had produced 4,500 of them.
The exact inner workings of the Mark 28 are still classified, but it is possible to make some educated guesses about what lay inside. The bomb contained a fission trigger, which was a plutonium core surrounded with reflective material (probably uranium) to contain the explosion, and high explosive to start the implosion. This “primary,” as it was called, was probably about a foot in diameter and vaguely resembled a soccer ball. Like a soccer ball, the primary had a pattern of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, forming a sphere. Each of these hexagons or pentagons, designed to focus explosive power inward, was called a lens. Each lens was filled with high explosive and attached to a detonator wire. When detonated simultaneously they imploded, crushing the plutonium inside into a critical mass and igniting a fission explosion.
If the high explosive didn’t detonate simultaneously, the plutonium would not be evenly compressed; there would be no critical mass and no nuclear explosion. Such a precise detonation could happen only when a bomb was armed — not the case with the bombs of Palomares. This is not to say that detonating the high explosive is a good thing. Plutonium is highly radioactive, and an explosion could scatter it for miles.
The rest of the Mark 28 bomb contained a secondary fusion bomb and probably a third fission bomb to keep the fusion reaction moving. All the various sections (as well as batteries and electronics) were probably supported by a dense plastic foam. When the primary implodes, the fission emits radiation that causes a series of reactions. In a few hundred microseconds or less, the massive energy crushes a cylinder full of deuterium, sometimes called the “pencil.” Inside the pencil, a plutonium “spark plug” explodes, releasing X-rays and gamma radiation. The radiation shoots outward, reacting with the plastic foam, which swells or explodes and further crushes the deuterium in the pencil. All this complicated engineering implodes and explodes within the blink of an eye, and the result is nuclear fusion. The Mark 28 was a deadly weapon and top secret — not the type of thing the United States wanted to leave lying around southern Spain, where anybody could see it, photograph it, or pick it up and cart it away.
As the sun rose on January 18, the Air Force searchers in Palomares began to gather for the day’s work. For everyone, it had been a long night.
After landing at San Javier, General Wilson had taken a small party and driven about two hours up the coast to visit Rooney, Messinger, and Wendorf in Aguilas. He spoke to them about the accident and arranged for their transportation to Torrejon. Afterward, Wilson and his men drove back to Palomares and convened at the B-52 tail section. The general took a quick look around and listened to the early reports. The charred remains of the dead airmen had been brought to Cuevas de Almanzora, the local government seat. In Cuevas, a priest had said a Mass for the men. Later in the afternoon, authorities laid the wooden caskets in the reception room of the town hall and surrounded them with burning candles. Townspeople filed by to pay their respects.
That evening, General Wilson drove to Cuevas to claim the bodies. Somehow, the townspeople and guardias civiles who had gathered the remains had determined that there were eight bodies, rather than seven, and distributed the remains into eight coffins. Wilson met with the authorities in Cuevas and explained that there had been eleven airmen on the planes and that four had survived, leaving seven deceased. After some bureaucratic struggle, the Spaniards allowed Wilson to sign for seven bodies. Late that night, a baker’s delivery van — the only appropriate vehicle available — carried the remains to San Javier. From there they were flown to Torrejon for identification and then home to America.
After completing this somber duty, General Wilson and his entourage drove back to Palomares to meet with the rest of the disaster control team. Most of the team — and, it seemed, most of the villagers-had crammed into a bar in the center of town. Amid the clamor, Wilson sorted through the day’s good and bad news. The good news was pretty good: searchers had found one bomb intact with no leaking radiation. There seemed to be no one hurt in the village, and certainly no widespread death and destruction. The locals seemed willing to help, and at least thirty-eight guardias civiles had already arrived to aid with searching and security.
The bad news: seven men were dead; two planes lay shattered across the Spanish countryside; there were no accurate maps of Palomares; there was no secure communication link to Torrejon; and there were still three bombs missing.
Wilson had sent a message to Torrejon earlier in the day by using a helicopter radio to talk to a KC-135, which relayed the message to Moron and then sent it on to Madrid. But the chopper was gone and he needed to talk to headquarters. The Air Force team set up a single sideband radio, and Wilson ordered more men, better maps, food, water, and a secure communications link. Because anyone could easily tap into the radio channel, Wilson used the code name “Warner,” which would stick for the rest of the mission. He also sent a messenger to Vera to find a telephone and call Madrid with the news of bomb number one.
