The 1965 Philippine Sea A-4 crash was a

Broken Arrow incident The United States Armed Forces uses a number of terms to define the magnitude and extent of nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents in order to reduce the time taken to report the type of incident, thus streamlining the radio communications ...

in which a

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

Douglas A-4E Skyhawk attack aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon fell into the sea off Japan from the aircraft carrier . The aircraft, pilot and weapon were never recovered.

The accident

On 5 December 1965, 31 days after ''Ticonderoga''s departure from U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay in the Philippines, the attack jet fell over the side during a training exercise while being rolled from the number 2 hangar bay to the number 2 elevator. The pilot, Lieutenant (junior grade) Douglas M. Webster; the aircraft, Douglas A-4E BuNo ''151022'' of VA-56; and the

B43 nuclear bomb The B43 was a United States air-dropped variable yield thermonuclear weapon used by a wide variety of fighter bomber and bomber aircraft. The B43 was developed from 1956 by Los Alamos National Laboratory, entering production in 1959. It entered ...

were never recovered from the depth. The accident was said to occur from

Kikai Island is one of the Satsunan Islands, classed with the Amami archipelago between Kyūshū and Okinawa. The island, in area, has a population of approximately 7,657 persons. Administratively the island forms the town of Kikai, Kagoshima Prefecture ...

Kagoshima Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands. Kagoshima Prefecture has a population of 1,599,779 (1 January 2020) and has a geographic area of 9,187 km2 (3,547 sq mi). Kagoshima Prefecture borders Kumamoto P ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. ''Ticonderoga'' had aboard

Carrier Air Wing Five Carrier Air Wing Five (CVW-5) is a United States Navy aircraft carrier air wing based at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. The air wing is attached to the aircraft carrier . It was initially formed in 1943. It has participated in the Second Wor ...

during this cruise, with two squadrons of Skyhawks. The lost aircraft was part of Attack Squadron 56 (VA-56); VA-144 was the other.

Number of weapons

Though most sources state that a single weapon was involved, a document from

Los Alamos National Lab Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in ...

indicates that two weapons were involved.

Revelation

It was not until 1989 that the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national sec ...

revealed the proximity of the lost one-megaton

H-bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...

to Japanese territory. The revelation inspired a diplomatic inquiry from Japan requesting details.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Philippine Sea A-4 incident 1965 in military history Aviation accidents and incidents in 1965 Aviation accidents and incidents involving nuclear weapons Cold War military history of the United States 1965 in Japan United States Navy in the 20th century Philippine Sea Japan–United States relations December 1965 events in Asia

The accident

Number of weapons

Revelation

See also

References