Nuclear Bomb Missing For 50 Years
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.
I well remember this, as I was a nineteen year-old in Savannah, Georgia when it occurred, and it was off the coast of Savannah that the bomb was lost. There have been several searches over the years as technology improved, but no luck so far.
I question however, the premise that a B-47 could fly from Homestead to any point in Russia, er… the Soviet Union. Too far, and the plane was too small and too limited in range, Thats why the B-47 is a footnote in history while its contemporary, the B-52, remains a mainline bomber to this day.
Bill Lewis.. I am sure the B-47 was capable of in-flight refuling