Lost in the Philippine Sea

My Dark Path

There’s a sign, mounted on a locked door, four decks down from the flight deck on the USS Ticonderoga, a giant aircraft carrier, a sign reads “RESTRICTED SECURITY AREA / KEEP OUT / AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY / IT IS UNLAWFUL TO ENTER THIS AREA WITHOUT WRITTEN PEMISSION OF THE COMMANDING OFFICER” No one, except the men assigned to work in that room, was allowed to go through that door. Because behind that door are stored the nuclear bombs the Ticonderoga carries. And on the floor of that room the bombs are assembled by the sailors in the weapons division. They trained to do so efficiently, rapidly, in case they were called upon to arm the bombs for use. The location is the Philippine Sea during the Vietnam War. The date is December 5, 1965, and before this day is over, one of those nuclear weapons will be in the ocean, armed to go off with no way of recovering it or disarming it. Today, in our second part of our two part series on broken arrows – lost nuclear weapons – we will explore the only armed nuclear bomb the United States lost and did not recover. All other weapons lost had fissile material, but had not been primed to explode. The bomb lost by the Ticonderoga those fifty-seven years ago still sits at the bottom of the sea of Japan, still capable of detonating a full nuclear explosion.

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