Concerning yesterday's post on missing nuclear weapons Gerald Hanner wrote to say:

I once flew with one of the people involved in that lost nuke in South Carolina. It was being carried by a B-47, and they were on their way to a forward-deployed base in England to pull alert. For takeoff the weapon (no one in the business calls them "bombs") is not pinned into the release mechanism so that it could be released if there was an aircraft emergency after takeoff. Since the "pit" was not installed in the weapon there was no chance of a nuclear detonation. In any case, after a safe takeoff the copilot went back to the bomb bay to place a safety pin in the release mechanism; the pin would not go into the slot it was designed for. After calling back to their departure base to discuss the problem, someone on the ground suggested jiggling the release mechanism a bit to properly align the parts. The copilot did. The next transmission from the aircraft was, "#! We dropped it!" The weapon released and went right through the closed bomb bay door; those were heavy dudes back then. You've read the rest of the story.

Dave Walker of Lockjaw's Lair wrote to report on a still-missing nuclear weapon in North Carolina.

It was just after midnight on January 24, 1961. A B52G Stratofortress (one of the greatest airplanes ever to cast a shadow on this fine Earth, IMHO) suffered structural failure in its right wing near Faro, NC. The plane carried two MK39 hydrogen bombs.

The two weapons were jettisoned from the plane. One parachuted safely to the ground, receiving minimal damage. The other plummetted to Earth, partially breaking up on impact. Part of the weapon, however, was never found. The lost portion was the uranium-containing part, as well. Crews dug to a depth of 50 feet in the boggy field, but could never retrieve the warhead. To this day, the lost weapon continues to lie in this field.

Radioactivity tests have come up negative, and the Air Force has purchased an easement on the property to prevent anyone digging. If you'd like to read further on the case of the lost warhead, check out this link.

• 10 March 1956
  A B-47 with two nuclear weapons aboard disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea after flying out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. An exhaustive search failed to locate the aircraft, its weapons, nor its crew.
  
• 28 July 1957
  A C-124 Globemaster transporting three nuclear weapons and a nuclear capsule from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to Europe experienced loss of power in two engines. The crew jettisoned two of the weapons somewhere east of Rehobeth, Del., and Cape May/Wildwood, New Jersey. A search for the weapons was unsuccessful and it is a fair assumption that they still lie at the bottom of the ocean.
  
• 5 February 1958
  A B-47 carrying a Mark 15, Mod 0, nuclear bomb on a simulated combat mission from Homestead Air Force Base in Florida collided with an F-86. After three unsuccessful attempts to land at Hunter Air Force Base in Georgia, the B-47 crew jettisoned the nuclear bomb into the Atlantic Ocean off Savannah. The Air Force conducted a nine-week search of a 3-square-mile area in Wassaw Sound where the bomb was dropped, but declared on April 16 that the bomb was irretrievably lost. The bomb was rediscovered in September 2004.
  
  CNN - Sept 13, 2004
  
  A group led by retired Air Force Lt. Col. Derek Duke of Statesboro, Georgia, said in July that it had found a large object underwater near Savannah that was emitting high levels of radioactivity, according to an Associated Press report.
  
  The group said it used radiation and metal detection equipment to search an area in Wassaw Sound off Tybee Island where the bomb reportedly was dropped, the AP reported....
  
  .... An Air Force investigation concluded in 2001 that the bomb is probably harmless if left where it is. It also said a recovery operation could set off the conventional explosives in the bomb that would put the recovery crew at risk and do serious environmental damage.
  
  The 7,600-pound, 12-foot-long thermonuclear bomb contained 400 pounds of high explosives as well as uranium.
  
  The Air Force insists the bomb was being used for practice and did not contain the plutonium trigger needed for a nuclear explosion.
  
  www.cnn.com...
  
  
• 24 January 1961: B-52 crashed and dropped two 20-megaton nuclear weapons near Goldsboro, North Carolina. Five of six interlocking safety triggers on the bomb failed. One weapon never recovered; Air Force purchased easement where lost.
  
• 5 December 1965
  An A-4E Skyhawk strike aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon rolled off an elevator on the U.S. aircraft carrier Ticonderoga and fell into the sea. Because the bomb was lost at a depth of approximately 16,000 feet, Pentagon officials feared that intense water pressure could have caused the B-43 hydrogen bomb to explode. It is still unknown whether an explosion did occur. The pilot, aircraft, and weapon were lost.
  
  The Pentagon claimed that the bomb was lost "500 miles away from land." However, it was later revealed that the aircraft and nuclear weapon sank only miles from the Japanese island chain of Ryukyu. Several factors contributed to the Pentagon's secretiveness. The USS Ticonderoga was returning from a mission off North Vietnam; confirming that the carrier had nuclear weapons aboard would document their introduction into the Vietnam War. Furthermore, Japan's anti-nuclear law prohibited the introduction of atomic weapons into its territory, and U.S. military bases in Japan are not exempt from this law. Thus, confirming that the USS Ticonderoga carried nuclear weapons would signify U.S. violation of its military agreements with Japan. The carrier was headed to Yokosuka, Japan, and disclosure of the accident in the mid-1980s caused a strain in U.S.-Japanese relations.
  
  
• 22 January 1968
  A B-52 crashed 7 miles south of Thule Air Force Base in Greenland, scattering the radioactive fragments of three hydrogen bombs over the terrain and dropping one bomb into the sea after a fire broke out in the navigator's compartment. Contaminated ice and airplane debris were sent back to the U.S., with the bomb fragments going back to the manufacturer in Amarillo, Texas. The incident outraged the people of Denmark (which owned Greenland at the time, and which prohibits nuclear weapons over its territory) and led to massive anti-U.S. demonstrations. One of the warheads was reportedly recovered by Navy Seals and Seabees in 1979, but a recent (August 2000) report suggests that in fact it may still be lying at the bottom of Baffin Bay.
  
• 21 May 1968
  The U.S.S. Scorpion, a nuclear-powered attack submarine carrying two Mark 45 ASTOR torpedoes with nuclear warheads, sank mysteriously on this day. It was eventually photographed lying on the bottom of the ocean, where all ninety-nine of its crew were lost. Details of the accident remained classified until November 1993, when Navy reports revealed that the cause of the sinking was an accidental detonation of the conventional explosives in one of Scorpion's warheads.

Originally posted by American Mad Man
The US also has nearly FIVE TIMES the number of nuclear warheads as Russia. As this indicates, Russia can not support more then 3,500 nuclear warheads according to START2, and more realistically can not afford to keep more then 2,500 nuclear warheads. The US of course has over 10,000.