The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes, and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History

improvised.”

9. The Fisherman's Clue

Back on dry land, the Air Force continued its tedious search for bomb number four. Joe Ramirez spent his days talking to locals, collecting data for damage claims, and listening for clues about the bomb. Conflicting information, possible leads, and various complaints whizzed around the young lawyer with dizzying speed. To keep track, he started jotting notes in a narrow notebook.

Other pages held more interesting notes. One page read, “Antonio Alarcon Alarcon — House is next one over to south of La Torre. Have been moved out. Pig with litter of pigs — litter has to be fed.

Why can't they move the pigs?” Another page listed two names already well known to many searchers: Roldan Martinez and Simo Orts.

One person who hadn't yet heard of the two fishermen was Randy Maydew, the Sandia engineer who had overseen the computer calculations suggesting that bomb number four might have landed in the sea. At the request of General Wilson, Maydew had flown to Spain to help narrow down the search area. He was surprised by how much the Almeria desert resembled Albuquerque, “except for that blue, blue Mediterranean out there.” But when he walked into Camp Wilson, he found that Air Force staffers didn't have much regard for eggheads like him. This changed when General Wilson discovered that Maydew had also served in the Pacific during World War II. As a navigator in a B-29 bomber, Maydew had flown thirty bombing missions, including LeMay's famous firebombing of Tokyo. The missions did more to establish Maydew's credibility with General Wilson than his engineering degrees or his years of research on bombs and parachutes.

Though Maydew had won over General Wilson, by early February he was little closer to pinpointing bomb number four. Then, one morning, Joe Ramirez stopped by Maydew's tent and told him about his interview with the Spanish fishermen. Ramirez knew that Roldan and Simo had seen something significant. Perhaps Maydew, with his engineering expertise, could put the pieces together. The engineer agreed to talk to Simo.

On the evening of February 2, Maydew and Ramirez drove to Aguilas and interviewed Simo in the mayor's office. Simo told the men his story. He told them about the small parachute carrying a half man with his insides trailing. And he told them about the dead man, floating from a bigger chute, who had sunk before he could reach him. Maydew asked the fisherman how much the objects hanging from the chutes had swung in the sky. Moving his hand in the air, Simo indicated that the “half man” below the small chute hadn't swung much, maybe about 10 degrees. But the “dead man” under the larger chute had oscillated about 30 degrees.

The information made sense: Maydew knew that the big sixty-four-foot chute would oscillate about 30 degrees as it fell, while the sixteen-foot chute would hardly sway at all. The engineer picked up a sheet of paper and roughly sketched the two parachutes, then asked Simo if they looked right. Simo examined the drawings and shook his head. Then he grabbed the pen and sketched his own, with greater detail. The engineer was astonished.

Looking at the fisherman's drawings, it was obvious that Simo's “dead man” was a bomb, or part of a bomb, falling into the sea underneath the sixty-four-foot parachute. And the “half man”? That was clearly the empty canvas bag of the large parachute, hanging from the sixteen-foot ribbon chute and trailing its “entrails”—the packing lines — behind. Simo had sketched it with uncanny accuracy.

“Before I left the mayor's office,” Maydew said later, “I was convinced absolutely that he had seen number 4 go into the sea.”

By the time Maydew reported his findings to General Wilson and Admiral Guest a few days later, however, he had decided to hedge his bets. In their calculations, Maydew's team took all information into account: Simo's report; the testimony of the B-52 airmen who had seen parachutes after the crash; the location of the other bombs; the tailplate from bomb number four; and other important pieces of wreckage. They also noted another new piece of information regarding the B-52's tail section: someone had found four scratches on the upper surface of the tail, which appeared to have been made by a radioactive object.

On February 5, Maydew's team briefed General Wilson and Admiral Guest on their findings. It was certainly possible, they said, that Simo had seen the intact weapon fall into the ocean. But the more likely scenario was this: After the explosion, weapon number four had collided with falling debris (possibly scratching and contaminating the B-52 tail section) and broken up in midair. The heavy nuclear warhead had probably fallen onto land and buried itself five to twenty feet below the surface. The bomb casing had drifted out to sea, where Simo had seen it fall.

Maydew's team advised the Navy to center its search on the area pinpointed by Simo. The Air Force, meanwhile, should continue its search on land, centering their efforts on a 10,000-foot-diameter circle calculated by the engineers. Air Force searchers had already combed this area, but this time they should look for a shallow depression about three to eight feet in diameter. The nuclear warhead would likely be buried below. Maydew's team printed copies of their report and distributed them on February 7. Then they returned to America, leaving a handful of replacements to continue the work.

It is unclear whether Admiral Guest didn't like Maydew's team or didn't trust their calculations, but he didn't entirely buy their conclusions. Over the next few days, as more Navy men interviewed Simo, Guest became more convinced that the fisherman had seen the whole bomb fall into the sea.

On February 7, the USS Pinnacle again carried Roldan and Simo out to sea, where they again showed the Navy where the parachutes had hit the water. This time, Simo placed the chutes about five hundred yards west of his previous position, but the Navy men were still impressed by his story and navigation skills.

A few days later, Red Moody, who now berthed aboard the admiral's flagship, went ashore to visit Simo himself. Red spent the afternoon with Simo reviewing the story, then joined him for a late dinner. Moody, already inclined to trust the instincts of locals, found the fisherman credible. By the end of the evening, Moody thought that Simo might have seen the bomb, but he couldn't be sure.

“What does a weapon look like to a person that's never seen one, when it's coming down and you're kind of busy?” wondered Moody. “Everybody on the scene was questioning: Is it intact? Is it not intact? If it's not intact, how much? If it came apart, what would happen?” Moody drove back to Camp Wilson that evening, mulling over these questions. When he arrived at camp, he found that a storm was brewing and all boat traffic had been canceled. Marooned onshore, Red spent a miserable night in a wind whipped tent. He tried to sleep, but his cot had no sheets or blankets. Blowing sand scoured his face all night. It was the worst birthday he'd ever had.

On the night of the big storm, Red Moody had it bad, but Mac McCamis had it far worse. First of all, he was stuck inside Alvin with Val Wilson, or “Slick Willie,” as Mac liked to call him. Wilson, another Alvin pilot, always rubbed Mac the wrong way. Both men had served on Navy submarines, but Mac had spent his time with tools in hand, wrenching machinery into submission. Wilson had worked as a quartermaster, managing a submarine's operations and handling copious paperwork. On the Alvin team, Wilson was known for his ability to push paper through Washington, an important skill but one of little interest to Mac. McCamis called him the “clock winder.” That was Wilson's greatest mechanical skill, he said — winding clocks on a ship.

Being stuck inside Alvin with Slick Willie the Clock Winder was bad enough, but even worse, Alvin was trapped on the water's surface off the coast of Palomares, moored to a buoy and rocking on the high waves. The previous day, the USS Plymouth Rock had arrived in Rota to pick up Alvin and her crew. The Plymouth Rock was a type of vessel called a landing ship dock, designed to transport marines and their amphibious landing craft to battle. The center of the ship contained a well deck, a cavernous compartment the size of a warehouse that flooded with water, allowing small boats to sail in and out. After the Alvin crew patched the sub together at Rota, they putted the craft into the Plymouth Rock's well deck, parked it next to another submersible named Aluminaut, and set sail for Palomares. They arrived the following day.