When Wilson’s message arrived in Torrejon and Moron around midnight, available airmen were rousted from their barracks and ordered onto buses. Most carried only the clothes on their backs and maybe a blanket. Two convoys left Torrejon by 3 a.m., with 175 men on six buses and an ambulance trundling along with the group. Two additional convoys left Moron by around 4 a.m., with 126 men on six buses. The convoy from Moron also included an ambulance, as well as one van and one truck carrying bedding, food, water, and radios.
In Palomares, Ramirez and the rest of the disaster control team set off to find somewhere to spend the night. Ramirez and a handful of others drove to Cuevas, where, they were told, the Guardia Civil had made some arrangements. The group bumped along over the dark, unfamiliar roads, and eventually found Cuevas and the office of the Guardia Civil. Ramirez, the designated spokesman for the group, pounded on the door and woke up the guardia. The bewildered soldier had no idea who these Americans were or why they were waking him up in the middle of the night asking for somewhere to sleep. Ramirez explained the situation. “It doesn’t have to be a hotel,” he said.
“Anyplace where we can get a bed.” The guardia suggested a couple of boardinghouses, and the Air Force men fanned out across the dark town to see what they could find. Ramirez wound up in an old house and spent the night in a cold, sagging bed, happy to have a blanket and a roof over his head.
In the morning, Ramirez and the rest of his group headed back to Palomares and gathered at the tail section in the riverbed. By 7:30 a.m., they were joined by a seven-man disaster control team from SAC headquarters, who had left Omaha a few hours after the accident and traveled all night. The busloads of men from Moron and Torrejon wouldn’t arrive until early afternoon.
The small teams moved out from the tail section and began searching nearby for the missing bombs, in the hope that they had landed near bomb number one. Aircraft debris — scraps of metal, shards of plastic — lay scattered all around. Radar-jamming chaff resembling silver tinsel hung from the trees.
The teams walked slowly, scanning the ground and marking searched areas with string or toilet paper tied to bushes and poles.
At 9 a.m., helicopters arrived from Moron and began reconnaissance flights. At 10 a.m., a chopper pilot sent word that he saw a metal tube in the rocky hills behind the cemetery, about a mile west of the village. Ramirez and others went to look. There, in the same area he had explored the previous night, Ramirez saw a circular crater, twenty feet across and six feet deep. In the middle of the crater sat a parachute and a bomb. Or rather, part of a bomb.
Bomb number two was in bad shape. Some of the high explosive around the primary had detonated, digging the crater and exploding weapon fragments up to a hundred yards in all directions. What was left in the crater was the secondary — the fusion section of the bomb. Fragments of metal, parts of switches, and connecting rings lay all around. The ready/safe switch lay among the wreckage but was so damaged that its position was unreadable. Ten pounds of high explosive littered the area in small pieces and slivers. The afterbody — the tail section of the bomb, which held the parachutes — had been blasted apart from the rest and lay a hundred yards away. Next to the crumpled afterbody sprawled a ribbon parachute. The chute looked beat up, like a fishing net washed up on a beach after a storm. Another parachute, still tightly packed in its canvas bag, stuck halfway out of the afterbody.
The nuclear core, or pit, was nowhere in sight.
Ramirez didn’t know it, but the area around bomb number two was highly contaminated with plutonium. Although there had been no nuclear explosion, some of the high explosive lenses had detonated from the force of the impact, scattering radioactive plutonium across the countryside. It was, in effect, a dirty bomb. “I didn’t know how an H-bomb worked,” said Ramirez. “But we had been told that if there was radioactivity, it would be low and not harmful. It’s alpha type [that] we could brush off or wash off.”
The “alpha type” radiation that Ramirez had been warned about can be either harmless or lethal, depending on where it goes. Alpha particles — two protons and two neutrons — are given off by radioactive plutonium and uranium as they decay into more stable elements. These particles are relatively large and slow, so they can’t travel
