The Day We Lost the H-Bomb

country’s nuclear policies as never before.

Throughout the Cold War, there had always been people who worried and complained about nuclear weapons. But most Americans managed to make peace with them, or at least accept them as a necessary evil. This uncomfortable peace existed only because Americans believed that their government had control over the weapons. The United States would launch the nuclear bombs only to respond to a Soviet attack or to offer a controlled display of American strength.

That is why Palomares proved so disconcerting. The United States not only lost control of four hydrogen bombs, it actually lost one of them. The accident upset the fragile peace that Americans had made with nuclear weapons, the deal they had made with their government. Palomares was “a nightmare of the nuclear age,” as one writer said, not because of what happened, but because it opened people’s minds to what could have happened. Despite America’s best efforts, it seemed that nuclear weapons could not be easily controlled. Perhaps, in accepting this necessary evil, America had made a deal with the Devil.

Suddenly, the 32,193 warheads stashed around the country seemed less like a security blanket and more like a loaded gun with the potential to misfire. As the security expert Joel Larus wrote in 1968, Palomares “made millions of people aware of how threatened their lives had become — even in peacetime.” In the years after the accident, the public increasingly questioned the need for such a massive, potentially dangerous nuclear arsenal. After 1966, amid growing concerns of nuclear accidents and neglect of conventional forces, America began to shrink its nuclear stockpile. The deal with the Devil, people decided, no longer seemed quite so worthwhile.

EPILOGUE

After the press and VIPs left the scene on April 8, the EOD team finished dismantling the weapon.

That afternoon, they placed its parts into an aircraft engine container, packed sand around them, and sealed the lid. General Wilson had proposed that the bomb be taken ashore, trucked to San Javier, flown to Torrejon, and then shipped back to the United States. Spanish Vice President Agustin Munoz Grandes nixed this idea, saying he didn’t want the bomb to touch Spanish soil. So, after dismantling the bomb, the Navy loaded it onto the USS Cascade, which carried the weapon back to the United States and handed it over to the Air Force.

The Air Force sent bomb number four to join its three siblings at the Pantex Ordnance Plant in Amarillo, Texas. Weapons experts disassembled the bombs, buried the most contaminated parts, and salvaged the valuable nuclear material. Then they sent the fuses, firing sets, and weapon bodies from bombs one and four to Sandia for analysis. The plutonium pits went to Los Alamos.

The engineers learned some lessons from Palomares that prompted them to change the design of weapons. The accident proved that high explosive could detonate in an accident, as it had in bombs two and three, scattering dangerous plutonium. After Palomares, Los Alamos developed an insensitive nuclear explosive that would not detonate on impact. It eventually incorporated it into most nuclear weapons.

The USNS Boyce arrived in Charleston on April 5, carrying 4,810 barrels of contaminated Spanish soil. Under the watchful eyes of two AEC couriers and the JEN scientist Emilio Iranzo, workers lifted all the barrels, except two, off the Boyce and loaded them into twenty-six railroad cars. The two AEC couriers stayed with the barrels on their train ride to the Savannah River Site, traveling in the caboose, and Iranzo met them there. At Savannah River, Iranzo watched as 4,808 barrels were placed into a massive, muddy trench. Satisfied, he returned to Spain.

The other two barrels were shipped to Wright Langham, “Mr. Plutonium,” at Los Alamos for tests.

He said he planned to grow tomatoes with the soil.

For all its searching, bomb recovery, and soil transport, the Navy billed the Air Force $6.5 million.

However, the Navy calculated that its total cost was actually much higher: $10,230,744, or $126,305 per day. It was the most expensive salvage operation in history.

On April 7, 1967, exactly one year after the recovery, George Martin, who had been in Alvin when they refound the bomb, held a Task Force 65 reunion at his home in Maryland. Tony Richardson composed a poem for the occasion:

Robert, an H-bomb in Spain,
Gave the Navy a great deal of pain.
He shouldn’t have otter
Gone into the water.
The Air Force should get all the blame.
Alvin, a submarine nifty,
Found the bomb in a search that was risky.
To recover she tried
But the bomb tried to hide.
Finally CURV saved the day, and quite quickly.

After the Boyce sailed off, the remaining airmen at Camp Wilson tidied up Palomares the best they could: replacing topsoil, repairing ditches, and building new concrete fences to replace the cactus fencing they had destroyed. The legal staff drew up official “certificates of decontamination” to give to the villagers.

By the end of March, Camp Wilson had dwindled to 144 people. On March 20, a delegation consisting of the mayors of Palomares, Villaricos, and Cuevas de Almanzora, along with eighty townspeople, visited the camp for a ceremony to mark the near closing of operations. General Wilson gave a speech and handed $1,000 to the local priest for repairs to the church in Palomares and $200 for the people of Villaricos. Officers and airmen had donated the money in appreciation for the hospitality of the local citizens.

By early April, Camp Wilson was gone, but a skeleton crew of lawyers — including Joe Ramirez — lingered. By September 26, Ramirez and the legal team had interviewed more than five hundred claimants and paid $555,456.45 in damages. A few sticky claims remained, including that of Francisco Simo Orts.

For his help in rescuing the downed fliers and pinpointing the spot where bomb number four had hit the water, the U.S. military had given Simo $4,565.56—reimbursement for his time and expertise and the use of his boat. In April, in a ceremony in Madrid, Ambassador Duke presented Simo with a medallion and a scroll. The medallion carried a picture of Lyndon Johnson. The scroll read: As testimony and admiration of the exceptional talents and profound knowledge of the sea of DON FRANCISCO SIMO ORTS which led to the finding of the nuclear bomb which fell into the sea on the coast of Palomares, and as a symbol of gratitude on behalf of my country, I make this document in Madrid, Today, April 15, 1966.

Simo, however, wanted more than plaudits. He wanted cash. In June, he presented his own claim to the U.S. Air Force, asking for $5 million. To most Americans (and some Spaniards), Simo’s claim seemed outrageous. But, as he told CBS News, Simo guessed he had saved the military at least five days of searching, which he valued at about $1 million a day. He didn’t want the money for himself, he added. He would use it to educate the children of fishermen and aid the local fishing industry.

The claim, too big for the Air Force lawyers in Torrejon, went to Washington, where the U.S. government rejected it. Simo hired a New York law firm to represent him, and the case was finally settled in Admiralty Court in 1971. He was awarded $10,000.

In the spring and summer of 1966, the Spanish government, through various meetings and public statements, made it clear that the upcoming base negotiations would not be easy. It refused to reinstate America’s nuclear overflights and started to flex its newfound muscle in other ways. It wanted the United States to help it gain control of Gibraltar and push for Spain’s membership in the EEC, and it planned to use the base negotiations as leverage. In May, The New York Times reported that Franco would not renew the thirteen-year-old