The Day We Lost the H-Bomb

that the note inside was classified. Red looked at the note and then at the messenger. “Tell them I’m coming back,” he said. He asked for an early flight.

That afternoon in Spain, Tony Richardson and John Bruce, the mathematician and oceanographer who had escorted Simo out to sea the day before, visited the fisherman at his house. Simo found the fathometer trace and unraveled it on the dinner table. John Bruce looked at the trace and questioned Simo. He saw nothing resembling the falling weapon.

The Americans told Simo that he would be paid for the previous day’s excursion — his boat had lost an entire day of fishing. Then Bruce, curious to see Simo’s fathometer, asked if they could visit the Manuela Orts. Simo agreed. The men boarded the ship, took a look around, and were impressed with the sleek vessel and its modern gear. When they finished, Simo offered to buy the men a drink, and they headed to a nearby tavern.

At the bar, Tony Richardson sipped a beer and watched news of the Gemini 8 space shot. The ship had launched from Cape Kennedy that morning and was due to orbit earth for three days. During that time, Gemini pilots planned to link the nose of their capsule with a satellite called Agena. If they pulled it off, it would be the first time two crafts had docked in space, a key component in the plan for landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

After a flawless start to the flight, Gemini docked to the satellite successfully. But shortly thereafter, a thruster on the spacecraft stuck open and set the linked vehicles spinning crazily The astronauts separated their capsule from the satellite and stabilized the craft, using rockets normally reserved for reentry. NASA ordered the crew to make an emergency landing in the Pacific. The astronauts were picked up after three hours at sea.

The outer-space drama received massive news coverage: a banner headline on the front page of The New York Times, with more than two full pages of stories. Alvin and Aluminaut’ s deep-sea rendezvous, the first time two submersibles had ever accomplished such a feat, remained secret.

The same day that General Wilson received Guest’s report, he sent three nuclear weapons experts to the Fort Snelling to look at the Alvin photographs. One man worked for the Atomic Energy Commission; the other two were EOD officers who had several years’ experience with the Mark 28.

The weapons experts showed the Alvin crew photos of a Mark 28 bomb, and they recognized it immediately as the object they had seen. “That’s it!” the crew said. The weapons team then examined the photos that Wilson had taken underwater. Although the parachute had wrapped itself around the object almost completely, the experts saw what appeared to be a lift lug. They also recognized the parachute as the right type for a Mark 28. Convinced that the Alvin crew had seen the bomb, the weapons experts took a boat to the flagship to tell Admiral Guest.

On board the USS Albany, the experts found Guest resistant to their news. “It is the opinion of my team that they had difficulties in convincing CTF-65 of similarities between the two sets of photographs,” wrote General Wilson in a secret telegram to his Air Force superiors the next day.

“Offers by my EOD team to assist in recovery operations and provide technical assistance met with cool reception.” Wilson promised to keep his superiors in the loop as new developments arose.

In the same message, Wilson also mentioned that both he and Guest had received marching orders from the embassy in Madrid. The identification and recovery of the weapon must be handled secretly. Only the embassy, working with the government of Spain, could make public announcements on the matter.

In Madrid, Duke was determined to keep the rest of this story under his control. If he played his cards right, the weapon recovery could become a proud moment for the U.S. and Spanish governments, an example of how well the two countries had worked together to tackle a tough problem. In the upcoming base negotiations, Spanish officials would remember how well the Americans had handled the accident, scoring points for U.S. negotiators.

But on March 17, two days after Alvin found the parachute, Duke’s phone rang, and his vision of a smooth ride to the finish was shattered. The man on the phone was Harry Stathos, the Madrid bureau chief for UPI, who had just returned from a trip to Germany. On the plane, he had struck up a conversation with a Pan Am pilot, who had been out drinking with an Air Force colonel the night before. The colonel had told the pilot, who told the reporter, that the bomb had been found. Now Stathos asked Duke: Had it? Duke said simply, “No comment.” But the word was out.

Trying to nip this gossip in the bud, Duke decided to hold a press conference to announce the news officially. The ambassador was hosting a gala reception at the embassy that evening. He would talk to the press when the party ended. Staffers sent word to the press corps to assemble at the American Embassy at 1 a.m.

Meanwhile, Duke sent a telegram to the secretary of state. In light of the UPI news break, he said, he planned to make the following public statement:

The undersea vessel, Alvin, made contact on March 16th with an object lying in 2,500 feet of water approximately five miles off shore near Palomares. Military experts have evaluated underwater photographs taken of the object and believe it to be the missing nuclear weapon. Actions are being taken to recover the device. The photographs show a parachute attached to an object with [sic] is similar in size and shape to the missing nuclear weapon. The parachute, however, is covering part of the object preventing positive identification. Experts who have examined the photographs indicate that the casing appears to be intact, thereby precluding any radioactive contamination in the water.

At 12:45 a.m., as reporters gathered in the embassy, Duke received a reply from the State Department, ordering him to cancel the press conference and say nothing. Instead, the embassy information officer, William Bell, read a telegram from Secretary of State Dean Rusk to the assembled reporters: “There have been hopeful developments but I cannot give you further information at this time. If we have a positive identification and recovery, we will so inform you.” The reporters were furious. And the slight did not stop them from filing stories for the following day.

The articles were remarkably accurate. They reported that Alvin had found the bomb and parachute at 2,500 feet and that experts had seen photos and identified the weapon. A front-page article in The Washington Post also explained that the object rested precariously on an undersea slope a few miles off the coast of Palomares. “Recovery promises to be a delicate operation,” the article added. “Not only is the parachute-shrouded object already in deep water, but apparently it is balanced on the slope in such a way that a wrong nudge could send it rolling into even deeper water.” A page-one story in The New York Times predicted a fast recovery. According to officials, claimed the article, it would take only up to three days to recover the weapon. “No pictures of the bomb or the recovery operations would be permitted,” it added, “because of the highly secret nature of the material.”

Duke may have been unhappy about the news break, but he shared the reporters’ confidence. He was certain that Alvin had found the bomb but also felt, contrary to the Times’ report, that to ensure credibility the Navy must display the recovered bomb to Spanish officials and the press.

The military thought that was a terrible idea. First, there was the problem of logistics: nobody had ever recovered a weapon from this depth. Guest didn’t know how long the recovery might take or if it would go smoothly. He also had no idea if the weapon — if it was the weapon — was intact or broken and perhaps leaking radiation. As for the Air Force, it had no interest in showing a top secret H-bomb to the press. It had never displayed a nuclear weapon in public before. Why start now?

Confident that he could iron out these disagreements, Duke formed a committee to devise a plan for the public recovery and viewing. Looking ahead, he also drafted a press release, which he sent to the secretary of state on March 18 for review:

The fourth and final weapon from the January 17 crash near Palomares Spain has been recovered today and is enroute to the United States at this time. The casing was intact and no release of radioactivity into the coastal waters has occurred. The weapon was located on March 16 in 2500 feet of water, approximately five miles off shore by the submersible Alvin. Photographs taken at that time tentatively identified the object as the missing weapon. The recovery of this weapon brings to a close the search phase of the operation. All wreckage fragments and associated aircraft material of interest to the US have now been located and recovered.