America's Lost H-Bomb

Video Statistics and Information

Video

Captions Word Cloud

Captions

[Music] George's sandy coastal shallows hide a deadly secret a hydrogen bomb dumped by an American bomber half a century ago their weapon lost in 1958 at Tybee Island Georgia was fully nuclear capable and we were never able find Pentagon officials insist that the missing h-bomb poses no threat we still believe that the best course of action is just to let this device sit wherever it is it's not harming anybody anything but with the threat of nuclear terrorism after 9/11 some aren't so sure to find the missing weapon of mass destruction lurking at the bottom just miles from shore investigators turn to science for answers scouring the depths determined to recover America's lost h-bomb before it's too late [Music] we all make mistakes there's a learning period there ain't gonna be a pair of nuclear weapons you make one mistake nations are going to be destroyed it's one of the best-kept secrets of our time a u.s. thermonuclear weapon lost nearly five decades ago just a few miles off the Atlantic coast of Tybee Island Georgia a weapon designed to potentially kill hundreds of thousands but the US government has never been able to find it after the horror of 9/11 finding it became one Americans personal obsession Georgia native Colonel Derek Duke so he financed his own small team to locate the weapon a bomb that's as long and heavy as a small truck 11 feet by 3 feet 8,000 pounds sounds big but out here it's small and hard to find the Air Force says it's 15 feet down in the mud that makes it even harder with limited resources Duke and his team have surveyed the area around Tybee Island and Wausau sound for more than five years I was totally soft mud hard so if you had a metallic object we'll give you a bright blue spot okay the rain indicates a salt bomb the terrorist group finding and it's obvious if this kind of technology that has been purchased by private individuals that the answer that yes it's just question of time before someone will have the technology out that will enable this thing to be searched for in fact that's exactly the nightmare scenario Duke and his team hoped to prevent a scenario beginning nearly a half century earlier just before midnight on February 4 1958 skies across the southern US are clear perfect visibility for two American b-47 bombers each loaded with a mark 15 hydrogen bomb a thermonuclear weapon a hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb as part of a 10 hour cold war game the planes fly with the nearly 4 ton bomb not only to gauge fuel consumption but also to remain prepared in case of nuclear war after both bombers faked a drop on Radford Virginia with safeties on they sit course back to homestead Air Force Base in Florida but over South Carolina something goes terribly wrong as the bombers approach Georgia's border three f-86 fighters joined the war game scrambling from Charleston their role is to perform attack maneuvers on the Bombers but the radar on one f-86 malfunctions reading only the lead bomber so when he dives he never sees the trailing bomber carrying the h-bomb two crewmen and pilot Howard Richardson until it's too late Mayday Mayday Mayday I told the crew don't hit the handles for ejection I've said it more take it down 20,000 feet and see if we can land this aircraft while the f-86 pilot parachutes to safety the Bombers right wing number six engine the fuselage and tail fins are all severely damaged dropping nearly four miles in just minutes Colonel Richardson struggles to maintain speed and altitude he'll never make it 500 miles back to homestead Air Base in Florida now over Georgia the closest airbase is Hunter in Savannah but its runway is undergoing renovation and is not yet complete air controllers they're worn at the front of the unfinished runway sticks upbeat teen inches if you land short you were hitting a runway and a bomb would go right to the cockpit and the bomb would explode right down on the Air Force Base the b-47 its crew and it's one point five Megaton each bomb plummet while residents on Georgia's coast sleep soundly unaware of the potential catastrophe unfolding above then at 20,000 feet Colonel Richardson manages to regain control with a crippled wing and a dangling engine he's forced to make a fateful decision first priority was the safety of the crew so I decided then we better release this weapon that's seven six hundred pounds lighter Richardson dumps the h-bomb the 76 hundred pound nuke plummets a mile and a half somewhere near the shore of Tybee Island Georgia but doesn't explode its safeties hold while sea water and soft sandy bottom absorb the impact Richardson warns controllers he's maintaining high air speed to avoid stalling on the long approach back to the unfinished runway when we'd hit the runway it was a little fast so we skipped and went up there and then came back down at that time I pulled a break shoot and that slowed us down and we turned off the runway and parked aircraft shut all the engines down and crawled out of there and I think all three of us kissed the tarmac somehow Richardson managed to keep the dangling engine from dragging the damage was extensive the plane never flew again for his heroic efforts in saving his crew Colonel Richardson receives the Air Force's Distinguished Flying Cross though all survived Richardson's stellar piloting remains overshadowed by one question what happened to the h-bomb the bomb now known as the Tybee bomb while the air force calmed public fear in 1958 by claiming that only part of the nuclear bomb was dropped Navy commander art arceneaux directed scores of personnel in a search for the weapon of mass destruction the general showed me a map of the east coast of the United States right off Savannah he showed me a pencil mark and said the bomb is right there the only problem with that was the the pencil mark was a half a mile wide and four miles long unfortunately the number six engine had been damaged and that's what 50% of the power to the radar was generated by so we ended up with a very distorted radar picture using conventional minesweepers or metal detectors didn't work since the bomb contains two little steel or iron and radiation detectors in 1958 were too primitive to pick up a distinct source buried in such a wide expanse so to this day the Tybee bombs exact location remains a mystery now almost a half a century later a new team of private citizens are determined to find it art Joe this is what we're doing in the morning for team leader Derrick Duke the first task is to locate the likely spot where the bomb entered the water something that no US agency has been able to do well what's interesting is this whole thing has caused in the shadow of 9/11 and our invasion of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction a lot of concern even with the new department domestic nuclear security a colonel like was citing the inability of the United States government to find this weapon in a known pretty confined area down here with help from retired Marine radiation expert Joe Edelman and original navy search commander art Arsenal Colonel Duke begins by mapping the area to be surveyed art 1958 I believe you had your search team primarily deployed on the northeast end of Wausau as a firm that's right knowing that the runway here ran on an easterly hitting like this we knew that the plane had to come this way released at that point and turn around and landed then that would have put the weapon out here in Warsaw Sound and that's where we concentrated our major search we worked there for 10 weeks before it was called up I think one reason they called it off is because I had suggested that they fly it another b-47 with a similar shape weight weapon drop it and let us sit there and watch it hit right and then go out and recover that thing but they decided it was too much publicity already and they just quietly told us to secure the area and we took off in the hopes of narrowing