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

more likely to be killed, injured, or contaminated by American nuclear weapons, set off by accident, rather than a Soviet attack. As the United States' nuclear arsenal continued to grow, this possibility seemed increasingly likely. With thousands of warheads stuffed into silos, trundled onto planes, and exploded in countless tests, it seemed inevitable that someday something would go terribly wrong.

Even President Kennedy grew worried. Reportedly he found the 1961 Goldsboro accident, which occurred four days after his inauguration, especially alarming. Although the Air Force never admitted this publicly, a nuclear physicist named Ralph Lapp later claimed that the bomb jettisoned over Goldsboro had been equipped with six interlocking safety mechanisms, all of which had to be triggered in sequence to detonate the bomb. “When Air Force experts rushed to the North Carolina farm to examine the weapon after the accident,” wrote Lapp, “they found that five of the six interlocks had been set off by the fall.” President Kennedy, shocked by this close call (and reportedly by his limited control of SAC planes during the Cuban Missile Crisis), ordered that nuclear weapons safeguards be reexamined to reduce the possibility of an accident. His order led weapon designers to equip bombs with electronic locks called permissive action links, or PALs, ensuring that only the president could launch a nuclear attack.

Yet public fears remained, played out in popular books and films of the early 1960s such as the drama Fail-Safe and the dark comedy Dr. Strangelove. Dr. Strangelove, in particular, openly parodied the Strategic Air Command. In the 1964 film, Colonel Jack D. Ripper (widely rumored to be based on Curtis LeMay) is a SAC wing commander at the fictional Burpleson Air Force Base.

Ripper goes bonkers, overrides presidential authority, and sends an armada of B-52s on airborne alert toward the USSR. The president orders the Army to seize control of Burpleson and take Colonel Ripper into custody. This leads to several ironic battle scenes, as soldiers exchange heavy gunfire near billboards bearing SAC's motto: “Peace is our profession.” Eventually, one B-52 makes it to a Soviet target and is able to drop one nuclear bomb. This is enough to trigger war.

Within the military, however, SAC was widely considered one of the strictest and safest commands.

Safety was almost a religion in SAC, and its straitlaced in-house magazine, Combat Crew, reflected this zeal. Combat Crew was notable for its utter lack of levity. One regular feature was “Pilot Error,” a grim comic strip demonstrating how sloppy flying technique led to deadly accidents. Another regular item, “Safety Bird Is Watching,” contained a “gotcha” photograph of an airman engaged in unsafe behavior, such as wearing a wedding ring while working on a plane. The “Safety Bird” photos, most of which seemed to be taken with a telephoto lens, gave the impression that any slip would be noted and punished. Some airmen thrived in this rigid environment, but others found it oppressive. One pilot, who eventually left SAC to fly fighter planes in another command, described SAC as uptight. “You needed a checklist to take a shit” was how he put it. In many officers' clubs, pilots replaced the SAC insignia, which featured an armored fist gripping lightning bolts and a laurel of peace, with a caricature: an armored fist crushing a man's genitals.

Both those who feared and those who lauded nuclear weapons used the Palomares accident to bolster their arguments. Some said that Palomares proved how dangerous the nuclear arms race had become, endangering lives even in peacetime. Others pointed out that, until the accident in Palomares, 18,340 KC-135 tankers had safely launched to refuel 8,209 airborne-alert B-52s over Spain. One accident, out of all those refuelings, was a pretty good record. Furthermore, some boasted that the Palomares accident had actually proved how safe nuclear weapons were, because the bombs had endured such stress but still had not detonated.

Still, everyone could agree that losing a nuke in another country — and doing it publicly, over civilian territory — complicated matters. Operation Roller Coaster and similar tests in the late 1950s had led the U.S. Air Force to create a cleanup plan called “Moist Mop.” The plan called for radiation teams to enter the area first, accompanied by EOD teams. The radiation teams would check for contamination while the EOD men tended to fragments of high explosive. Everyone except emergency personnel should stay 1,500 feet away from the accident; everyone entering the area should wear full face masks for protection.

