Legend of Lost Bomb Resurfaces With Facts

Below the deck of his shrimp boat, W.G. Smith recounts the story of his big catch more than 40 years ago.

It was 1959 or 1960, as best Smith remembers, as he trawled for shrimp off the coast of Georgia. His net snagged on something large, an object so heavy he had to get a diving buddy to shake the net loose.

“He dived down and when he came up he said, ‘That’s a bomb,’ ” recalled Smith, 72. “I really didn’t think much of it. I thought he was cutting the fool or something.”

Smith’s 50-year-old son, Glenn, figures his father caught the “Tybee bomb,” a 7,600-pound nuclear device dumped by a damaged B-47 bomber in February 1958.

In this beach community east of Savannah, the lost bomb has been a legend for so long it’s hard to separate fact from folklore.

For the first time in 46 years, the Air Force last week led a team of experts to investigate reports of radiation traces that might reveal the bomb’s location.

“I thought it was over here, and then I kept hearing it was over there,” said handyman Harold Michael, pointing in several directions from his seat at the bar at Cafe Loco.

“You listen about and there’s probably a thousand stories out here,” he said.

Islanders remain divided over whether the Air Force should recover the bomb or leave it. The government says the Mark-15 device is incapable of an atomic explosion, though it still contains about 400 pounds of conventional explosives.

Three years ago, island Mayor Walter Parker and the City Council sent a resolution to the Air Force, asking that the bomb be found before the military declared it nonthreatening. Five months later, the Air Force rejected a renewed search.

Now, Derek Duke, a retired Air Force pilot who has privately sought the lost bomb for five years, says he has detected radiation patterns that he believes might mark the bomb’s resting place near the southern tip of uninhabited Little Tybee Island, which is about four miles south of the Tybee Island beach community.

So the military sent a team of 20 experts to gather water and soil samples Thursday. A final report will not be ready for several weeks.