The Day We Lost the H-Bomb

near an adjacent search area, C-4, closer to the actual point where Simo had seen the “dead man” hit the water. Mac asked the support ship’s captain if he could “play stupid” and steer Alvin out of its assigned space.

“You’re the controller,” said the captain. “Why not?”

McCamis seized the moment and sent the sub into the new area. Near the end of the dive, pilot Bill Rainnie spotted something on the bottom.

“Wait a minute, I see something,” Rainnie said.

“What?” Wilson asked.

“I’m not sure, a little to the left, that’s it, no, dammit, you went over it, to the right.”

“What?”

“To the right, dammit! That’s it, right on target.”

“What is it?”

It’s nothing, Rainnie said. Never mind.

The pilots saw nothing else of interest and surfaced soon afterward. Mac’s gamble, it seemed, had been a bust.

When they arrived back on the Fort Smiling, the pilots handed off their film for developing. That night at their briefing, the Alvin crew gathered around the latest batch of photos. Mac, looking at the pictures, spotted something odd — a curious track in the sediment. It looked, he said, “like a barrel had been dragged over the bottom, end to end.” Brad Mooney agreed with Mac. “To me, it looked like a torpedo had slid down,” said Mooney. “It had a curved shape to it, all the way down.” The pilots were excited. What they were seeing, they hoped, was the track of bomb number four sliding down the undersea slope. The next day, this time with official permission, the Alvin crew returned to the area to look for the track. They couldn’t find it. They returned on March 3, 4, and 7, combing the bottom, going over and over the area where they had photographed the track. Nothing.

On March 8, the day of Ambassador Duke’s swim, the task force suddenly yanked Alvin off the trail and sent her to search a shallow inshore area. Near the beach, some undersea gullies plunged too deep for Navy divers to search. Most likely, Admiral Guest had sent Alvin to investigate these gullies so he could check another square off his chart. But whatever the admiral’s intentions, the Alvin crew received no explanation for the sudden change and no information about when they could return to the promising track. The move, which seemed completely arbitrary, demoralized the crew and hardened their attitudes toward Guest. “My turn at surface control,” grumbled Mac, “and we’re still messing around in 800 feet of water.”

By the third week in March, the mood of the searchers had settled into a mix of frustration, boredom, determination, and despair. Alvin moved back to deeper water but couldn’t find the mysterious track. Aluminaut, likewise, was coming up empty-handed. The Ocean Bottom Scanning Sonar, Task Force 65’s only unmanned deep search system, made nine runs over a dummy test shape and couldn’t find it. On March 12, an OBSS towed by the USS Notable snagged a ridge, snapped its line, and never came up from the bottom.

The divers had wrapped up most of their inshore search, leaving Red Moody without much to do.

Guest asked the long-faced Moody if he wanted to head home to Charleston. With little work left for him in Spain, Red agreed. On March 14, Red Moody flew to Rota Naval Air Station to catch a plane home.

Ambassador Duke, picking up on the mood in Palomares and catching wind of the shifting tone in Washington, sensed that the search might soon be called off. Trying to ensure his role in the endgame, Duke wrote to Jack Valenti, special assistant to Lyndon Johnson: Madrid, March 14, 1966

CONFIDENTIAL

Dear Jack:

Word has reached me that Cy Vance is heading up an interdepartmental group to cover all aspects of the search and recovery operations in connection with the nuclear weapon problems here in the Palomares area of Spain.

This brings to mind the possibility that the search for the missing device might be called off. The Spanish Government, of course, is not unaware of this possibility, and I foresee no irreparable damage to our relationships if such a decision is handled extremely carefully and properly. Through other channels I am suggesting to the Department that thought be given to my being called back to go over in great detail how such a step should be handled. I have in mind recommendations such as a hand-carried letter from the President to the Chief of State here giving him personal reassurances in the matter.

I write you now (events happen so fast) in order to head off any possibility of premature announcements, either at the White House level or State Department level, before I would be given an opportunity to be heard and subsequently empowered to handle the matter at this end. The manner in which the Palomares incident is terminated will be of great importance not only in Spain but to every nation in the world where there are nuclear overflights or bases.

With every best wish,

Sincerely,

Angie

On the following day, Tuesday, March 15, Tony Richardson, the baby-faced mathematician analyzing the search for Admiral Guest, sat on a small boat skipping across the waves toward Camp Wilson. Along with a WHOI oceanographer named John Bruce, Richardson planned to pick up Simo Orts and revisit, once again, the area of his parachute sighting. The Navy searchers worried that they had misread Simo’s point and were searching the wrong area. Perhaps another outing with Simo, now widely known as “Paco de la Bomba,” could set their minds at ease.

Richardson arrived at Camp Wilson around 10 a.m. to meet Simo and the Navy men who had driven the fisherman from Aguilas. The group climbed back onto the boat and headed out to the minesweeper USS Salute. Over coffee, the men discussed the search. Simo told the group that he had taken a fathometer tracing on the day of the accident — perhaps it contained some clues. He also let the men in on a plan. By attaching some small lines and hooks to his trawling nets, he said, he could probably grab the bomb’s parachute. If the Navy didn’t find it soon — or abandoned the search — he just might go out there and snag it himself.

While Simo and his group chatted, Admiral Guest sat on the USS Boston. His response to the Cyrus Vance committee was due in Washington that day, and Guest and his team had been working on it for four days. The long memo answered all the committee’s questions in comprehensive detail. In it, Guest explained Richardson’s search effectiveness probability, estimating that he needed thirty more working days to bring Alfa 1 to 95 percent. For Alfa 2, he would need only twelve more days. There was, however, an undersea canyon stretching between the two search areas, its slopes and floor slimy with ooze. The weapon could be lying there, completely buried in the mud, invisible.

On that same morning, the Alvin crew prepared for their last dive in the area where they had seen the track. They were supposed to get a new transponder installed that morning to allow the Mizar to track them within about 130 feet. After that, they would be transferred to Bravo, a secondary search area. However, when the new gear arrived, it required two days of bench testing before installation in Alvin. Knowing that Alvin would be sitting idle, Brad Mooney nagged Admiral Guest for another day in C-4. Guest brushed him off. The area had already been searched to 98 percent. It was time to move on. But Mooney persisted. “All right, goddamn it,” Guest told Mooney. “One more day, and that’s all.”

That day Mac McCamis and Val Wilson piloted the sub, with a WHOI technician, Art Bartlett, tagging along as the observer. As the sub descended, Mac spoke to Bill Rainnie, who was the surface controller that day. Mac told Rainnie to put them right on the elusive track, because today was his son’s birthday.

Alvin drifted down, and almost as soon as the sub reached the bottom, Wilson saw the track. He snapped pictures and shouted directions to McCamis, as the pilot struggled to hover near the track without stirring up clouds of silt. Soon Mac could see the track out the front window — it seemed to head