The Day We Lost the H-Bomb

Duke constantly received a question from Defense: When can we get the overflights reinstated?

Duke foresaw other troubles ahead, and not just from the Spanish government. The story had broken open, and hordes of international journalists were massing on Spain’s southern shore. Despite Duke’s best efforts, Palomares was swelling into an international news event. He braced himself for a long struggle, concluding his January 22 dispatch to Washington with a warning and a plea: Believe we must be prepared for continued and possibly increased media treatment of accident until fourth bomb located and removed. If much more time elapses without success in search, we may be faced with practical necessity admitting officially one bomb still missing. This in turn carries obvious dangers including potentially triggering off further GOS [government of Spain] official statements possibly including public reference to Spanish demand that refueling and/or overflights nuclear-armed aircraft be stopped. It therefore clearly of utmost urgency that no effort be spared locate fourth bomb with minimum delay. Urge all necessary US resources be provided for search.

5. Parachutes

Joe Ramirez pushed aside the ropes of plastic beads that dangled in place of a door and stepped into the tavern. The small room was dominated by an L-shaped bar. In late afternoon, the tavern was not crowded. Ramirez ordered a drink and stood at the counter near the door. Soon he spied the man he had come looking for: the mayor of Herrerias — also the owner of the bar. The mayor walked over and joined him for a drink. They began to talk.

Ramirez had spent the last few days in Palomares translating, answering questions, and following leads. He had come to this small tavern in the tiny mountain town of Herrerias to track down an especially promising story. A local man had approached Ramirez in the Air Force camp and said, “I understand you’re looking for un artefacto.” Artefacto, Spanish for “artifact” or “device,” had somehow become the favored euphemism for “missing nuclear bomb.” The man pointed to a tiny village perched high in the mountains. “The mayor of that little village has a brother who’s a shepherd,” he said, “and he grazes his flock on this mountain, the one between us and the sea.” The shepherd, he continued, had seen the planes explode and the debris fall; he might have some important information to share.

Ramirez got permission to check it out. He commandeered a vehicle and, with an Air Force lieutenant colonel, drove the narrow, unpaved road to Herrerias. They arrived just before dark, tracked down the mayor in the tavern, and asked if the story was true. The mayor, a gregarious man, said that he did have a brother, a shepherd who lived on the mountain and had seen the accident.

Ramirez asked to speak with him, but the mayor replied that this would be difficult: his brother was deaf and dumb. To complete the picture, the mayor added, “Le llaman Tarzan.” They call him Tarzan.

As the men continued to talk, word spread through town that two Americans had holed up in the bar, and curious villagers began to fill the room. Then an unexpected visitor loomed in the tavern doorway: Tarzan himself. The mayor grabbed his brother’s arm and dragged him over to the two Air Force officers. Using sign language, he explained why the Americans had come. Tarzan hulked over the men but was shy and offered little information. Painstakingly, they dragged his story out. The lieutenant colonel, who spoke only English, asked a question; Ramirez translated it into Spanish for the mayor, who then asked his brother in sign language. Tarzan’s answer traveled back through the same slow route. Over several hours, the officers learned that the shepherd had seen, among the falling debris, a large white double parachute with an object dangling underneath. This sounded promising. At the end of the interview, the lieutenant colonel had one final question: “Ask him if he’ll go with us in a helicopter tomorrow.”

They didn’t need a translator to understand the shepherd’s reply. Tarzan was emphatic: No! No way was he getting into some flying contraption with these Americans! The mayor signed to his brother some more, cajoling and convincing, and told the officers not to worry. They should show up in the helicopter tomorrow morning; Tarzan would be ready.

The next morning around 10 a.m., Ramirez sat in a helicopter hovering above Herrerias, looking down at the village square. The villagers had gathered in a circle to watch the whirring machine, and the chopper’s wash swirled them with dust. As the helicopter set down, Ramirez saw the mayor tugging his brother forward. Hopping out amid the churning dust, Ramirez handed the mayor a helmet fitted with a radio and microphone. The mayor beamed with pleasure, trying on the helmet and strutting for his constituents. Then Ramirez, the mayor, and the reluctant shepherd piled in the chopper and lifted into the sky.

