The Day We Lost the H-Bomb

by Barbara Moran

  They also agreed to work with the Spanish government to create a long-term monitoring program of Palomares and its people.

  The Strategic Air Command had actually been through similar situations before. According to the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy, there had been at least twenty-eight nuclear accidents before the one in Spain. Here are a few examples, paraphrased from official DOD/DOE records:

  March 11, 1958: A B-47 left Hunter Air Force Base, Georgia, en route to an overseas base. After leveling off at 15,000 feet, the plane accidentally jettisoned an unarmed nuclear weapon, which landed in a sparsely populated area 6½ miles east of Florence, South Carolina. The bomb’s high explosive detonated on impact, causing property damage and several injuries on the ground.

  October 15, 1959: A B-52 bomber and a KC-135 tanker were refueling in the air, 32,000 feet over Hardinsburg, Kentucky. Shortly after the B-52 began refueling, the two planes collided. Four members of the B-52 crew ejected from the plane, but four did not. All four men aboard the KC-135 tanker were killed. The B-52’s two unarmed nuclear weapons were recovered intact. One had been partially burned but did not disperse any nuclear material.

  January 24, 1961: During an airborne alert mission, a B-52 suffered a structural failure of the right wing. The B-52 broke up in the air, dropping two weapons near Goldsboro, North Carolina. Five of the eight crew members survived. One bomb’s parachute deployed, and the weapon received little damage. The other bomb fell free and broke apart upon impact. No explosion occurred, but a portion of one bomb containing uranium landed in a waterlogged field. Despite excavation to fifty feet, the bomb section was not recovered. The Air Force purchased an easement, requiring permission for anyone to dig there. There is no detectable radiation in the area.

  These accidents were public knowledge. And many Americans, accepting the logic of deterrence, also accepted that accidents could and would happen. But they assumed that the people in control of nuclear weapons were, in fact, in control. Others were not so sure.

  By the early 1960s, a public debate began to take shape, as Americans started to wonder whether they were 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 the less contaminated vegetation in the dry bed of the Almanzora River, as long as the smoke blew out to sea.

  Burning the vegetation was an operation in itself. On an average day, Bud White’s team hauled 140 truckloads of vegetation to a temporary pit or the burn site, located near the former resting place of the B-52 tail section. In late February, the Air Force built a new road to the burn site so they wouldn’t have to drive their radioactive haul through an inhabited area. In the end, the team hauled 3,728 truck-loads of vegetation to the riverbed, and burned it all.

  This left the question of what to do with the more contaminated dirt and vegetation. At first, it was generally assumed that the Americans would bury it in Spain. But to hold all the contaminated soil, they would have to dig a pit about the size of the Empire State Building lying on its side. To complicate matters, the Spanish government wanted the pit in a mountainous, uninhabited area about three miles west of Palomares.

  As ideas bounced between Washington and Madrid, with Ambassador Duke, the State Department, and the Department of Defense weighing in, opinion quickly turned against a burial pit in Spain.

  Jack Howard, the assistant secretary of defense for atomic energy who oversaw Palomares for the Pentagon, worried about a permanent monument to the accident. A burial site could become a stark reminder of nuclear danger for decades to come, perhaps even a gathering point for annual anti-American protests. Nobody wanted that.

  Spanish and American officials had already worked through this problem with regard to the aircraft debris. Neither the United States nor Spain wanted to leave the wreckage (some of which was slightly contaminated) lying around Spain, possibly leading to “lingering recriminations against the United States.” Spain, with an eye toward the tourist and fishing trades, also didn’t want the debris dumped in the Mediterranean. Both sides eventually agreed to dump the wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean. The Navy built a fifty-foot pier off the beach at Palomares and used a twelve-ton crane to load two barges full of debris. The USS Luiseno hooked the barges and pulled them through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic. By February 27, the Luiseno had dumped the debris into the deep ocean, in international waters about 170 miles west of Portugal.

  Officials discussed whether to dump the dirt in the ocean as well or move it to the United States.

  Eventually, the Americans agreed to haul it to the Savannah River Facility, a nuclear processing center in Aiken, South Carolina.

