Yes, The US Has Lost Not One, But Six Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear weapons are the single-most destructive explosives humanity has created and deployed in warfare. Because of their destructive power that can wipe away whole cities, you'd think that the United States military would be careful not to misplace any, and for the most part, that's absolutely true. Still, there have been six instances over the years where accidents resulted in the loss of nuclear weapons that have yet to be recovered.

The U.S. calls these "Broken Arrow" incidents, but the term isn't limited to loss, as it also includes accidents. As of writing, the U.S. has had 32 Broken Arrow events, six of which involved the loss of nuclear ordnance that was never recovered, and that's just what the public knows about. A notable incident occurred in 1958, when one of the U.S' earliest jet bombers, a B-47, jettisoned a fully-armed Mk. 15 hydrogen bomb near Tybee Island, Georgia, following a mid-air collision. The military initially said it was all a simulation, but this wasn't true, and the bomb has never been recovered.

Incidents like the Tybee Bomb accident continued to pop up sporadically throughout the Cold War, as a variety of nuclear weapons found their way outside of the military's control. You likely have nothing to worry about, as there's a reason they can't be recovered, so a random diver isn't about to stumble across a ticking nuclear time bomb. Regardless, the losses are notable, and they represent six times in human history that people took control of nuclear weapons and lost them.

The U.S. government's Nuclear Triad is a policy of maintaining three methods of nuclear weapon deployment at all times. These include air-dropped weapons from strategic bombers, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The Tybee Bomb was a 3.8 megaton device, making it around 190 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, and it's not the only weapon like it sitting somewhere on the bottom of the ocean.

The longest-missing nuclear weapon was lost in 1950, when a Convair B-36 bomber dropped a 30-kiloton Mk. 4 bomb into the Pacific Ocean. The Air Force's report indicated that while it didn't contain a plutonium core, it held a lot of uranium. Six years later, A B-47 crashed in the Med, likely carrying two cores for Mk. 15 devices. Not long after, in 1961, a 24-megaton nuclear bomb with three of its four arming mechanisms activated was destroyed, leaving a significant portion of the weapon buried in a field following a B-52 crash. The Air Force has since secured the site, so the loss isn't like those resting on the ocean floor.

In December 1965, an A-4E Skyhawk with a one-megaton thermonuclear bomb rolled off the USS Ticonderoga into the Pacific Ocean, and neither the pilot, plane, nor bomb was found. In 1966, another mid-air collision resulted in the loss of four B28 thermonuclear bombs, and only three were recovered. This occurred over the Mediterranean Sea, and it had a yield of 1.1 megatons. The final, unrecovered nuclear weapons were lost in 1968, when the USS Scorpion sank, taking 99 crewmembers and two 250-kiloton nuclear warheads down with it.