the each bombs likely drop site a charter retraces the ill-fated bombers path flying due east over Savannah Georgia the prop plane heads towards Tybee Island eight miles away on the marshy Atlantic coast in 1958 US Air Force emergency protocol for ejecting a nuclear weapon required a bomber to drop its bomb at least 25 miles offshore but since the bomber that night was so severely damaged the pilot didn't think the plane could make it 25 miles out to sea and back so upon first sight of open water just past little Tybee Island the pilot ordered the navigator to release the weapon that confirms the bomb is most likely somewhere within the three mile radius of Wausau sound and the river channels that feed it after release the bomber made a gradual turn back towards Hunter's unfinished runway still the accident report holds at least one known discrepancy he claims Richardson made more than one attempt to land but Richardson himself says that's not true more than one attempt would have been too risky with a broken wing since a nuclear bomb was dropped as a result Richardson believes the reporting officer embellished the story to help calm public criticism he thought he was doing us a favor just by saying it was so difficult you know that the pilot aircraft commander had to make two passes but I had two thousand hours in the b-47 Everson instructor pilot so I didn't need but one time to go and I couldn't land that thing anywhere but after almost five decades a 1.5 Megaton thermonuclear weapon remains missing just a few miles from George's Shore so is it still capable of killing hundreds of thousands in an instant since 1958 a 1.5 Megaton each bomb has been lost in the shoals of Tybee Island Georgia now a group of concerned citizens former military officers radiation experts and weapons technicians are attempting to locate it [Music] the team looks to pick up where the Pentagon left off nearly 5 decades earlier well we're standing at Lazar at a creek which is the old site of the Coast Guard Station here at Tybee Island Georgia and when the Mayday call went out from the distressed bomber that night this place became sort of ground zero for a response for search on the sea an Air Force survey team concluded that the weapon was still lost in the environs of Wausau sound probably buried deep in the mud and would take quite an effort to locate it I got numerous warnings from the air force that this is our property do not touch it mess with it we had never had any intentions of doing more than telling the air force okay here's your lost bomb come get it Duke plans to first survey the bottom for radiation then drop divers down directed by the dive leader of the initial search in 1958 Navy commander art Arsenal we didn't have any of those fancy suits but we had a dry suit that you went in through the back and then you turned it over and put a you clamp on it and it supposedly was a dry suit but they always leaked today Arsenal guides another young team as they prepare to submerge into the frigid murky depths we've got some places that we're looking at what we call hangs and these are places where the shrimp boats that have been trawling up and down the different waterways have have snagged on on something underneath they don't know what it is they just mark it and say don't hit that spot because it's going to cost you a whole bunch money on a net and we're gonna go down there and check out some of these places and find out what it is exactly this down there today is a chilly day the water is rotating around 50 to 53 degrees temperature is an issue today it's a big deal you're diving wet wetsuit like I am we've got one diver this diving dry but two of us are diving wet we're probably going to be in the water about about an hour per tank the water penetrates through the wetsuit and it gets into the skin now sometimes the body can heat that water however it will bring the body temperature down much faster and if it's just drier despite chilly temperatures the team remains undaunted in the hunt for the lost h-bomb close to 200 times more powerful than this blast the thermonuclear weapon buried beneath Georgia's coastal waters is a mark 15 modification zero one of the earliest H bombs designed by the US it has an estimated detonation yield of 1.5 megatons nearly 40 times the combined power of both atom bombs dropped on Japan that killed a hundred and fifty thousand in an instant the mark 15 mod 0 generates its power from two major components a long fixed secondary device composed of uranium-235 and a round primary removable device or the pit a grapefruit-sized capsule of plutonium surrounding a smaller core of beryllium once the crew inserts the removable pit the bomb is nuclear capable 350 pounds of high explosives surround the pit which when triggered with exact precision begin the thermonuclear reaction according to weapon designer Charles Lowe burr the plutonium crushes from this large sphere down to a smaller sphere neutrons are inserted and suddenly it begins to fission it explodes out [Music] in one six hundred billions of a second exploding plutonium triggers the uranium-235 in the secondary device deficient intensifying the detonation depending on the wind if the Tybee bomb detonated at its full yield it would poison everything in a 250 mile radius killing as many as a quarter million people detonation at full yield is likely remote after all this time though the bomb is still deadly especially for anyone attempting to defuse it exceeding seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit twice the surface temperature of the Sun and each bomb detonation kills first by incineration then by blast pressure with winds bursting beyond 650 miles per hour four times the wind speed of Hurricane Katrina lastly its nuclear fallout radiated alpha particles blown miles from the blast site and inhaled can kill as many as the initial explosion and in 1957 America's fears of attack blue sky high when the USSR launched Sputnik the first man-made satellite in history America feared the Soviets could now deliver nukes by rocket we felt we were behind and we had to dramatically accelerate her scientific advances and catch up with the Russians but in October 1957 US nuclear missile technology was years from deployment in the meantime Strategic Air Command designed a remedial strategy air alert Air alert called for nearly 15% of all nuclear bombers to be armed with h-bombs and airborne at all times thus assuring second strike capability against the Soviets air force colonel Howard Richardson and his crew were among the elite chosen for the prestigious new squadron their ship was the b-47 stratojet the first bomber in the US fleet with swept wings and jet engines cutting-edge technology at the time strapped into its belly the 11 and a half foot long 76 hundred pound mark 15 h-bomb would just fit before takeoff you would go down to the munitions center and you would sign a document signing for the weapon and it would give the serial number identification of the weapon and what aircraft it was loaded onboard and who was the aircraft commander watch and that's where I signed my name the mark 15 Richardson signed out on his ill-fated training mission was supposed to be incomplete without its plutonium capsule rendering it incapable of nuclear detonation that bomb did not have its capsule on board we have a hand receipt signed by the pilot that day that did not have it you went off on a training mission without the capsule that bomb is nothing more than a big weight with some high explosive in it but it's not a nuclear weapon but that assertion was refuted eight years after the Tybee incident previously classified congressional testimony claims that plutonium was indeed present in the Tybee bomb that revelation came in 1966 following another US nuclear weapon mishap this one over Palomar II Spain a collision between a refueling plane and a b-52 killed seven us Airmen and dropped 41.4 Megaton H bombs over Spanish tomato farms parachutes