Photo Gallery The Missing Nuclear Bombs
During the height of the Cold War US B-52 bombers carrying nuclear bombs were in the air around the clock, 365 days a year. Officially 11 bombs went missing but it is estimated that 50 were lost.
The USS Scorpion in 1960. The nuclear submarine sank on May 22, 1968 to a depth of 3,300 meters about 320 nautical miles south of the Azores.
A B-36 bomber, nicknamed the Peacemaker. In May 1957 a B-36 accidentally dropped a hydrogen bomb on a deserted area while landing at Kirland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
The mushroom cloud of the first test of a hydrogen bomb in April 1952.
A photo of the Little Boy type bomb similar to the one that detonated over Hiroshima. The bomb had an explosive force comparable to 20,000 tons of TNT.
The worst nuclear weapons incident of the Cold War happened off the coast of Spain. On Jan. 17, 1966 a B-52 collided with a tanking aircraft. The bomber had four hydrogen bombs on board, three landed on the ground, contaminating the area with radiation, and one went into the ocean.
Dozens of US warships patrolled the coastline near the town of Palomares to seal off the area.
The wreck of the B-52 at Palomares.
The Mark 28 Thermonuclear bomb. It was this type of weapon that was lost in Greenland in 1968 after a B-52 crashed into the ice.
Steel barrels filled with debris from the crash near the site at the Americans' Thule Airbase in Greenland.
A bomber is refueled in this archive photo from 1957. Back then the aircraft were unable to complete a flight across the Atlantic or Pacific on a single tank.
