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US 'Lost Nuke In Greenland In 1968'

An investigative report by the BBC reveals that one of the four nuclear weapons onboard the nuclear-armed B52 bomber is not accounted for.

The plane, co-piloted by John Haug and Joe D'Amario, crashed on the ice a few miles out from the Thule Air Base on January 21, 1968.

The Pentagon maintains that all four nuclear weapons were 'destroyed' in the crash, when high explosives surrounding the weapons had detonated.

The blasts did not set off the actual nuclear devices since they had not been armed by the crew.

According to declassified US government documents obtained by the BBC, investigators piecing together the fragments in the aftermath of the crash realized that only three of the weapons could be accounted for.

The documents also reveal that there had been a re-frozen layer of ice near the crash site with shroud lines from a weapon parachute.

"Speculate something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary," reads the document, the primary or secondary referring to parts of the weapon

The US then, according to the documents, sent a Star III submarine to the crash site to search for the weapon. The operation, however, encountered technical problems.

The search was eventually abandoned.

"There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components," William H Chambers, a former nuclear weapons designer at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory who was involved in the aftermath of the Thule crash, told the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"It would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn't find them," he said as explanation for the US decision to abandon the search.

The Pentagon has declined to comment on the BBC investigation.

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