on two of the bombs opened which limited their speed of descent protecting their conventional explosives inside from detonating upon impact but the other two H bombs malfunctioned the other two that landed on the ground the parachutes did not open they hit at a very high speed the high explosive detonated and scattered plutonium around it did not cause a nuclear explosion because of all the safeties but it create a mess so the u.s. went in and collected 1,400 tons of Spanish soil put it in barrels and brought it to the US for storage the cost of those constant air alerts with planes flying 24/7 the probability of an accident greatly increased human beings are fallible we all make mistakes there's a learning period in conventional war you make mistakes and you say well I'm not going to do that the second time we may do it a second or third but you don't do it five times there's a learning period there ain't gonna be nothing for a nuclear weapons you make one mistake nations are going to be destroyed to help prevent the unthinkable the accident over Spain in 1966 prompted a classified congressional investigation into previous accidents with nuclear weapons that's when Jack Howard defense secretary Robert McNamara's assistant for Atomic Energy testified under oath that four nuclear weapons had been lost and were still missing two incomplete and two complete with plutonium capsules of the two that still held plutonium one was lost in the Pacific the other was a mark 15 mod zero lost near Savannah Georgia though Howard received a distinguished Public Service Medal from the Department of Defense in 1966 when he testified now Pentagon officials have impressed upon him he was mistaken about the Tybee bomb it's a mark 15 nuclear weapon in what we called a transportation configuration transportation configuration means we had removed the nuclear capsule the plutonium nuclear capsule that is absolutely needed to make that weapon go off in a nuclear weapon this nuclear capsule that reportedly not would this weapon must still exist in the nuclear armory of the United States these things are good for twenty five thousand years where's the capsule where's the paperwork and I'd been told that trill does not exist also with the heightened threat of a Soviet missile strike early in 1958 US Strategic Air Command considered it a tactical risk to have bombers airborne with weapons that lacked a plutonium capsule even though we had a thousand b-47s there given the maintenance cycles and everything only so many of them were combat ready at any given minute to load them with this mark 15 mod zero without the nuclear package in it you're talking an hour upload and download time and the war is over bombs without capsules would be a liability in defense but bombs with capsules could be armed or disarmed in the air when ordered the h-bomb could only be considered armed if the plutonium had been inserted in flight into the firing position and the trigger safety switched off allowing power to flow freely to its detonators though these things could all be considered part of the farming and firing system but in a sense they're also part of the safing mechanisms if those batteries never turned on because the pull out switches were never withdrawn well it couldn't go off with or without plutonium there is no dispute that the bomb still contains uranium and 350 pounds of old and unstable high explosives at best it's a dirty bomb one that may not go nuclear but one that could spread radiation if it's conventional explosives detonated whether or not plutonium was present when the h-bomb dropped in the shallows of Tybee Island one question still remains why is it still missing after nearly five decades a half century after a damaged US b-47 dropped a 1.5 Megaton thermonuclear weapon in the shallows of Tybee Island Georgia the initial team leader of the dive search Navy commander art Arceneaux returns in the hopes he can finally pinpoint the lost weapon when you're flying along at 2 o'clock in the morning and you fly East from Savannah and you go over the coastline and you drop a weapon to know exactly where that weapon is is a real guesser what appears week that it stuck when it entered a month much like this pin we were most interested in the rear end this is where the accidents and at some point might be exposed this plutonium is present as Duke believes after 49 years it could be leaching out of the weapons rear cover if so it's degraded form known as a daughter element will be distinct and traceable sleeping dogs are fine as long as I sleep but seepage from the bombs nuclear material is not the only possible source of radiation on the seabed radiation can also occur naturally from degrading elements and organisms it's common in the seabed near Tybee Island Georgia one theory is that a higher concentration of natural radiation could be piled close to where the large bomb displaced it they test their theory where shrimpers reported bottom snags close to the bombs estimated entry point the team employs a radiation detector sheathed in a waterproof housing if struck by gamma radiation a very sensitive crystal will transmit its pulses topside to the survey meter Joe's reputation is remarkably well established in the nuclear measurement industry he's been at this since the early 60s and with his headquarters in Oak Ridge Tennessee which has its own nuclear source right there at it he's been quite experienced in measuring radiation wherever it occurs though the instrument is sensitive gamma radiation from the sandy bottom natural or man-made will be diffused by sediment and water so the detector will only be able to read activity within several feet at the sea bottom now you can see our activity we had initial results are promising could the bomb be closed it will take several hours of surveying to map the area and select the best spot to drop the divers in this is not the first time Duke and his team braved the elements in search of America's lost h-bomb in 2004 they mapped Wausau sound finding higher than normal radiation readings in the sediment Duke thought he may have found the bomb so did the Pentagon but when dr. Billy Mullins assembled a team to confirm the findings that's not what they found we scanned everything for uranium what we found were potassium-40 that's in seawater thorium and radium all known by Georgia to be in the dirt around there everywhere around Georgia still the bomb does contain plenty of uranium and daughter elements the problem is that no technology currently exists to detect radioactive material from a distance but a team in San Francisco is working on a possible solution physicist Victor George and Stanley Glaros are designing a detector to pinpoint a nuclear weapon from a distance I'm looking where it's comest you know what I think we'll motor up to the tower most radiation detectors work like the one used by the team in Georgia and with the same limitation as distance increases accuracy decreases you have to be fairly close I mean really effectively a meter it can go out farther depending on the size of the source but these are designed for four people in the field looking in a building or something and then you're able to identify then you move closer and it'll continue to take data the problem is that once a bomb is found inside a warehouse or harbor or lost as in Georgia there is still risk the device could contaminate its surroundings or worse what the world needs is a reliable way to detect a nuclear bomb before it can get close to the population an avid sailor and longtime resident on San Francisco Bay Stanley Glaros has analyzed the grim possibilities we have done studies to anticipate where in the port the explosions would do the most damage and unfortunately does not put me in a good place I will be affected in all of those locations and so my intent is to address it before it comes through the Golden Gate which gives me much more protection if you find it inside the Golden Gate at the port's it's a little