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

Aug. 14, 2000 -- 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.

Washington hopes to upgrade the base — as well as the Menwith Hill Signals Center near Harrogate and the Flyingdale base in Britain — for its Space-Based Infrared System, part of the National Missile Defense system of the Upgraded Early Warning Radar program.

Petersen said the report would have no bearing on Denmark’s attitude to the possible use of the Thule base in a U.S. missile defense system.

Leading politicians in Greenland, which has enjoyed limitedself-determination from Denmark since 1979, fear that makingThule part of the missile shield would make it a target in anyconflict and they do not want the base to play any role in thesystem.

The Danish government has said it will decide its stanceonly if it receives a request to alter the status of Thule.

Security policy analysts and a senior western diplomatbased in Copenhagen said the report that a nuclear bomb mightremain in the sea off Thule could, despite official assurancesto the contrary, cast some doubt over U.S. intentions and wouldcolor the debate on the NMD issue in Denmark and Greenland.

“It will obviously have an effect,” said one analyst, whoasked not to be identified. “It will lead to growing oppositionagainst the idea that Denmark should be involved,” he said.

“It could change the debate climate toward not justsupporting everything the United States wants,” the diplomatsaid. “But I don’t think that the [Danish] government will beaffected by the debate,” he added.

Reuters contributed to this report.