But Moist Mop assumed that the accident would take place somewhere under U.S. government control, such as an Air Force base. It didn't account for sheep, goats, tomato fields, and curious Spanish villagers. Nothing in the plan mentioned that one bomb would be found by an Air Force lawyer, another by a Spanish shopkeeper.

Thus, the early days of the Palomares cleanup were decidedly ad hoc. Any men plowing, scraping, or removing vegetation were supposed to wear gloves, surgical caps, and masks. Anyone working in a dusty area was supposed to wear a half-face respirator. Men were ordered to tape their shirtsleeves and gloves together with masking tape to keep dust out; the same with their pant cuffs and boots. At the end of every day, each man and his gear were to be checked for contamination and washed down. Some adhered to these guidelines, and enforcement certainly got more strict as the operation progressed. But many airmen recall spotty safeguards and monitoring in the beginning.

Robert Finkel, who spent many long days chopping tomato plants, says his men wore fatigues and T-shirts. Their only protective gear was hats for the sun. At the end of each day, they would decontaminate themselves by walking, fully clothed, into the Mediterranean. “Ultimately we got showers, and things improved dramatically,” recalled Finkel. “But initially it was pretty tough.” Soon after Red Moody arrived in Palomares, he suggested that the Navy begin testing for contamination. The Navy regularly sampled the water and also swiped dew off ships' decks to test for airborne alpha. To the best of Moody's memory, the Navy never found any contamination, but the divers weren't entirely out of harm's way. One day, Gaylord White, one of the divers who had come to Palomares from Rota, traded a diver's knife for a warm Air Force jacket. White, happy with the swap, took his new jacket back to the EOD tent. When he arrived, one of the other divers told him to leave the jacket outside while he ran to get an alpha monitor. Sure enough, the jacket was contaminated. White, undeterred, came up with a plan. He ran a line up one sleeve and out the other, then staked the jacket on the beach below the high-tide line. After a few days of ocean washing, White let the jacket dry in the sun.

Some contamination stories had more dramatic endings. Henry Engelhardt, the commander of an Army EOD detachment in Mannheim, Germany, answered a call for assistance and sent a small EOD team to Palomares shortly after the accident. When Engelhardt's unit commander arrived on the scene, an Air Force colonel told the men not to wear protective clothing “because it might scare the locals.” The Army commander refused the order and appealed to a higher command. According to Engelhardt, the Air Force colonel was finally relieved over the dispute, and the Army men were allowed to wear protective gear. However, Engelhardt, worried about the primitive safety conditions in Palomares, had a decontamination team waiting when the team returned to Germany. As suspected, the men were hot — their clothing and gear tested four times as high as permissible levels.

Three men also had high counts on their fingernails, probably from putting their hands in their pockets. The decon team ordered the men to undress on the spot, bagged their clothes and gear, and sent the men to the showers. Luckily, says Engelhardt, they didn't have to decontaminate the plane.

Despite such mishaps, “Don't scare the locals” became the overriding theme regarding radiation in Palomares. When Bud White's team first mapped out the contaminated areas, for example, they marked the boundaries with red flags. This color choice “proved to be unacceptable due to psychological factors,” according to the SAC final report. The Air Force ordered the red flags changed to green. Furthermore, the guardias civiles and U.S. air police who controlled access into the contaminated areas were forbidden to post signs prohibiting entry or noting the radiation hazard.

In any emergency situation, authorities want to prevent undue panic, a logical and even admirable goal. But in Palomares, it is unclear whether the Air Force crossed a line, choosing public relations over public health. When they decided not to post warning signs, they undoubtedly prevented unnecessary worry, but they also avoided embarrassing photographs being published in the international papers. It is difficult to determine which goal was more important.

This much is certain: the broken bombs certainly emitted enough alpha radiation to cause harm. And at the start of the operation, safety measures were haphazard at best. Some men, such as Gaylord White and the Army EOD team, left Palomares with high radiation readings and were monitored for months afterward. The Air Force maintains that the radiation exposures were not significant, but military health records from Palomares remain classified or heavily redacted.

After Spanish and American officials decided how much soil and vegetation to remove, another question arose: where to put it. The vegetation problem was quickly solved. Spanish officials said the Americans could burn