Lost nuclear bomb left to rot on sea-bed

A lost United States nuclear bomb may still lie on the seabed off the coast of Greenland, 32 years after the aircraft carrying it crashed on the Arctic ice.

A lost United States nuclear bomb may still lie on the seabed off the coast of Greenland, 32 years after the aircraft carrying it crashed on the Arctic ice.

The sensational claim, made by a leading Danish newspaper yesterday, will be a boost for opponents of America's planned new missile defence system. The US wants to use a base at Thule in Greenland for the scheme, but it was precisely the presence of that base which led to nuclear weapons being deployed in the area.

The crash of a nuclear-armed B-52 on 21 January 1968 caused a crisis in relations between Copenhagen and Washington, as officially Denmark prohibited nuclear weapons on its soil. Denmark looks after the external relations of Greenland, its former colony. The aircraft landed on the ice in Baffin Bay. Three of its four bombs broke on impact, and tons of radioactive ice and debris were recovered. But new documents show that one of the four B28 thermonuclear weapons, with a yield of between 70 and 350 kilotons, may still lie on the seabed.

"Detective work by a group of former Thule workers indicates that an unexploded nuclear bomb probably still lies on the seabed off Thule," said Jyllands Posten, a well-respected Danish newspaper.

Denmark's Ritzau news agency reported that film from a US submarine searching for the bomber's wreckage showed a bomb-like object. And the US State Department said at the time only that the bombs had been accounted for, not that they had been recovered.

The US maintained up to a dozen nuclear-armed bombers airborne 24 hours a day. The bomber, codenamed Butterknife V, had been flying above Thule as part of a secret mission to monitor the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar located at the base.

Another B28 bomb was lost when a B-52 collided with a KC-135 Stratotanker in January 1966 over Spain. It took 80 days and cost more than $50m (£33.5m) to find the weapon.

The reminder of America's apparently casual ways with nuclear weapons comes at a very inopportune time. The US wants to use the bases at Thule and Fylingdales, in Britain, for its National Missile Defense scheme, as part of an Upgraded Early Warning Radar.

It also wants to use the Menwith Hill Signals Intelligence Centre near Harrogate for its Space-Based Infrared System.

There is strong opposition in Greenland to the plan, as it would make Thule an even more attractive target for nuclear attack. "It would be dangerous for Greenland to permit an upgrade of the Thule radar," Johan Lund Olsen, an influential member of the leftist Inuit party, said in the Greenland local parliament in February.

Greenland's prime minister, Jonathan Motzfeldt, said last November: "If upgrading the radar is on the agenda, Greenland's government expects to be directly involved in the deliberations."