Tybee Island is home to a city-smashing monster that is waiting off the coast to wake up one day and possibly cause havoc on Georgia’s shores. An F-86 fighter plane collided midair with a B-47 bomber carrying the Mark 15 hydrogen bomb. This was during a training exercise. The F-86 pilot managed to escape before the jet disintegrated. The damaged bomber made a terrifying emergency landing at Hunter Army Airfield, but it did not abandon the 7,600-lb. The bomb was dropped into the waters of Wassaw Sound to lighten its weight and prevent it from exploding in case they crash. 100 Navy personnel spent ten weeks searching for the bomb but were unable to find it. One theory suggests that the bomb was found by a Soviet submarine and has not been found. There are many conflicting reports on how dangerous the bomb is. The initial government claims that the bomb contained a dummy trigger, which didn’t pose any threat unless it was disarmed. However, in 1994, a document that was classified revealed a completely different story. 1966 Congressional testimony of W.J. Howard, then Assistant Secretary to Defense, states that the lost weapon was a complete bomb with a nuclear capsule. According to 1966 Congressional testimony by W.J. Howard, the missing weapon was a fully functional bomb and a nuclear capsule. If this is true and the bomb contains a plutonium trigger then the resultant explosion would produce a fireball that can reach more than a mile in radius and thermal radiation that can reach up to ten times the distance. There are other ways to get a Tybee Island tan.
A private team, led by former Air Force Lt. Colonel Derek Duke, discovered radiation at Little Tybee’s tip. This radiation was consistent with the location where the bomb may have been dropped. However, a U.S. Air Force investigation later determined that the radiation was caused by natural monazite deposits in the sand. A satirical news website published a fake story in 2015 about a couple from Canada finding the bomb while diving. It was finally recovered. It is likely that the bomb is still out there. It doesn’t matter if the bomb was taken by the Russians or buried beneath fifteen feet of silt. It is best to let the sleeping monsters sleep.
