On February 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber dropped a 7,600-pound nuclear bomb into the waters off Tybee Island, Georgia, after colliding with an F-86 fighter jet. At the time, the quantity of radioactive material, the destructive capability of the bomb, and whether it contained a dummy trigger were unclear. The bomb has an explosive yield 190 times more powerful than the Fat Man bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945. A team of 100 Navy personnel equipped with handheld sonar conducted cable sweeps in search of the bomb immediately following the incident, but stopped two months after the accident after failing to find it. In 2001, a hydrographic survey revealed that the bomb was buried under 5-15 feet of silt. A 2001 report from the Air Force stated that if the bomb were still intact, the explosive would post no hazard. Today the Tybee bomb remains in its original dropped location.
