The Missing Bomb — Harry Rubin

On February 5, 1958, an Air Force B-47 Stratojet was cruising at 38,000 feet over southeastern Georgia at 500 miles per hour. In its bomb bay was a Mark 15 thermonuclear bomb, many times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. At 12:33 a.m., in a bright moonlit sky, history was about to be made when an accident with an F-86 required the pilot of the bomber to jettison the bomb into the waters of Wassau Sound, located just 16 miles from Savannah, Georgia. Despite a massive serach, the missing bomb has never been found. Fifty years later, a small U.S. Navy crew on a coastal trawler is given the mission to look for it. This is the story of that mission.