too late gives them the opportunity if that may see we have cesium 137 today cesium 137 is a mildly radioactive isotope used to calibrate their prototype detector wrapped in protective foil the technology inside is somewhat familiar like other detectors it employs a crystal that vibrates when struck by gamma radiation then the computer indicates the element detected what's new is there design that fuses ten detectors together based on field tests it will likely be accurate up to one point eight miles a 3,000 percent increase beyond current applications but that's not the best part they've even thought of an innovative way to make it six times more effective for detecting radiation on approaching cargo ships they've installed a device on a pilot boat a boat that meets all freighters 12 miles outside the harbour to drop off a local sailor who sails the freighter in the pilot boat gets close very close to the boat it's nearly touching the hull when it drops the pilot off you can't ask for better proximity to me time gives you the latitude of responding and the only way to have time is have distance you already have distances have it on the pilot though the major ports like New York Baltimore New Orleans all V the primary players of container ports for instance have bar pilots are necessary to approach those ports that could also be a solution for the port in Savannah Georgia we could have a cargo ship come into this port right here in Savannah right behind us up the Savannah River with a nuclear weapon in the car ago ever how big or how small and it going to take it all the way till it got into the Port of Savannah they're trying to address that problem but still there is no way to prevent that eight miles downstream in Wausau sound Joe Edelman continues his sea-bottom survey for radiation hotspots it was his findings early in 2004 that convinced the Pentagon to mount their last multi-million dollar search but this time Joe's results provide no direction it appears that hurricanes and currents have transformed the bottom once again now divers are the only hope time tides and shifting coastal sands continue to conspire to keep the bomb hidden even with advanced technology finding the deadly h-bomb will be difficult at best on a chilly December day a team of divers prepared to search for a 1.5 Megaton hydrogen bomb lost near Tybee Island Georgia in 1958 the bomb contains uranium and 350 pounds of unstable high explosives though the Pentagon disputes the presence of a plutonium capsule this weapon was never intended to rest in the corrosive elements of the sea for 50 years it's anybody's guess how much a cocoon the dis substantial hardcase is contained in has protected anything in it from the elements so is the bombs casing corroded or could it still be intact after all this time at Ocean City research in New Jersey John rep and Bill ville de test the corrosive effects of seawater on metal alloys [Applause] an alloy is a recipe of two or more metals combined to form one though the alloy used for the mark 15 h-bombs casing is classified the team surveys several possibilities likely used for an airborne weapon all are aluminum alloys so bill how's your test going here what's going well well we have here is a few aluminum alloys in seawater we're testing the corrosion behavior okay we have a middle alloy this so typically used in aerospace where they need a good lightweight alloy with general corrosion resistance mm-hmm this one over here is the very tough alloy generally used in armor plating they're not so much concerned about corrosion so they have more of a more copper in the alloying elements okay this one over here it's kind of the middle ground between these other two I notice a little bit of corrosion but not nearly as much electrons move from metals with more electrons copper to metals with fewer electrons aluminum oxygen and salt and sea water speeds up that process so we have in this other tank over here over here we have a similar situation but that process changes dramatically when an alloy is buried in sediment as the one likely used on the Tybee bomb this was our most heavily corroded alloy in the seawater and you can see right at that soil water interface we have a band of corrosion mm-hmm right it's definitely a darker in the area where the seawater versus the soil area which I guess that's because of the lack of oxygen that's right because there's less oxygen in the sand corrosion is impeded yeah really see it a lot better yeah there's definitely an area of the interface there it's a little bit heavy recruited definitely tell it there is an effect on the actual sea water mud interface mm-hmm and these you say we're only in there for about four days this is four days worth of corrosion it doesn't take long and all if you have the right conditions mm-hmm so if any part of the Tybee mom is buried it's more protected from corrosion shallow tidal areas are often more corrosive since they contain more oxygen from vegetation due to increased exposure to sunlight thank you see plants and animals also accumulate on hard solid objects as a refuge and feeding place in the surf Sherrie Simpson has been recording growth on one metallic sample for four months what else we got huh looks like we have a lot of sea squirts on here um some sponge some Brown bryozoa growing throughout it's a pretty decent amount of fouling for only four months yeah it's only been four months under well from a version standpoint when you start to have more of these growth it actually starts to limit the the access of oxygen and a corrosive species to the substrate so they can in effect actually protect the surface from some levels of corrosion and different types of organisms will have different effects the sea squirts because they do hold sea water might have not as what are a good of a flourish and protection effect at something else like you know this form right here which was the chimera commune where it's actually protecting the base material from further corrosion so if the bombs corrosion has been reduced by organic growth or by submersion and silt it's likely than any radioactive material is still in or near the bomb that also means the bomb is likely still whole that's good news for the dive team based on the known flight path of the b-47 and previous searches commander Arceneaux estimates the best location to dive with in Wausau sound altitude II drop that's exactly where we are right now so I think we're we're in the right spot I can go down and check it out and find out what's what's down there what's down the bottom we're looking at 18 feet of depth not real deep but zero visibility means that you know son son will never hit that that seabed so we'll be reaching out into the dark they're pretty mean and nasty [Music] though a team feed is a shallow scuba dive today's dangerous conditions will necessarily limit dive time to around 30 minutes 52 degrees 5 not currents really rippin so stay close together a diver in 52 degrees seawater risks hypothermia which can set in unknowingly in minutes rendering a diver sleepy and then unconscious Tim and I are wearing wetsuits today and so what you've got is you've got a closed-cell neoprene this material it has been used in life preservers before and so it's very buoyant you float a lot and we've got such thick wetsuits on today because it is a cold day the waters is very chilly you'll get very hypothermic very quickly so we wear a lot of wetsuit and because of a lot of wetsuit put on a lot of weight and it's kind of like a tug-of-war the wetsuit wants to make you float the way it's want to make you sink and you're somewhere stuck in the middle so it's a lot of work it's a lot of work to do that kind of the kind of diving where gets cold with zero visibility from suspended-sediment and a five knot current a diver can also be swept out to sea before team members would be aware a clear mask is still essential to be able to read the gauges and dive watch why do I Spit my mask you know