The Day We Lost the H-Bomb

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To give CURV as much freedom as possible, the commander of the Petrel, Max Harrell, had to hold his ship almost directly over the bomb each time it dove. And he couldn’t use the Petrel’s own power: the CURV lines dangled dangerously near the Petrel’s propeller, and Harrell couldn’t risk turning it on. Instead, he decided to position the ship with two Mike boats, one attached to the bow and one to the stern. By directing them with walkie-talkies, he would try to keep his ship over the bomb, with only 50 yards of leeway in any direction. The first time they tried the maneuver, both Mike boats got tangled in their own tow lines and had to be untangled by divers and boat crews.

Harrell would have to keep them untangled — and in position — for at least ten hours each dive.

While Harrell ironed out the positioning, the CURV team prepped their lift line. The machine shop had finished Bob Pace’s grapnel, strength-tested it to 10,000 pounds, and found it could hold the weight. The grapnel was attached to one end of a braided nylon line that stretched 3,200 feet, well over half a mile. The other end of the line was hooked to a buoy. The rest of the lift line — the entire midsection — was attached to CURV’s umbilical cable with masking tape at regular intervals. The tape would keep the line in place until CURV ejected the grapnel and pulled away.

On April 4, just before 9 a.m., CURV dropped into the water and headed down to the bomb. Air Force experts had told Larry Brady that the apex was the strongest point of the parachute; if Brady could hook the grapnel in there, he was home free.

Around noon, CURV reached the bomb, guided by the pingers that Alvin had left behind. Brady sailed CURV around the bomb, looking at the tangled chute through the video monitors. He found the apex and, with his usual dexterity, dug three tines of the grapnel in through the hole and out through the chute. Sure that the grapnel was firmly attached, Brady ejected it from CURV and backed away. The masking tape binding the nylon line to the cable snapped, piece by piece, and the lift line buoyed off. The operation had gone exactly as planned.

Larry Brady and the rest of the CURV crew had been cocky since their arrival in Spain. After all, they retrieved lost bombs for a living. They had heard about the first attempt to retrieve the bomb and thought that the men involved, while certainly earnest, had been amateurs. It was as if, said Brady, two guys flipped their car into a ditch, tried to tow it out on their own, and burned up the clutch before finally calling a tow truck. CURV, said Brady, was the tow truck. With one line solidly attached, Brady considered his job done. He was surprised to learn that it wasn’t.

The CURV crew expected that the Navy would now lift the bomb. Instead, they learned that Admiral Guest wanted two more lines attached. Guest had been burned the first time around; it wouldn’t happen again. Bob Pace tried to talk Guest out of it. “Admiral,” he said, “you got that parachute ballooning in the water now. It’s going to be difficult enough to get another grapnel into it without tangling it.” Guest shook his head. “I can’t help that,” he said.

On April 5, Mac McCamis and Val Wilson dove Alvin down to the bomb to assess the situation with human eyes. When they arrived, they saw the chute, supported by the buoyed line, floating in the water column. The parachute danced in the water like a giant jellyfish, the bomb still tangled in its tentacles. Dragged by the bobbing buoy on the surface, the bomb and chute had moved several hundred feet west and now rested a bit deeper, at about 2,850 feet. Trying to get a better look, McCamis carefully nudged the sub toward the dangling mess. “This sixty-four-foot cargo chute was billowing up like you was under a Barnum and Bailey circus tent,” said Mac. “My biggest worry was getting tangled.”

Approaching cautiously, Mac stopped just short of the parachute. But Wilson, looking out the side window, panicked. The curvature of the window made it appear that the parachute was reaching over them, threatening to engulf the sub. “Scared him dead,” said McCamis. “So he yelled topside to Rainnie that we’re in the parachute, which we weren’t, and I couldn’t shut him up quick enough. So I moved off to the side, to get him back in his seat.” Worried by Wilson’s report, Rainnie ordered the sub back to the surface.

Both Mac and Wilson had been spooked by the close call. If Alvin got trapped or tangled, the pilot could jettison various parts of the ship — the batteries, the mechanical arm — with explosive bolts, hopefully allowing the sub to surface. If that didn’t work, he could lift a panel on the floor, exposing a stout metal cylinder: the sphere release. If the pilot turned the cylinder 90 degrees, Alvin would release the personnel sphere, and it would rocket, spinning, to the surface. The sphere separation could save the inhabitants from death at the bottom of the sea, but it would be a rough and terrifying ride to safety.

