Glenn Vance

The Tybee Bomb

It was nearly 4 pm on Feb­ru­ary 4, 1958, when a B-47 bomber, piloted by Major Howard Richard­son and 2 other crew mem­bers, lifted off from Home­stead Air Force Base near Miami, Florida. There mis­sion that day was to prac­tice to fly tan­dem with another B-47 and mimic the require­ments of a wartime attack on tar­gets in the Soviet Union. These mis­sions, striv­ing for real­ism, would include an aer­ial refu­el­ing, a round trip of about 5,000 miles at speeds up to 600 mph and an elec­tronic “bomb drop” scored by a ground sta­tion in Europe or North Amer­ica. Often along the way the bombers, to sim­u­late real­ity, would be “attacked” by Air Force fighter air­craft. This day, how­ever, to add another touch of real­ism to the mix, the B-47 flown by Maj. Richard­son also con­tained within its bomb bay an 11-foot-7-inch-long, 7,600-pound Mk 15 Mod 0 ther­monu­clear weapon, which wasn’t stan­dard prac­tice for these types of missions.

While cruis­ing west­erly over the Gulf of Mex­ico Richardson’s B-47 refu­eled as was stan­dard prac­tice on these mis­sions. Upon reach­ing New Orleans, Richard­son turned northerly and pro­ceeded to the Cana­dian bor­der in prepa­ra­tion for a southerly turn to begin his “bomb run” on radar scor­ing facil­ity at Rad­ford, Vir­ginia. Richardson’s B-47 “bombed” the tar­get elec­tron­i­cally and headed for home. The crew had cov­ered 4000 miles in 8 hours and were ready to rest and relax. Richard­son was told by a mes­sage from head­quar­ters that on the return trip he would not be “attacked” by enemy fight­ers, which added a lit­tle bit of com­fort to the remain­ing flight.

But no one seemed to have told Charleston Air Force Base in South Car­olina. Lt. Clarence Stew­art and two other pilots and three crew chiefs are ready­ing their F-86 fight­ers to “attack” Richardson’s return­ing B-47. They had been given per­mis­sion to attack Richardson’s plane any time before it landed in Florida.

At 12:09 a.m. on Feb­ru­ary 5, Air Defense Con­trol radar picked up one of the B-47’s roughly 180 miles north of Charleston Air Force Base, but it did not pick up Richardson’s B-47. Ground con­trol radar directed the 3 F-86’s to a point sev­eral thou­sand feet over and 15 miles away from Richardson’s B-47. Stew­art, and his radar, locked onto the known B-47 and he began descend­ing rapidly to “attack” the bomber, never know­ing that he was on a col­li­sion course with Richardson’s B-47. Stew­art didn’t know he was plung­ing towards Richardson’s B-47, as he was intently look­ing at his radar for fear of los­ing the other B-47 in the dark­ness, but he looked up for a sec­ond and saw the moon reflect­ing off the top of Richardson’s B-47. He attempted to roll the F-86 right but was unable to avoid a collision.

Stew­art was able to eject from the crip­pled F-86, but, amaz­ingly, the B-47 was only dam­aged. Upon inspec­tion, the B-47’s crew noticed that the far right engine was bent upwards at a 30-degree angle and the right exter­nal fuel tank had been sheared off. Because of the bent engine the plane is rolling wildly. In an effort to con­trol the craft Richard­son cuts the power to that engine and then cuts the speed of the plane in an attempt to make an emer­gency land­ing at Hunter Air Force Base in Geor­gia. The tower at Hunter advises Richard­son that because of main­te­nance on the run­way, if the plane lands short it could cause the plane to crash, hurtling the Mk 15 bomb through the cock­pit and down the run­way at 200+ mph. Richard­son radios Strate­gic Air Com­mand and informs them that he is going to ditch the bomb in the Atlantic near Tybee Island, off the coast of Geor­gia. He does this and is able to even­tu­ally land the dam­aged plane.

On Feb­ru­ary 6, 1958, the Air Force 2700th Explo­sive Ord­nance Dis­posal Squadron and 100 Navy per­son­nel began the ardu­ous search to recover the lost Mk 15 bomb. 10 days later an announce­ment was made that the search had turned up noth­ing, with the Air Force and Navy believ­ing that the bomb was buried below the water in upwards of 5–15 feet of mud. To this day it has never been recov­ered.¹

1. Most, if not all, of the infor­ma­tion for this post came from an amaz­ing Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle, “Lost: One H-Bomb. Call Owner”. [↩]

07. March 2007 by Glenn Vance
Categories: History | 4 comments