the air that's it's my face and these lenses it's going to be relatively warm and I mean like you know sixty degrees maybe and yet the outside temperature is going to be so cold if this glass is gonna want to fog over quite a bit so spitting in your mask prevents that from happening it keeps nice and clear for you I was like give it a rinse before I put it on to combat buoyancy from thick warm wetsuits counter weights are needed there's probably close to 500 pounds on the Reg including tank and everything but you know when you get in the water all of that weight goes away which is nice to stay safe and cover much ground the team will need to work together [Music] it's best they stay within arm's reach as predicted visibility is poor now they must grope in the darkness for the 50 year old Tybee bomb hoping time and tides are on their side a team of divers just offshore Tybee Island Georgia the search in the bottom silk for a thermonuclear bomb not seen since jettisoned from a b-47 in 1958 a [Music] radiation survey of the bottom surface found no conclusive hot spots but there could still be trace elements from the bomb in the silt itself [Music] just upstream from Tybee Island at skidaway Institute of Oceanography professor Clark Alexander tests for trace elements in the silt as a geologist and director of the Georgia Southern University coastal research lab Alexander has been studying Georgia's coastal sediment around Tybee for 15 years beneath the silt layers that likely hold the five decade old h-bomb lies the Floridan Aquifer the main source of fresh water to much of the southeast us recently the swell and coastal population has raised demand for fresh water from the aquifer the result is a drop in aquifer pressure causing sea water and anything dissolved in it to get sucked in contaminating the fresh water because of the negative potential head in the aquifer existing around the city of Savannah today if there was any leaching of uranium into the aquifer that uranium would be being sucked into the aquifer and would be moving down gradient towards the middle of the city of Savannah so far no trace of man-made uranium has been found in the aquifer but man-made uranium is exactly what Alexander is testing for in this sediment of Wassaw sound if he finds it it could indicate the bomb is leaching radiation into the area this is a grab sampler which we use for taking samples of the bottom it's got a screen to allow water to come out and which keep water from flushing the sample away as it comes back up it has a spring-loaded pin which keeps the arms together until it reaches the bottom the pin pops out and then when you pull up on it it closes and we bring our sample back up to the deck of the ship [Music] the black silt is naturally rich and unharmed for uranium eroded and carried there by Georgia's inland streams despite the high background radiation manmade isotopes would read far higher and be unmistakable even if trace amounts of uranium-235 or its degraded daughter elements are in the sample they'll jump out when tested still with such energetic tides and so much potential sediment to test he knows the odds of finding traces of nuclear radiation are small I've been counting samples from this area for the last 15 years and so I pretty much know where all the peaks are and how big they ought to be in relation to each other and so if I saw a peak I didn't recognize I would be very surprised [Music] first the wet sample is dried slowly so moisture won't impede the readings once dry the sample is measured weighed and recorded gamma spectroscopy counts the number and rate of electrons released by elements in the soil after a few hours an atomic fingerprint develops of each element found in the sample so like we have pretty small lid to ten good bit of thorium 234 good bit of lead to 14 quite a bit well looks like we've got relatively high activities but I don't see anything unusual in these sediments without distinctive radioactive readings to point the way the search team has only one hope of finding the missing weapon basically the only way that a device of the sort we've been discussing could be exposed at the bottom today is if it was buried in one of these deposits of sand next to a channel and the channel moved removing the sand file and thus exposing the bomb leaving it in its same location but now without the supporting surrounding sand submerged in frigid 52 degree v not currents in the channels near Wausau Sound divers continue their search for the lost H bond [Music] why didn't you see what Justin was saying down there you want to give me the camera yeah you can see why it's been 50 years and then the nuclear weapon has still not been found visibility is terrible out there um does we don't stop trying this mean it's not there it's down there we just didn't find it okay okay good try we think we're in the right area it just might be a chance if you stumble on it it could be there you guys next yeah here you guys want to go in for now the Tybee bomb remains hidden still the news is not all bad the fact is we've had accidents we have yet to have a nuclear explosion that was accidental and so that's hats off to the engineers and the scientists at the National Labs that designed these things and their vigilance to constantly improve them so that we don't have those that's our guarantee the American public that guarantee is important since there are approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons in America's arsenal today [Music] by far the most of any country on the planet the thought that today 15 years after the end of the Cold War we are still on the verge of utilizing that and some people believe we should under certain circumstance is absurd it's bizarre I don't believe there's any justification for this nation ever initiating news of nuclear weapons the only hope is that with new technology and new applications coming online we can mend previous mistakes and continue to prevent what we've managed to avoid since Nagasaki six decades earlier while Colonel Derek Duke and his team continue their search determined to find the Tybee bomb for now the one point five Megaton h-bomb remains elusive buried out there somewhere just waiting explain the missile gap or lack thereof very few people today remember that when John Kennedy ran for president he charged that President Eisenhower had allowed a missile gap to develop meaning that Eisenhower had failed to procure and deploy nuclear tipped missiles in the US or for US forces sufficient to offset the Russians forces and therefore a missile gap had developed this was a major charge of that campaign and when I became secretary in the first week or two after I was sworn in I both I and my deputy Roscoe Patrick spent perhaps 75 percent of our time in the first month determining the size of the missile gap in order to ensure that we would prevent that from enlarging and ultimately eliminate it and what we found was there was a gap but it was in our favor the problem had been that we had roughly five intelligence agencies army intelligence Navy intelligence Air Force intelligence State Department intelligence and the CIA and they differ and one in particular the Air Force Intelligence Estimate indicated there was a missile gap in favor of the Russians so rise go Patrick my deputy as I said he spent most of our time in the early weeks tracking that down and what we found was that the Air Force the so-called a to a major general in charge of intelligence had estimated there was a missile gap now at that time there were no satellite photographs we only had the u2 to give us information on what was on the way massive Russia Soviet Union and the YouTube flew irregularly and when we sat down with the the a to the Major General of the Air Force in charge of this and asked to see the photographs that led him to that conclusion that there had been a missile gap I couldn't tell a missile from a bale of hay but as he tried to explain us it was apparent to me