, also survived, after his ejector seat shot him clear
of his aircraft.  Immediately after the crash, a search was set up to find the unexploded nuclear
weapon, buried somewhere too close for comfort to the US's second-largest seaport and one of its
most beautiful cities. Numerous other searches have followed, both official and unofficial, and each
of them has also proved unsuccessful. So the bomb remains tucked away on the sea-bed, in an area
which is frequently dredged by shrimp fishermen, any one of whom could suddenly find that they have
netted something a touch larger and scarier than a crustacean.

How dangerous the bomb is after all these years is a matter of hot debate.

The US Air Force insists it is safest to leave it wherever it is, and Colonel Richardson is adamant
that it is incapable of a nuclear explosion because it lacks the vital plutonium trigger.


'Practice mission'

He said these were routinely left out of the bombs used on training flights. "This was just a practice
mission. We were continually working out any problems, that's why we had to practise - we wanted
to be perfect," he said.

But his case has been vigorously contested by opponents who raise apocalyptic fears of a thermonuclear
explosion which could destroy much of the US eastern seaboard. Fears have also been expressed that
the bomb could be located and recovered by a terrorist group, and there are even some who believe
that may already have happened.

For Colonel Richardson, the event which shaped his life has not ended quite the way he thought it would.

"I've been living with it now for 51 years. "We had an accident and I landed the aircraft safely... I did get
a Distinguished Flying Cross from a general for that. "I thought that would be the story. That's not the story
- everything's about the nuclear weapon."
 
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