Just before midnight on April 5, CURV dove to attach a second line. In the early-morning hours, Larry Brady twisted CURV’s second grapnel into the parachute, snaring at least six lines. Then he ejected the grapnel, and the line was buoyed off. Alvin, diving to check on CURV’s progress (but now keeping a safe distance from the chute), reported that the bomb had shimmied farther downslope, dragged by the two buoyed lines. The news injected new urgency into the operation.

Admiral Guest and his staff feared that the bomb might slip out of CURV’s reach. They had to get that third line attached as soon as possible.

But just as the Navy got the second line to the surface on the morning of April 6, the weather turned sour. Twenty-two-knot winds whipped the sea into five-foot waves, conditions too dangerous to operate CURV. Admiral Guest looked at the recovery crews. Most of the men had been awake for more than thirty hours and looked like zombies. Since the seas were too rough to dive anyway, Guest stood them down until that evening.

Just before 9 p.m., sensing that a recovery attempt was near, Admiral Guest and his staff boarded the Petrel. Bad weather grounded CURV until after midnight. Around 1 a.m., CURV dove to attach the third and final line. The control shack was crowded. Members of Guest’s staff, including the admiral himself, watched over Brady’s shoulder as he flew CURV toward the target. Guest asked him to pull closer to the chute, to try to see the bomb. Since Admiral Guest was paying the bill, Brady indulged him. “We might get stuck,” he told Guest, “but we’ll sure give it a try.” Brady steered CURV back and forth around the dangling bomb, trying to give Admiral Guest a clear view of the weapon. Suddenly he noticed that a switch on the control panel had flipped. It was the circuit breaker for the starboard thruster. Brady reached up, flipped it on, and tried to run the thruster. The circuit breaker popped again. Brady panned the underwater TV camera around, looking back over CURV’s shoulder. The parachute had tangled in the starboard thruster. CURV was stuck.

Brady pointed at the TV and said, “We’re fouled.”

Guest and his staff stared at the image on the screen. Then they stood up and walked out. Guest thanked his lucky stars that CURV was an unmanned machine, rather than a manned sub. Then he climbed the steps to the wardroom and gathered his staff. He had to make a decision.

The CURV crew waited in the control shack, killing time by playing cards. Eventually, a member of the CURV team came down from the wardroom, looking grim. You’re not going to believe this, he told his colleagues. The admiral wants to cut CURV’s umbilical cord, tie it off to a buoy, and retrieve the bomb later. The men in the control shack were shocked. They had two lift lines solidly in place; why not just raise the bomb?

The same argument flew about the wardroom. The atmosphere grew so tense that Howard Tarkington, the CURV division head, fainted from the stress. Guest had vowed not to make another lift attempt without three lines attached. Yet if they strained to free CURV, the only vehicle that could attach a third line, the bomb might be dragged out of reach. Guest wanted to cut CURV loose.

He turned to each member of his staff and asked his opinion. Red Moody and Brad Mooney argued against cutting CURV free. CURV, in a way, was the third line they were looking for. They should lift the bomb now.

Cliff Page, the admiral’s chief of staff, agreed. Knowing that Mooney enjoyed a strong rapport with Admiral Guest and had excellent diplomatic skills — one Navy man called Mooney “the snake charmer”—Page took charge. He cleared out the wardroom, leaving the lieutenant and the admiral to slug it out. They stayed there, behind a closed door, for hours. “I tried to be as respectful as I could, but I was saying, ‘Admiral, this is dumb as hell to cut this thing loose,’” recalled Mooney. “‘It’s totally enmeshed in there, and they can’t help but lift it now.’” By early morning, Mooney had beaten the admiral down. At 5:02 a.m. on Thursday, April 7, Guest sent a message to General Wilson. The message said that Admiral Guest had a broken leg, code that the lift would soon begin.

Red Moody and Max Harrell, the commanding officer of the Petrel, had already started preparations. The two men went over every detail: they didn’t want any lift lines snapping this time around. Harrell designed a system of blocks and pulleys that would haul the two lines up, distributing the load equally