This may be the biggest Cold War story you've never heard.
On December 5, 1965, the giant American aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga was plowing through the sea towards Japan, its crew of sailors and airmen looking forward the rest and recreation after a month launching missions against targets in Vietnam. That afternoon, Douglas Webster, a young pilot from Ohio, strapped into an A-4 Skyhawk bomber for a routine weapons-loading drill and simulated mission. After mishandling the maneuver and losing control, the pilot and aircraft-armed with a live B43 one-megaton thermonuclear bomb-toppled overboard and sunk to the bottom of the South China sea.
Almost immediately there began a cover-up of this "Broken arrow"-accidental loss of a nuclear weapon that does not risk the outbreak of nuclear war-and the Pentagon only revealed its loss 24 years later. For the first time, drawing on previously classified documents, unpublished photos of the accident aircraft, and the accounts of witnesses, this is the full story of carrier aviation's only "Broken arrow".