The explosives dropped under the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are part of a sad part of history. However, other nuclear bombs are scattered around, and we are not talking about the ones in the hands of the armed forces of different countries. We deal with artifacts that have been lost and no one is able to find them.
One of the famous cases occurred in Palomares, Spain. There, in 1966, four thermonuclear bombs landed in the Mediterranean. Three were recovered, but one was never found. And she is not the only one in the story. In times of warlike tension between nations, heightened by the War in Ukraine, facts like this do not go down well.
The “broken arrows”
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)
There is a “technical name” for missing nuclear bombs. They are known by the nickname “broken arrows“. There are at least 32 reported cases of lost artifacts since the 1950s. The date coincides with the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War.
Of these lost bombs, some are reported to have been launched by total mistake, ejected in cases of serious emergency and recovered. However, three of them, all of North American origin, remain lost in some corner of the globe.
Specialists on the subject, however, warn that the apparent low number of “broken arrows” cannot serve of self-indulgence. This is because there is a high possibility that some nations will not report the disappearance of nuclear bombs. Therefore, the publicly known figures deal only with North American cases.
Disappearances in the Cold War
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)
The Cold War was a period of heightened tensions between the United States and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The time was marked by the two nations strengthening their armed forces, investing in nuclear technology. It is also from this phase that the largest number of disappearances of nuclear bombs.
There are reports that the Soviet Union, in 1986, had about 45 thousand nuclear weapons, bombs were lost and never recovered. . However, as the USSR’s nuclear history is obscure, there is no official data on it. In any case, the reports of Soviet incidents are all involving submarines, unlike the North American cases.
What was also not lacking in the period were bomb hunters. The most eccentric was billionaire Howard Hughes. He pretended to be interested in deep-sea mining to seek out the Soviet submarine K-129, which sank in the Pacific Ocean. The mission was frustrated for Hughes, as the submarine was destroyed during the rescue process.
Losses must be permanent
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Unlike planes that have black boxes, missing nukes have no mechanisms to find them. It must be borne in mind that we are talking about artifacts that have been missing for about 60 years. Specialists on the subject believe that the disappearance of these missiles is a permanent loss, and not just financial.
It is very unlikely that US bombs will be found, especially as visual searches are complicated. It would be possible, who knows, a search for radiation spikes. The obstacle is that the “lost arrows” are not, in fact, radioactive.
For this reason, it is common that nuclear weapons such as the missing ones are not considered potential risks for the damage they can cause, but for showing that the handling and security systems are fragile and flawed. It would be better, then, not to have these devices.
