Report: Lost U.S. Nuke Found in Frozen Sea

Aug. 14 -- A lost U.S. atomic bomb may be lying in the frozen sea off the coast of Greenland, according to a published report.

A nuclear-armed B-52, code-named “Butterknife V,” crashed in Baffin Bay in 1968. It was carrying four bombs.

Three smashed on impact — spreading nuclear waste over 20 acres. “Detective work” by the staff of an air base at Thule shows that the fourth hydrogen bomb could be lying in the ice under the bay, according to Jyllands Posten, a leading Danish newspaper.

Workers at the base claim they have suffered cancer and other debilitating diseases as a result of the cleanup from the crash, and are seeking damages. Tons of ice and debris were removed from the site, at enormous cost.

Found or Recovered?

In Washington, a U.S. Defense Department spokesman denied the report in Jyllands-Posten. Bryan Whitman said all four bombs aboard the B-52 were destroyed by fire in the crash on Jan. 21, 1968.

But Denmark’s Ritzau news agency reported that film from a U.S. submarine searching for the wreckage showed “a bomb-like object” hidden in the depths.

Other sources claim that secret U.S. Atomic Energy Agency papers obtained by the workers prove that the Pentagon carried on searching for the bomb long after the official search was over.

Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen said there was “nothing new” in the report that one of the bombs had never been found and probably remained on the seabed near the base. The most important thing, he added, was whether the site had been properly cleaned after the accident.

“No new evidence has materialized to change earlier assessments,” he said, citing U.S. assurances given in the spring of 1968 and again in 1995 that the cleanup had been completed.

Cold War Mission

The United States used the Thule base during the Cold War, when the Pentagon kept armed nuclear bombers in the air 24 hours a day as part of a secret mission involving the base’s Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radar System.