he was looking at the photographs through air force glasses he wasn't flying he wasn't trying to mislead it was a natural bias but we soon concluded there was no missile gap but I remember very well Arthur Sylvester my assistant secretary in charge of public affairs said Bob you know you haven't met with the Pentagon press and they're very anxious to meet with their wonderful group of guys and you're going to sit down and meet with them I said look are there I just came from the auto industry I don't know anything about worse than the last thing I want to do is make no no no you've got to do it so we met with them the door was closed and I thought that Arthur started the meeting by saying now this is all off the record but in a man whatever the words were I didn't understand them properly and the first question was mr. secretary you've been here next weeks what have you learned about the missile gap I said well I've learned it there was a gap but it was in our favor they broke down the doors that afternoon we had two papers at the time of the worst and the evening star and the words imposed the evening star an afternoon paper came out McNamara says no missile gap and the next morning the Republican leaders in the House and the Senate demanded that the election be rerun that Kennedy would draw that he fire me it was a heck of a mess as you say people then and I think you're I think you're right from my research I find it to be the case people weren't intentionally misleading in fact just the opposite maybe overly cautious lizard do you think maybe that there was a it's a character as a hysteria from Sputnik and in rocket technology had an influence or question on in this country and we felt we were behind and we had to dramatically accelerate our scientific advances and catch up with the Russians but I don't think the missile gap was as much a reflection of that as it was that that a senator who will go unnamed who had also been a a political leader in the airforce political appointee in the Air Force stated he believed there was a missile gap and he gave the information to Kennedy and Kennedy believed and it was a major charge even out of Eisenhower into Kennedy was there there was the air alerts and the the ground alert so that was that the response to because the technology well I think the major result was that that we accelerated the buying of some of our missiles and the deployment of those land-based and silos and sea-based and polaris submarines and that later dates we we took actions which were based on our belief of what the Soviets would do but we had so little information we know more about their capabilities than we did about their intentions so we had to base our procurement plans for our weapons on what we thought their capabilities were and and we may have overestimated the capabilities but in any event they didn't utilize to the full of capability the result was that with a lead time for development and production of strategic nuclear weapons or something on the order of five to seven year we were looking ahead five to seven years trying to anticipate what the Soviets would have at that time we greatly overestimated the number of weapons they would have five to seven years out and therefore today if you look back on a comparison of US and Soviet strategic missile forces over a period I forgotten what years but let's say 1981 to 1990 or something like that you will find the US was substantially ahead the Soviet Union during that period the reason was not that we wanted to be that much ahead but we were looking at what their capabilities were and they didn't utilize them to a full that's correct it's amazing to me you're making these decisions and you got to make them five seven years out based on what little information the best of information that you have at the time do you think you think it has it improved oh yes well we have much more information we have satellite photographs much much more information today so we and it's an important point to make because I believe and I think this is one of the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis I believe that we must we the human race must move to eliminate or nearly eliminate all nuclear weapons and people say well that's absurd even if they believe it's desirable and I think it's absolutely essential not only desirable but essential they say you can't do it and you can't be sure they'll be eliminated I think you can there are ways today to verify what each nation does we can verify what the Russians do if we had an agreement to eliminate or nearly eliminate nuclear weapons and they can verify what we do and I think we should do that it is such a dangerous situation today is it different now Russia's a 1/1 example but what if one of the as it proliferate like with Pakistan and India how could it is a really a feasible plan to be able to assure today we have about well we have between eight and ten thousand nuclear weapons here it is 15 years after the end of the Cold War each of us Russia and us have somewhere between eight and ten thousands of nuclear weapons of our eight to ten thousand six thousand our strategic weapons deployed in missile silos or polaris submarines and of the six thousand two thousand are on hair-trigger alert ready to be launched on 15-minute warning the US has never said not my years of secretary or since that we will not launch first I think to think of launching first is insane if you launched first against the nuclear equipped opponent it'll be suicidal because you can't get out all of his missiles and he'll have one two or five left and if you launch first against a non-nuclear power it's morally and politically indefensible so there is no possible in my mind no possible justification for our current nuclear policies they are very very very dangerous and we should change them it's going to be extremely difficult to change them because they've never been debated in the the Senate or the House if I were to characterize in one sentence sometimes I'm asked to do this characterized in one sentence your view of US and NATO nuclear policy day I would say they're they're immoral illegal militarily unnecessary very very dangerous in terms of exit and the risk of accidental or inadvertent launch and destructive of the non-proliferation regime that has served us so well for 50 years it's absurd but the people don't know that and therefore there is no pressure not only no pressure there's no support for moving in this direction despite the fact that a large number of retired four-star officers and retired senior civilian security experts a large number have publicly stated after retirement that they strongly favor either eliminating or nearly eliminating these we should do it there's no public pressure for no no and there there are some I think miss ill-advised senior both military and civilian leaders not yet retired who strongly favor current nuclear policy but I don't think they have reflected adequately on the dangers we've lived through these dangers at least I have in particular and others have and many who have after they've retired either military leaders or senior civilian leaders after they retired have stated publicly they believe the danger is great Lee Butler was the former commander of those TG Care Command has said publicly we ought to eliminate nuclear weapons as I say Eisenhower's military assistant general good ambassador said exactly the same thing Helmut Schmidt the former Chancellor of Germany has said the same thing a host oh I should say Mel Laird former's Nixon's Secretary of Defense wrote a book saying we should eliminate nuclear weapons it's very dangerous and our people don't understand that we today of this 6,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons 2,000 are on hair-trigger alert ready to be launched on 15 minute warning by the decision of one man the president and he wouldn't have any time for consultation he would have to launch in 15 minutes if they were to be launched