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     In 1958 during the height of the Cold War, a F-86 fighter-jet collided with a B-47 bomber during an Air Force training mission over Tybee Island.   The pilot of the B-47 fearing an explosion on landing, jettison the MK-15 thermal nuclear weapon they were carrying into the waters off Tybee Island in Wassaw Sound.    

     An intense recovery effort began for several months without result.   The MK-15 was one of the most powerful weapons ever developed.   It had a yield of 3.8 (mega/million) tons of TNT., compared to the first bomb used at 15 (kilo/thousand) tons!   

     Today the largest weapon in the US arsenal is the B83, which has a yield of 1.2 (mega/million) tons.  Thermal nuclear weapons with the destructive power like the one lost near Tybee Island are no longer being built as they could only have but one possible use, which is to destroy populations of large cities.

     The US Air Force has maintained that the bomb that was lost near Tybee Island, did not have its trigger installed.    However, according to 1966 Congressional testimony by Assistant Secretary of Defense W. J. Howard, “The Tybee Island bomb was a complete weapon, a bomb with a nuclear capsule, and one of two weapons lost that contained a plutonium trigger.”