Once airborne, the lieutenant colonel asked where the shepherd had been working at the time of the accident. By the time the question and answer traveled back and forth, the group had overshot the point by several miles. This would never do. The lieutenant colonel ordered the pilot to hover until they established where the shepherd had been standing and where he had seen the parachute and object fall. Information in hand, they headed back to the village. Pleased with the whole adventure, the mayor leapt out of the chopper with a flourish. His brother just looked relieved to be back on solid ground.

Returning to camp, Ramirez gave the new information to his superiors, who dispatched a search team to the shepherd’s hills. Less than a week into the search, the Air Force was still chasing every lead. Searchers, scouring the area, had found the combat mission folder. The heat of the explosion had melted the folder’s plastic coverings together, sealing the top secret codes securely inside.

Searchers also found the box containing additional classified documents, still locked tight. These finds gave the Air Force some measure of relief. But there was still no sign of bomb number four.

Some people began to suspect that the bomb might have exploded in the air, buried itself underground, or fallen into the sea. But it had been only a few days, and the chances remained high that bomb number four had fallen on land near the other three. Perhaps Tarzan’s clue marked the spot. A team headed to the mountains to search the area. They returned without the bomb.

By January 20—the Thursday after the accident — General Wilson realized that finding the bomb and cleaning up the mess would take longer than he originally thought, and he relayed the news to SAC headquarters in Omaha. General John D. Ryan, who had succeeded Tommy Power as SAC’s commander in chief, directed Wilson to use all available resources to find the missing bomb. “Until every avenue of search is exhausted,” he said, “we do not have much of a leg to stand on.” Hundreds of searchers had arrived from Moron and Torrejon the day after the accident and were camping in the dry riverbed near the B-52’s tail section. The first night, the men slept in the open air or under the buses. The next day, as tents and gear arrived, the men set up a rudimentary camp. They called the area “Camp Wilson.” Conditions were rough. Phil Durbin, an airman who arrived from Torrejon, remembers the desert nights as cold and damp. He and his friends, seeing a small wooden bridge in the nearby hills, tore it down and burned it for warmth. Robert Finkel, a squadron commander, slept under a bus with his head in a cardboard box to keep the sand out of his face. The men ate cold C-rations out of metal cans. There were no bathrooms or showers except the Mediterranean Sea.

After a few days of searching with no maps or strategic plan, Wilson’s men got organized. Bombs numbers one, two, and three had fallen in a jagged line along the doomed planes’ flight path, with bomb number one near the water, bomb number three about a mile inland, and bomb number two a mile or so inland from that. Wilson assumed — or at least hoped — that they would find bomb number four somewhere along the same path. Each day, coordinators — soon supplied with photomosaic maps from U.S. Air Force reconnaissance planes — mapped out areas to search. At daybreak, the searchers rumbled out in buses to their assigned patch of desert scrub or tomato farm. The men spread out in a line and walked shoulder to shoulder, eyes glued to the ground, looking for any sign of the bomb. After a certain amount of trudging under the merciless desert sun, the men “ wheeled” the line and walked back to their starting point.

If the searchers saw anything of interest, they marked it with a flag on a pole, a piece of string, or a bit of colored toilet paper. If they found small bits of metal, they placed them in bags for inspection back at camp. Durbin found a chunk of the boom nozzle nearly as long as his arm. Nobody knew which piece of scrap might lead them to bomb number four. Those who thought the bomb had disintegrated in midair found some evidence for their theory: a reservoir — a piece of a bomb mechanism — lying 1,500 feet from bomb number three. Perhaps it was a remnant of the missing weapon. The Air Force sent the scrap to Los Alamos for identification. The verdict: the reservoir was