Search begins for lost H-bomb

LITTLE TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. - With boats dragging sensors and divers scooping underwater soil samples, federal experts searched Thursday for radioactive clues that might pinpoint a nuclear bomb lost off the Georgia coast for 46 years.

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It's the first time the military has sought signs of the 7,600-pound H-bomb in the murky waters of Wassaw Sound since 1958, when a crippled B-47 bomber dumped the Mark-15 nuke into the sea near Savannah.

A team of 20 experts in nuclear weapons, gamma spectroscopy and underwater salvage confined their search to an area roughly the size of a football field.

That's where Derek Duke, a retired Air Force pilot who has doggedly pursued the lost bomb for five years, says his private searches detected higher-than-normal radiation levels less than a mile from the southern tip of uninhabited Little Tybee Island.

"Our goal is to have a definitive report on claims of radiation in this area - is it there and what it is," said Billy W. Mullins, an Air Force nuclear weapons adviser leading the government team. "If it's the Mark-15, that's one thing. If not, where does this come from?"

The Air Force says the bomb is incapable of a nuclear explosion because it lacks the plutonium capsule needed to trigger an atomic blast. Still, it contains about 400 pounds of conventional explosives and an undisclosed amount of uranium.

The bomb was dropped into Wassaw Sound in February 1958 during a training flight when the bomber carrying it collided with a fighter jet. The military searched the area for 10 weeks, but failed to find it.

Mr. Duke asked the military to renew its search for the bomb three years ago, but the Air Force declined. It issued a report in July 2001 saying 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 military also had no idea where to search in the vast Wassaw Sound, the site of Olympic sailing events in 1996. Mr. Duke's recent claim of finding radiation readings more than five times higher than background levels changed that.

Mr. Mullins' team hoped to complete its field work in one day. Boats dragged radiation detectors through the water, looking for peaks in radiation levels.

From those "hot spots," samples of water and soil collected by military divers were to be taken for lab tests that should detail the type of radiation.

Mr. Mullins said those results aren't expected for several weeks.

--From the Friday, October 1, 2004 online edition of the Augusta Chronicle