on warning we've had many false warnings certainly while I was secretary it takes time to go through that and if you are absolutely positive on the warning it's difficult to be absolutely partner you then have to decide what to recommend to the president he has several options launch or withhold we have enough weapons so we could allow the first strike by the Soviet Union or now Russia against our weapons with the recognition the first strike could not destroy so many that we wouldn't have enough left to inflict unacceptable damage on them so the president would have an opportunity to withhold but the majority opinion at that moment I think would likely be mr. president loss very very dangerous now one of the things we did do when I was secretary made it a little less dangerous is we introduced into the warhead what are called permissive action links and those are designed to make it impossible for anyone to arm that warhead it could be launched but it could not be armed to detonate without the introduction of an electronic code and when you see the president he's accompanied by a military officer that carries a briefcase and that military officers within reach of the president 24 hours a day 365 days a year and that briefcase carries the electronic codes that the president would have to pass on to his military commanders in the event he wished to lunch a military nuclear strike but the that today 15 years after the end of the Cold War we are still on the verge of utilizing that and some people believe we should under certain surfaces is absurd it's bizarre I don't believe there's any justification for this nation ever initiating the use of nuclear weapons well in fact of course we did conventional argument but as you say also you know government's a conversation there's two arguments going that at all times and and and for whatever reason that argument seems to be prevailing well one of the problems is the argument isn't going on you point to me or bring too many or list the public statements in which this argument is address they're very very few you just read that President Bush put forward his nuclear policy review in which he essentially said we're going to maintain our present nuclear stance our present reliance on nuclear force indefinitely for decades ahead that's very dangerous it's going to lead to proliferation among other things we had today these terrible cases of North Korea and Iran I don't know how we're going to settle those but in part they come about because of our nuclear policies idea that with that security with that dominance with the accuracy now that we have that you didn't have in your day well you know we had we needed more warheads because who knows we had it we hadn't hit the three that could did that that we're creating a greater insecurity for ourselves it's insane the average nuclear warhead of our strategic nuclear wars in which I say we have 6,000 deployed the average is 20 times the kill capability has 20 times the kill capability of the Hiroshima bomb and the Hiroshima bomb killed as I remember 80,000 people in one night it is absurd and it's immoral whatever else you think it's immoral and they I'm not a Catholic but the Catholics Catholic Bishops published an extraordinarily wise statement the bishops report in about 1987 in which they said for the first time since Genesis the human race has the power to destroy human human Humanity is that what we want is that where we're going and they strongly recommended that as soon as the Cold War was over and they anticipated the end of it they were absolutely correct we must give up our reliance on nuclear weapons it's it's immoral and it's contrary to our our political strength and our political future to great degree it was built under how do you reconcile well well i reconcile it as the Catholic Bishops did they they said it's immoral to think of utilizing the nuclear weapon however they said there is one exception while a cold war is on and while NATO believes as we did at the time that the Russian conventional for the Soviet conventional forces exceed NATO's and therefore we believe that the Soviet Union wished to weaken NATO and they can do so by bringing conventional military pressure against NATO forces and we believe NATO to offset that required a capability to use nuclear weapons to prevent that from happening the Catholic Bishops said well we'll accept that as morale if you will but only so long as the Cold War exists and in effect it's going to end and when it ends we must give up this reliance on nuclear weapons they were absolutely correct but we haven't done that 15 years after the Cold War today we have 6,000 strategic nuclear weapons deployed 2,000 on hair-trigger alert it's insane what's the reasoning what's that are what's the argue the dominant argument that's winning well the dominant argument is that you don't know what's gonna happen and here you have North Korea developing nuclear weapons I suspect today well they have said they have a nuclear weapon and I suspect they do but hell it's one and how much do we need to deter one or even if it's Tanana we don't need eight to ten thousand which is what we have now you say well the Russians have agent ten done okay we we can negotiate with the Russians to get that number down and I say they have no military utility I have never seen a piece of paper that indicated how we the US could initiate the use of nuclear weapon issue eight the use of nuclear weapons against either a nuclear Iran on nuclear power against the nuclear power would be suicidal we couldn't get all of them out they'd have one two or five or ten left and against the non nuclear power it would be morally and politically indefensible I've never seen a piece of paper that indicated there for how we could initiate use of nuclear weapons with advantage to ourselves I've made that statement in front of NATO defence ministers in front of senior military commanders the supreme Allied commanders of the NATO forces nobody has ever refuted it there isn't any reputation you know very well I didn't during your time the Chiefs recommended action as such strikes well one could argue whether they did or not there's some evidence indicate they did but at a time when when they did the danger is illustrated by an Africa by an all-day discussion on October 3 of my dates I guess it maybe was September Saturday September 24 1962 I think I'm correct it was the last day of the missile crisis we had photographs of the Soviet missiles nuclear missiles in Cuba and we believed this was a strong belief of both military and civilian advisors to President Kennedy we believe they had to be pushed out and he in order to put pressure on Khrushchev to push them out had authorized what we called a quarantine it was an ineffective blockade and have became effective on Wednesday before this Saturday I'm talking about and by Saturday it didn't accomplish anything so in an all-day meeting what to do and there was general agreement that we had to get them out and the way to get them out would be to force them out with a military attack at that time the CIA estimated that while the missiles were there the warheads had not yet been delivered and they thought the first batch I think it was a 20 or something like that we're coming on a ship named the Poltava and it would arrive within two or three days and therefore that she said was the president if you want us to attack we have to do it before the warheads get there now the attack we had planned was a huge attack 8,000 aircraft sorties more than against more than we used in Bosnia or whatever we had 80,000 troops mobilized along with the shipping in southeast Atlantic ports to move against Cuba we were prepared to go she said mr. president if you want us to do that we have to do it before the words get there the words would like me to get there in two to three days therefore this was Saturday we have to do it before Monday if Khrushchev on Sunday had not stated that he was removing those