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Man Goes Diving For Sea Cucumbers, Finds Missing US Nuke

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Ryan Pickrell China/Asia Pacific Reporter
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A Canadian diver searching for sea cumbers may have solved one of the biggest mysteries of the Cold War.

Sean Smyrichinsky, 45, discovered a large metal object resembling a flying saucer in the ocean while diving off the coast of Western Canada. The Canadian Department of National Defense suspects it might be a nuclear weapon that went missing after a Convair B-36B bomber carrying the bomb crashed in the area in 1950, BBC reports.

“I found this big thing underwater, huge, never seen anything like it before,” Smyrichinsky reportedly said of his discovery. “It’s a UFO,” he further noted, completely unaware that he may have been diving around a nuke from the Cold War-era. His friends told him he was crazy.

It wasn’t until he told an elderly local fisherman about his peculiar find that the actual nature of the mysterious object came to light. “Hey, maybe you found that old bomb they lost,” the fisherman told Smyrichinsky.

The bomb that disappeared at sea was an 11,000 pound Mark IV “Fat Man” similar to the one dropped on Nagasaki. Unlike other similar weapons, this particular nuke was filled with lead, TNT, and uranium rather than plutonium. The bomb was used in a drill designed to prepare the U.S. for a possible nuclear strike on San Francisco, the Vancouver Sun revealed.

During the drill, the engines of the B-36 iced up. Fearing the impact of a land-based detonation, the crew of the B-36, just before their plane went down, jettisoned the bomb in the water. The plane then slammed into the side of a mountain. The crew members bailed out of the aircraft, and five were reportedly killed in the process.

The wreckage from the plane was recovered three years after the accident, but the bomb was never found, which raised concerns that the Russians would acquire it. The missing nuke was the first “broken arrow” incident, an accident involving a nuclear weapon.

The fate of the bomb has long been a mystery.

The Royal Canadian Navy, in response to Smyrichinsky’s reports, dispatched a ship to investigate the discovery. The U.S. insists that the bomb is not armed and is not dangerous.

Dirk Septer, a historian who has written extensively on the missing nuke, is suspicious of Smyrichinsky’s find, particularly the location of the find. “It could be anything,” he told BBC, “Whatever he found, it’s not the nuke.”

Major Steve Neta of the Canadian Armed Forces said that the location is reasonable given the crash site.

“I think every diver wants to find a pot of gold,” Smyrichinsky said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “But you never expect to see this or something like this,” he added.

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