Today in Labor History February 5, 1958: The U.S. Air Force lost a Mark 15 thermonuclear bomb in the water near Tybee Island, near Savannah, Georgia. The B-47 bomber was on a simulated combat mission. It collided with an F-86 fighter plane, midair, and jettisoned the bomb in order to make an emergency landing without detonating it. Sources vary on whether it was a “dummy” bomb, or if it had a plutonium core. If it was a “dummy” bomb, it still carried 400 lbs of conventional high explosives, enough to do considerable local damage. However, Assistant Secretary of Defense W.J. Howard, told Congress that the Tybee Island bomb was a "complete weapon, a bomb with a nuclear capsule" and one of two weapons lost that contained a plutonium trigger.

For a truly terrifying history of the history of nuclear weapons systems and accidents involving nuclear weapons in the United States, read Eric Schlosser’s “Command and Control.”

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