Nuclear bomb missing for 66 years may have been found

  • 09/11/2016
A replica of the famed missing bomb (Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada)
A replica of the famed missing bomb (Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada)

A deep-sea diver looking for sea cucumbers is believed to have discovered a nuclear bomb that has lay dormant for nearly 70 years off the coast of Canada.

Sean Smyrichinsky was diving in waters near British Columbia last month when he came across a metal object "bigger than a king-size bed", he told the BBC.

After returning to the surface, he described it as "really weird" to his fellow divers and said it might be a UFO.

After speaking to a friend on the mainland about what he had found, Mr Smyrichinsky realised it might be the missing nuke - and now the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) is looking into it.

The mystery started during the Cold War. Despite wreckage of the US B-36 plane carrying the nuke being found hundreds of kilometres inland, no trace of the bomb was ever found.

A spokesperson for the DND said they had high hopes the object is indeed the missing bomb - but aviation historian Dirk Septer said there was no chance, as the diver's location was completely wrong.

"It could be anything - whatever he found, it's not the nuke," Mr Septer told the BBC.

If it is actually the missing bomb, the US government says it shouldn't actually contain active nuclear material.

The DND has now sent naval ships to the site to analyse the object.

Newshub.