The Day We Lost the H-Bomb

calculations was vague. Nobody could say for sure when Alvin or Aluminaut or OBSS had “covered” a particular area, because their navigation accuracy and the underwater terrain remained largely unknown. But Richardson had equations to cover these uncertainties. Every night, he crunched numbers using a Frieden calculator — a mechanical adding machine the size of a cash register — in the Boston’s accounting office. Because the office was busy during the day, Richardson made all his calculations from about 11 p.m. to 3 a.m., the chug-chug-chug of the calculator keeping him company. At eight every morning, he presented his new chart to Guest at the admiral’s daily briefing.

Guest grew to love Richardson’s search effectiveness probability chart. Like all salvage missions, the search for the missing bomb was a succession of failures, one day after another of hard work, with nothing to show for it. Richardson’s ever-changing numbers were the only tangible sign of progress. “It’s important psychologically to have something that shows that you’re actually achieving something. And SEP served that purpose,” said Richardson. “It was kind of like the thermometer on the United Fund chart. It keeps going up and up.”

That is to say, the numbers in certain squares kept going up and up; namely, those searched by Red Moody’s inshore divers — probably the only searchers on Task Force 65 properly trained and equipped to do their job. By February 17, they had thoroughly scanned the water from the beach out to eighty feet deep. “He had guys swimming along the shore that were actually looking at the bottom with their eyes,” recalled Richardson. “So I’d always have these very high numbers for Red, like over ninety percent.” The numbers cheered Admiral Guest, not only because they showed progress but because he could then tease Red Moody, the towering, muscular diver, about intimidating the skinny mathematician into fixing his stats.

Deep water, however, was another story. With Alvin, Aluminaut, and OBSS struggling, the numbers in the deepwater boxes remained stubbornly close to zero. At times, Guest moved the submersibles inshore, probably to be able to check off a few more boxes on Richardson’s chart. The submersible crews, with no understanding of the admiral’s motivations, were greatly annoyed by these seemingly arbitrary moves. But the admiral didn’t care, because he was greatly annoyed by the submersibles.

By the time Alvin and Aluminaut had been in Spain for a few weeks, specific grievances began to emerge. During a dive on level terrain, Aluminaut veered off her back-and-forth sweep pattern to examine what appeared to be a piece of airplane wreckage. The crew took photos and presented them to Guest at a meeting on the flagship. Instead of being congratulated on the find, as he expected, Art Markel received a rebuke. “What are you doing, going out of the area?” demanded Guest. “I think I’ll have to send you back to the States, because you don’t know how to take orders.” Markel, proud of his work and his ship, was furious.

The Alvin crew had its own problems with the admiral. The high seas had led to several close calls for the little sub. On February 23, the waves rose too high for the crew to maneuver Alvin into the well deck of the Fort Smiling, so the Navy ship used its crane to lift Alvin over the side. It was a risky maneuver, dangling the fragile sub close to the side of the ship, and Earl Hays did not want to repeat it. He would not risk Alvin or her crew by diving in rough weather again and sent a message to the flagship stating so.

Soon after, Hays attended a briefing on the flagship. Guest told the scientist that he wanted Alvin to dive by 2 p.m. the following day. Knowing Alvin would dive only if the weather permitted, Hays replied, “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.” Guest, taken aback by the scientist’s insolence, asked what he meant. Hays, equally insulted by Guest’s demand, replied, “If you’re going to give me orders like that, Admiral, I’m going to take Alvin and go home.” With that, Guest threw Hays out of the room.

Then he turned to Brad Mooney, who had witnessed the exchange, and said, “What the hell do you do with a guy like that?”

Mooney, used to dealing with both admirals and scientists, knew that the two men came from vastly different cultures, one that demanded obedience and one that questioned authority. But Mooney also knew that no matter what their differences, these people had to work together to find the bomb. He said to Guest, “Admiral, he’s a researcher. Why don’t you not talk to him anymore and let me talk to him?” From that day on, says Mooney, Guest never spoke to Earl Hays. Such events soured the already strained relationship between Guest and the Alvin crew. Some of the crew understood the admiral, but many, according to Mooney, just “locked into their minds what a bastard Guest was.” By the end of February, Guest had all the deep-search tools he was going to get. Despite the personnel difficulties, Aluminaut and Alvin were diving and searching. The USNS Mizar had arrived, with hydrophones that could navigate Alvin more effectively. Mizar also brought a deep-towed camera sled to photograph the bottom. Often, the Mizar spent its days tracking Alvin and its nights taking photographs. The Ocean Bottom Scanning Sonar was up and running, at least for now.

One Navy captain estimated that if all the deep-ocean gear worked well every day, they could cut the search time from three years to two.

Catching glimpses of divers, minisubs, and high-tech gear, the press played up the James Bond angle. Life magazine reported, “At first the Thunderball aspects of the great search were not discernible. But gradually the search force took on the familiar trappings: squads of frogmen emerged on the beaches, and tiny two-and three-man subs prowled the waters. Now the spirit of James Bond is all over this tiny coastal area of southern Spain.” Admiral Guest would probably have disagreed. He was working with temperamental gadgets, experimental subs, and disrespectful scientists. He had nothing like the custom gear designed by James Bond’s Q.

11. The Fisherman’s Catch

One Sunday morning in February, Joe Ramirez sat in the claims tent at Camp Wilson, poring over legal documents. Ramirez plunged deep into the villagers’ claims, trying to place a value on each farmer’s patch of alfalfa, peas, or tomatoes. As Ramirez worked, the phone rang. General Wilson wanted to see him.

Ramirez scampered to Wilson’s tent to find an irritated general. “Your friend the fisherman,” Wilson said, looking at Ramirez with annoyance, “has run the blockade.” Early that morning, Simo had sailed his fishing boat into the Navy’s restricted area (which, as it happened, covered some prime fishing grounds). Simo had lowered his nets and caught something heavy, which he believed was the bomb. He had dragged the object to a small cove in nearby Terreros and tried to haul it up, but it had proved too heavy to reel in. Simo had radioed the Air Force with the news. I have your bomb, he said. If you want it, come get it.

Ramirez’s first thought was “Damn, we finally found this bomb!” General Wilson gave the orders: Ramirez and two EOD divers should fly to Terreros and check out the situation. If Simo had the bomb, Ramirez should secure the area and report back to him.

So, at about 11:30 in the morning, Ramirez climbed into a helicopter with Red Moody and Oliver Andersen and headed up the coast.

By this point, Air Force searchers had accepted that bomb number four was probably not lying intact in an open crater. Many assumed that the bomb had fallen into the sea. But as the sea search dragged on, several other possibilities arose.

A Palomares schoolteacher said that he had seen something on the day of the accident: a large cloud of dust near the B-52 tail impact point. Perhaps, thought investigators, the bomb had buried itself in the desert sand. Searchers were ordered to mark any sort of crater, depression, or patch of earth that looked disturbed. The problem was, nobody knew what the crater above a buried bomb might look like. General Wilson asked the Sandia engineers to arrange some drop tests. They contacted their colleagues in Albuquerque, and they quickly organized a test at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, in a stretch of desert that resembled the land around Palomares.

The engineers at Sandia assumed that if the bomb had stayed intact before hitting the ground, the searchers would have found scattered debris on the surface. Since that hadn’t happened, the engineers assumed that the bomb had broken apart in midair and that only the heavy primary or secondary sections had buried themselves