  To prepare the dirt and vegetation for shipment, the Americans decided to excavate a temporary burial pit at the site where bomb number two had been found. This area was already contaminated, relatively barren, and some distance from the village. The Americans dug a trench measuring approximately one thousand cubic yards and started to haul in contaminated dirt and mulched vegetation.

  Once the U.S. government started stripping contaminated crops and topsoil from the land, the farmers had to be paid. By late February, the Air Force had a full-blown claims office, with lawyers interviewing about twenty people a day to assess damages to crops, homes, livestock, and livelihoods.

  The claims work was as complicated as the radiation cleanup, if not more so. Lawyers had to sort out which odd-shaped plot of land belonged to whom, how big it was exactly, what had been growing there, and how much that crop had been worth. This might have been easy in Oklahoma, but in Palomares, farmers often marked property lines with buried rocks or nothing at all. Formal records didn’t help: when lawyers consulted the owners’ registry at Cuevas de Almanzora, they found that the entries were as much as six years behind. Furthermore, boundaries had been shifted and parcels had changed hands without being recorded. It didn’t help that many people in Palomares had similar — or identical — names. Four claimants, for instance, were named Francisco Sabiote Flores; twelve were named Navarro Flores.

  Joe Ramirez sympathized with the villagers. He did his best to be fair with their claims and give them their due, and he says the Air Force supported him. He was troubled, however, that it never made any allowance for fear, anguish, or general disruption of life. The Air Force had procedures for foreign claims and in some Eastern countries it allowed a “salve” payment for mental hardship. But there was no such plan in place for Spain. Ramirez felt that the United States had upset these people’s lives and they should be compensated. It was not an easy situation, recalled Ramirez. “How do you value anxiety?”

  MARCH

  13. Spin Control

  Ambassador Duke stood on a rocky beach, dressed in nothing but swim trunks, loafers, a blue bathrobe, and a bathing cap. The morning air felt sharp and chilly; the blue waves, slithering on the shoreline, looked cold and forbidding. Behind the ambassador, up a slight incline, squatted a white modern building — a new parador, or government-run hotel — that
seemed utterly out of place in the barren desert. The dapper ambassador, too, seemed out of place, half naked and shivering on this godforsaken strip of sand. But Duke was a man of duty, and he had a job to do. He slipped off his loafers and sank his toes into the cold, damp sand. He untied his bathrobe and tossed it aside on the beach. Then, as a swarm of news reporters watched, their cameras clicking, Duke shouted, “Okay, let’s go!” With his children following gleefully behind, he ran down the beach and splashed into the 54 degree water.

  A few minutes later, Duke emerged looking winded. The water was “thrilling,” he told the gathered reporters. “Sensational!” As the ambassador dressed quickly, the questions peppered him: “Did you detect any radioactivity in the water?” asked one reporter. “If this is radioactivity,” said the ebullient Duke, “I love it!” Another reporter questioned the ambassador: “When you were out there, did you happen to see the bomb?” Duke replied gamely, “I wish I had!” On March 2, less than a week before the ambassador’s swim, the U.S. government had finally admitted that it had lost an H-bomb in Spain. For weeks, the U.S. and Spanish governments, aware that the current press policy was neither controlling information nor calming fears, had been debating how to release more information. Duke had been pushing for a more liberal press policy since early February but could not get the two governments to agree on the particulars. The stalemate finally broke when Dr. Otero Navascuéz, president of Spain’s Junta de Energía Nuclear, discussed the subject with the Spanish news agency CIFRA, which published lengthy articles on March 1. The Americans didn’t know if Navascuéz had acted independently or in concert with the Spanish government, and the leak annoyed them. But it was also a relief. The Department of Defense used the opportunity to publish a formal press release. It read: Search is being pressed off the Spanish Coast for the recovery of material carried by the two planes involved in the recent air collision, and for fragments of wreckage which might furnish clues to the cause of the accident. Included aboard the B-52 which collided with the KC-135 tanker were several unarmed nuclear weapons, one of which has not yet been recovered.