missiles I think on Monday the majority of Kennedy's civilian and military advisers would a recommend attack we didn't learn for 29 years that at that time 4:30 in the afternoon that Saturday I'm talking about the Soviets had about 1700 nuclear warheads on the soil of Cuba roughly a thousand for their strategic missiles at about 6 or 700 tactical words to be used in the face of US attack it would have been total disaster among other reasons because we against the advice of the Chiefs President Kennedy and I had refused to allow the designated commanders of our nuclear of our invasion force to include nuclear weapons in the force so our forces would have gone in without nuclear weapons now nobody should believe we would have allowed a u.s. force to be attack the nuclear weapons without responding the force itself couldn't respond but we had nuclear equipped airplanes southeast landing fields we would have responded with those it would have been a total disaster for the Soviet Union for Cuba for the US and in a very real sense for the rest of the world because the radioactive fallout would have been tremendous that Khrushchev was responding with missiles in Cuba to the dummy silos that were in Turkey well there weren't dummy silo doesn't tell you there were there were US missiles in Turkey they weren't very effective we thought it was a pile of junk and actually President Kennedy had believed that he had issued instructions to take them out there was a misunderstanding on that but from a Soviet point of view they were very dangerous they were close at hand the Soviets had to think about it however some believe that one reason we had to take the missiles out of Cuba was that had changed the strategic balance I didn't believe that then I don't believe it today however they were put there under the cloak of deceit actually Soviet ambassadors to the UN to the US and others and stated publicly that there were no missiles there none would be put there and based on that a month or so before the Cuban Missile Crisis President Kennedy has said based on what had been told there were none there never we put there if in effect they were put there he would have to respond so he was boxed in but it was an extremely dangerous time and I should add one other thing that that that Castro had recommended to Khrushchev before this Saturday afternoon meaning that in the event of a US attack on Cuba Khrushchev should use nuclear weapons against the US and and I asked Castro in a meeting when we learned about these nuclear warheads there was in Havana that we learned about it as I say years and years after the date what would have happened he said I said did you know there were nuclear weapons there yes would you recommend and Khrushchev I use them he said I would have I did recommend I'm talking about this Saturday afternoon and I think Castro on Thursday has a memo or cable to Khrushchev stating Khrushchev should utilize nuclear weapons in response to a u.s. attack and he said what did I think would happen in Cuba he said we disappear and he said mr. McNamara if you were President Kennedy were faced with a similar situation you would initiate use of my quotes I hope we wouldn't have we'd have pulled the temple down on our head it was insane but that's the way we were and to some degree that's the way we are human beings are fallible we're all mistakes there's a learning period in conventional war you make mistakes and you say well I'm not gonna do that the second time we may do it a second or third but you don't do it five times there's a learning period there ain't gonna be nothing very nuclear weapons you make one mistake nations are gonna be destroyed but safety what safety measures were in place at the time and now well the permissive action links which were not in place the Missile Crisis are in place now and that greatly reduces the risk but the risk of erroneous decision ranking erroneous intelligence is just as great today as it was then I thought the 9/11 Commission report on intelligence was superb and particularly their list of things that could go wrong but they they didn't make one point that I think is very important they didn't make one recommendation I think it's very important intelligence by definition is imperfect you just don't know you can have the best information in the world you can have human intelligence but you're never certain and human intelligence may be the decision makers will act differently than your your resources indicate they will and as I suggest with nuclear weapons you make one mistake nations can be destroyed three in-laws six grandchildren and I'm not prepared to remain silent today in the face of what I think is a very very risky future for them I I think the probabilities of a nuclear detonation affecting their lives if we continue as we are are very very great bill Perry who's not an alarmist former Secretary of Defense he's a scientist director Stanford's security program stated publicly here in Washington News I remember a year or so ago then in his view there was a greater than fifty percent probability of a nuclear detonation on US soil within the decade and Graham Allison the former dean at the Kennedy School and before that an Assistant Secretary of Defense made essentially the same statement in a book I think it was titled nuclear terrorism now I don't want to argue whether they're both way but it's fifty percent probability or ten percent or eighty percent but any significant probability is far beyond what I'm prepared to accept from as risk to my children and grandchildren I think every parent in the country would feel that way if he understood what the risks are they don't can the metaphor be similar to having a gun next to the bed whereby you have it for safety but in fact the status does tick show clearly that that it would be used against you or creates danger even if there is an intruder you and to that this is this is worse than a country fan because the guy at most would attract her or not our set a shot that might kill you but it won't kill your whole family or your grandchildren a nuclear detonation of the kind that Bill Perry and Graham Allison predict is probable will kill millions of the human race it's insane that we accept that risk do they talk about our arsenal doing it some sort of maintenance regarding that or are they talking about somebody else bringing it in well neither neither Bill Perry nor Graham Allison described the foundation for their statement about risk I think they were probably thinking somebody would bring in one weapon or alternatively would put fissile materials from which weapons or dirty weapons could be produced in the hands of terrorists and that's a very significant risk and we're we're accepting it today it's name we you know the Senators Nunn and Luger none now retired presented was known as the nunn-lugar bill which was designed to control limit the production of fissile materials and control the storage and distribution of existing facility riyals very very wise move and it has been used to reduce the risk of uncontrolled photometers however I was on a panel that was senator Dan in Aspen Colorado about a year ago and he said the nunn-lugar program needed additional financing so I said to him how much more do you need and he said well I think they need about a billion dollars a year more now with a the defense budget excluding Iraq and Afghanistan running on the order of four hundred billion a year I can't think of anything at the margin they would buy some more security than a billion dollars more on controlling for sound materials but we're not doing it

Info

Channel: DEEP SOUTH DIVERS

Views: 903,705

Rating: 4.3816328 out of 5

Keywords: Tybee, Bomb, Tybee Bomb, Nuclear, Savannah, Georgia, Divers, Deep south, SeaJay, BAYNE, H bomb, Broken arrow, Atom bomb, Lost, Us

Id: U9qGne1qiwM

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 86min 47sec (5207 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2017

Reddit Comments