Alvin’s limelight. But Guest rejected the idea. If Aluminaut got into trouble, he reasoned, she might have to drop her emergency ballast, leaving him with a new problem: a two- ton bomb hooked to a 4,400-pound lead weight. Guest never explained his reasoning to the Aluminaut crew, however, and this brush-off — the latest in a string of them — left the crew bitterly disappointed. “It is quite apparent that CTF 65 does not want Aluminaut in the act if they can help it,” Markel wrote. “I am quite disgusted over this whole mess.” Markel had half a mind to take his lifting rig to the sunken ship of antiquity and hoist a cannon to the surface. That would show the world what Aluminaut could do.
As the recovery plan slogged forward, the press got antsy. On March 22, the Los Angeles Times ran a pessimistic front-page article that was reprinted in the International Herald Tribune. The headline read, “H-Bomb May Slip into Deep Sea Crevice, Balk Recovery.” The article reported that the weapon was teetering on the edge of a steep undersea slope, in imminent danger of sliding into the abyss. “American officials here and at the scene are more pessimistic now about the situation than at any time since the search began,” said the article. “They are depressed at having come so near only to face the possibility that a stray undersea current and the peculiar bottom topography may rob them of success.”
Duke, disturbed by such gloomy press, asked permission to release regular progress reports without consulting the government of Spain. It is unclear whether he ever received a reply. But it is doubtful that Admiral Guest would have wanted to cooperate with such a plan; he had little interest in keeping the world press informed of his every move. In fact, he and his staff had become increasingly alarmed by the detailed information regularly appearing in the papers. There was a leak somewhere, and they didn’t like it. The Air Force thought that someone in the Pentagon was talking to Washington reporters or that someone at Camp Wilson was chatting with the press. But Guest suspected the embassy in Madrid, perhaps even the ambassador himself. He didn’t know Duke well, but he disliked the ambassador and didn’t trust him. There is no evidence, however, that Duke passed illicit information to the press. Indeed, he seemed as mystified by the leaks as anyone.
On the morning of March 23, soon after Red Moody sent POODL to the bottom, McCamis and Wilson flew Alvin over to have a look. Mizar had landed the anchor and POODL about eighty feet from the bomb. When Alvin arrived at the site, the pilots saw that POODL had landed on the bottom and fallen over, spilling its lines into a tangle. Alvin tried to reach through the metal bars to grab the lines but couldn’t. It then picked the remaining line off the anchor and tried to attach it to the billowing chute. With the pilots still getting used to the mechanical arm, the job proved difficult.
Finally, they hooked the line into the parachute. But by that time, Alvin’s battery had run low and the sub had to surface. At the debriefing, the pilots reported that the bomb had moved about six feet and now rested in a small ravine.
The next day, Wilson and McCamis dove again. Again, they couldn’t clear the tangled lines from POODL. They returned to the anchor line, which was already attached to the parachute, and tried to connect it more firmly. Alvin grabbed the grapnel and slowly, painstakingly twisted it into at least six parachute risers. Then the parachute billowed, and Alvin backed off. The pilots reported the news to the surface: they had snarled the grapnel in the chute. And, they added, the other two lines remained fouled on the POODL. The pilots couldn’t possibly reach them.
Guest’s staff met aboard the Mizar. The admiral did not want to lift the bomb with only one line, which seemed way too risky. But his staff pushed him to try. The breaking strength of the attached line, they argued, was ten times the weight of the weapon and rig combined. If they waited, the grapnel might work itself loose, or the line could tangle. Bad weather posed a constant threat. If the wind blew up, it could cancel operations for days. Washington and Madrid were losing patience. The sooner they recovered the bomb, the better.
Guest didn’t like the idea. But eventually he was persuaded.
Guest’s staff made a plan. Mizar would hover directly above the bomb, then winch it straight up through its center well, or moon pool. Once the bomb was safely off the seafloor, Mizar would pull it slowly toward shallow water, winching it up along the way. When the bomb was about 100 feet below the surface, EOD divers would attach two sturdy wire straps, and the bomb could be hoisted aboard a ship.
McCamis, still underwater in Alvin, heard that Mizar was going to attempt the lift. He asked if Alvin could stay submerged so the pilots could observe the operation. The answer came from the surface: No. It was too dangerous for Alvin to linger during the lift. The pilots were ordered to surface.
Meanwhile, Red Moody was having his own argument with the captain of the Mizar. Moody worried that the Mizar couldn’t hold position directly above the weapon. He suggested that the captain place landing craft, known as Mike boats, on either side of the ship to hold the Mizar steady.
The captain refused, saying he could maneuver his ship without help. Moody gave up, and the lift got under way.
The Mizar’s crew snagged the floating buoy tied to the anchor and the POODL. They jettisoned the buoy and attached the lift line to the ship’s winch. Moody and Jon Lindbergh stood by the Mizar’s moon pool to watch the operation. Guest and members of his staff waited in the ship’s laboratory, watching the instrument panels. At about 7:30 p.m., Mizar’s winch began to turn. Guest started to pray.
After about an hour, the instruments noted a slight strain as POODL rose off the seafloor. Fifteen minutes later, the rope took a heavy strain: the anchor had cleared the bottom. Slowly, the winch turned. The line grew steadily more taut, but the instruments showed that the strain was not severe.
Ten minutes passed. Twenty. Thirty. The instruments showed another strain. The bomb had lifted off the bottom.
Three minutes later, the instruments jumped. Moody and Lindbergh, watching the line, saw it suddenly go slack. Staring at the loose line, Lindbergh felt a terrible sinking feeling. Moody thought,
“Oh, shit.”
The winch took another long hour to reel in the anchor. The line below the anchor — the one that had been attached to the bomb — ended in a frayed stump. The bomb itself was gone. Looking at the mangled rope, Lindbergh guessed that about three fourths of the strands had been cut cleanly on some sharp object. The rest had just split.
Moody later discovered that Mizar had, in fact, drifted off course while raising the bomb. The captain had cut power while the winch turned, sending the ship drifting toward shore and likely dragging the bomb upslope before lifting it. But it’s not clear if Mizar’s drift snapped the line. The line could have fouled on the anchor flukes, rubbed on a sharp rock, or even cut itself on the POODL. Perhaps the nylon line was too prone to splitting or this particular line was defective.
Nobody ever figured it out for sure.
McCamis and Wilson were eating dinner when they heard the bad news. “Oh, boy,” said Mac. “Now we got to go find it again.”
Alvin needed a battery charge and repairs to her ballast system and couldn’t dive again for almost a full day. The admiral ordered Aluminaut to head down and look for the bomb. Several times, Mizar reported that the sub passed within 100 feet of the weapon’s former position, but the Aluminaut crew saw no sign of it. After five hours of searching, they were ordered to surface to avoid disturbing the bottom further. When Alvin returned to the weapon site on the evening of March 25, the bottom was scored with deep gouges. “The slope looked [as] if it had been torn up by bulldozers,” said Mac. The pilots found chunks of stone, clay, and mud, but no bomb.
The broken line seemed like a small mishap — an unlucky break rather than a tragedy. The recovery team hadn’t moved the weapon far from its original resting place, and they knew where they had dropped it. How far could it have gone? Surely, the subs would soon find it again. So, as Task Force 65 combed the ocean floor, the embassy staffers didn’t panic. Instead, they continued to argue about how to display the bomb when Guest finally brought it up. Ever since word had leaked out that the bomb had been found, an international chorus had been
