On December 5, 1965, a month after the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga‘s departure from a U.S. naval base in Subic Bay, a Broken Arrow incident (i.e. an accident involving a nuclear weapon) occurred.
The attack jet United States Navy Douglas A-4E Skyhawk, manned by American pilot Lieutenant Douglas M. Webster, accidentally fell off the carrier while being rolled from the level 2 hangar to the level 2 elevator. Unfortunately, the Skyhawk was carrying a nuclear weapon at that time, specifically the Mk. 43 free-fall bomb which contains at least a megaton’s worth of nuclear explosive. The accident happened just 80 miles from Okinawa. The pilot as well as the aircraft and the nuclear bomb were never recovered, and it’s not until the 1980s that the Pentagon revealed the loss of such weapon.
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