Tybee Island cold war bomb remains lost at sea like so many other broken arrows

OFF the coast of this tourist town lies somthing that’s 12-feet-long, weighs seven tonnes and is deadly. Experts say swimmers should be worried.

399543 04: The sun sets near the beach front home of Sandra Bullock January 11, 2002 on Tybee Island, Georgia. Bullock bought the home after filming "Forces of Nature". The island faces the Savannah river inlet east of Savannah where portions of the movie where filmed. Several of Bullocks film friends such as Ben Affleck and John Travolta are now looking for property in the area. (Photo by Stephen Morton/Getty Images)

BE CAREFUL where you swim. You never know what could be lurking beneath the surface.

In Georgia, off the coast of beautiful Tybee Island, experts are convinced swimmers should be very worried.

They say there’s something down there that’s 12-feet-long, weighs more than seven tonnes and is deadly.

It doesn’t swim. Instead, they say it lies still. Waiting.

Somewhere near the holiday hotspot frequented by Americans in the warmer months is a broken arrow, an undetonated nuclear weapon.

The US military declared the bomb, believed to contain more than 180kg of explosives, “irretrievably lost” in 1958. It hasn’t been seen since.

It’s one of hundreds of broken arrows believed lost and undetonated around the world.

The Mark 15 bomb was dropped into the sea off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia, during the early morning hours of February 5, 1958.

The mishap that would make Tybee Island famous took place during a practice exercise when two fighter planes collided.

One of the planes was carrying the warhead, but dropped it shortly after the collision because the pilot, Howard Richardson, was afraid it would detonate upon landing. He likely saved his crew and was rewarded with a bravery medal for his efforts.

Searches took place in the months that followed, led by the now infamous Tybee Island Bomb Squad, but were unsuccessful.

More than 100 Navy personnel joined the search but on April 16 declared it was lost for good.

The town itself remains popular. Far from ignoring the dangers off its sandy beaches, instead locals celebrate their past.

A nuclear bomb pictured in 1956.

At AJs Dockside Restaurant, bomb squad paraphernalia lines the walls. Across America, experts argue about how dangerous the bomb might be.

The air force claims the bomb cannot detonate because it lacks a plutonium capsule.

A spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times the bomb is not capable of a nuclear explosion. She said the other threat, uranium, was so small it was almost non existent.

“To have that hurt you, you would actually have to ingest it,” she said.

Others are not so sure.

Former Savannah congressman Jack Kingston said in 2001 people downplaying the serious threat were kidding themselves.

“Four hundred pounds of TNT to some folks isn’t a big deal,” he said.

“But if it’s your family and your boat that hits it, it is a big deal.”

Tybee Island isn’t the only place where cold war era explosives haunt its residents.

Between 1950 and 1960, bombs went missing on average once every two years.

On November 10, 1950, a B-50 bomber carrying a Mark 4 bomb jettisoned the 45kg uranium shell about 440km from Montreal, Canada.

Six years later, a B-47 which departed from an Air Force base in Tampa, Florida, disappeared over the Mediterranean. It was believed to have been carrying two nuclear capsules.

In 1965, an A-4E aircraft simply rolled off the deck of the USS Ticonderoga. It was carrying a pilot and a B43 nuclear weapon.

Years later, in 1989, a Soviet submarine sank in the Atlantic Ocean. It was carrying 69 crew members, a nuclear reactor and two armed torpedoes. It has not been seen since.

Back at Tybee Island, the missing bomb still sparks people’s interests. But they don’t expect it to be recovered anytime soon.

Billy Mullins, associate director of the air force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency, once said recovering the bomb would cost an estimated $5 million.

“As we see it, there’s zero risk to anybody leaving it where it is,” he said.