Next , on December 5 , 1965 , in an incident at sea near Okinawa , an A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft rolled off of an elevator of the aircraft carrier the USS Ticonderoga ( CV-14 ) into 16,000 feet of water resulting in the loss of the pilot , the aircraft , and the B43 nuclear bomb it was carrying , all of which were too deep for recovery . Since the ship was traveling to Japan from duty in the Vietnam war zone , no public mention was made of the incident at the time and it would not come to light until 1981 when a Pentagon report revealed that a one-megaton bomb had been lost . Japan then formally asked for details of the incident
an incident at sea near Okinawa
1965 Philippine Sea A-4 incident
U.S. nuclear weapons in Japan