It happened in a frozen bay a few miles near the base. The rescue job was extremely difficult, as the documentation and video obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act show. It took months for the government to collect thousands of pieces from the B-52—scattered all around the bay—plus 500 million gallons of ice, some of it radioactive.

For a while it was just a giant recovery operation, but then the real problems started. After trying to make sense of all the pieces they were able to gather, they discovered that something was missing. The new documents reveal that they were only able to find three out of the four nuclear bombs on board the plane. The possible reason: "Something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary".

Nevertheless, the government said all four weapons were destroyed and everything was ok. Meanwhile, in April the US government sent a Star III submarine to find the bomb, making the Danish government believe it was a "survey of bottom under the impact point":

Fact that this operation includes search for object or missing weapon part is to be treated as confidential NOFORN [not to be disclosed to any foreign country]. For discussion with Danes, this operation should be referred to as a survey repeat survey of bottom under impact point.

The search was finally abandoned. According to William H Chambers, a former nuclear weapons designer at Los Alamos: "There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components. It would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn't find them." There you go, people. If you are ever attacked by a 45-foot high shrimp, remember to call Mr. Chambers and tell him that, apparently, our new crustacean overlords didn't find it so difficult. [BBC News]

They pore over the 300 photos and videos in the memory card—which probably wasn't exactly legal—landing upon a shot of a bunch of people drunk in a bar, wearing nametags. Though the names themselves seemed to lead nowhere, a couple clicks up and to the right, a little zoom and voila! Our heroes could see the bar's name, written on an awning.

Popping over there, they shook down the bartender for information. The barman remembered a party and a particular "big tipper" who, fortunately for the couple, worked at another bar. They met up with her, and it turned out that her sister was amigos with the Australian who lost the camera. (What kind of amigo, I guess we'll never know.) After a few e-mails, the camera is making its way back to the bloke in Australia, who is happy to "know there are some honest people left in the world." [SMH]

Sure, it's a cute story, but the question is this:

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Someone at Amazon wondered why the power of the web couldn't be brought to bear on this critical problem. Sparing no expense, Amazon arrange for a satellite sweep of the area where Jim Gray must still be located, and stored all the images on its server.

Now you can help find him by searching these images, looking for foreign objects in the water. Might want to mosey on over there and give it a try. Hopefully we can all help find him before it's too late. – Charlie White

Jim Gray Missing [Amazon Mechanical Turk, via TechCrunch]