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

by Barbara Moran

  There was still, of course, the matter of the missing bomb.

  By early March, the land and sea searches were still plowing forward, but everyone was running out of ideas. A second team of ballistics experts had recrunched the numbers and come up with another high-probability area on land, which the Air Force duly searched. “By 1 March,” said SAC's final report of the accident, “literally no stone had been left unturned, and no depths unplumbed. It was doubtful if any area of equivalent size, about ten square miles, was as well-known as this one.”

  With regard to the water search, the ballistics team interviewed the Garrucha pharmacist, took a second look at the contaminated debris, and ran the numbers again. They concluded that Messinger and the tail section could have been contaminated by dust rising from the broken weapons on the ground, rather than a midair breakup of bomb number four. Sandia engineer Bill Barton briefed Admiral Guest on March 1, concluding what the admiral already believed: that Simó Orts had probably seen bomb number four land in the water. Based on this new report, the secretary of defense authorized General Wilson to terminate the land search. The burden of finding bomb number four now fell squarely on Guest.

  In Washington, officials in the Defense Department braced for a bad outcome. Guest's job seemed impossible, and Pentagon insiders began to accept that the Navy would probably not find the bomb. On March 9, Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance created a “Search Evaluation Board” to evaluate Guest's task force, putting the physicist Robert Sproull in charge. Sproull had worked in the Pentagon for two years as the director of ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency. He had recently returned to academia but still held high government clearances. Sproull was chosen for this job, he says, because he was “expendable.” “It was pretty clear that if the fourth one was not found, there'd be a congressional investigation, and mud all over the face of everyone,” said Sproull. “But if Congress made a monkey out of me, it wouldn't hurt the Defense Department.”

  The Search Evaluation Board, also known as the Vance Committee, included representatives from every agency involved: the State Department, the Atomic Energy Commission, Defense, Navy, Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Labs. Vance ordered the group to “examine all implications of the search.” But its main job, everyone knew, was to figure out when, how, or if the Navy could safely abandon the search.

  In early March, the group held a meeting that Sproull described as “very glum.” The committee had two major concerns: Spain and the USSR. “We were always looking toward Capitol Hill,” said Sproull, “how we would guarantee to the Congress that the Soviets would not pick it up and that it would not do any damage to the relations with Spain.” The men went home that day having decided little. They planned to meet again on March 16.

  In anticipation of the next meeting, Admiral Leroy Swanson, the head of the Technical Advisory Group and also a member of the Vance Committee, sent a list of questions to Guest. He wanted to know, among other things, what percentage of Alfa 1 and Alfa 2—the top-priority areas—had been searched and when the task force would finish Alfa 1. He also wanted to know the probability that the bomb could have buried itself in the bottom mud and what sort of protective screen had been placed around the area before the Navy arrived. Swanson wanted answers by Tuesday, March 15, in time for the board's next meeting. For Guest, the clock was ticking.

  14.

  The Photograph

  On the morning of March 1, Mac McCamis stood in front of an instrument panel, manning Alvin's surface controls. The day's search plan had put him in a rotten mood. Alvin had been searching the rough terrain of area B-29, a square inside Alfa 1, for a week, and it would dive there again today. Mac thought they had covered B-29 frontways and back and the time had come to move on. This decision, however, like so many others, was not his to make. The Fort Snelling maneuvered into position and opened its well deck, allowing Alvin to sail out into the waves. Mac directed the Alvin pilots to dive. As the sub disappeared beneath the surface, Mac hatched a plan.

  Today, three weeks after their arrival in Spain, Alvin pilots Bill Rainnie and Val Wilson were piloting the sub, with Frank Andrews as a guest observer. Andrews had asked Earl Hays, the senior scientist for the Alvin group, for a ride in the sub. Hays, who didn't feel compelled to tell Admiral Guest who rode in Alvin or why, much less ask the admiral's permission, often gave the observer spot to old friends and VIPs. Andrews, being both, squeezed in for the ride.

  To dive, Rainnie and Wilson vented Alvin's ballast, blowing a froth of bubbles to the surface. The sub, now five hundred pounds negatively buoyant, sank slowly toward the bottom. As Alvin descended, the passengers felt no sense of falling. The three men sensed movement only by looking out the portholes and watching the “snow”—swirling clouds of tiny organisms—moving upward as the sea grew dark. When Alvin neared the bottom, the pilot flipped a switch and dropped two stacks of steel plates weighing a total of five hundred pounds. Now neutrally buoyant, the sub could cruise the area without floating up or down. (To make smaller adjustments in ballast-up to two hundred pounds positive or negative—the pilot could use Alvin's variable ballast tanks, which pumped seawater in and out.) When the time came to surface, Rainnie and Wilson would drop another five hundred pounds of steel plates and float to the surface. The plates would remain on the ocean floor, a trail of breadcrumbs marking Alvin's path.

  The pilots and observer had their eyes glued to Alvin's three viewports—one in the front center and one on either side. (A fourth viewport, on the sub's belly, was hidden by the floor and rarely used.) Each window was a Plexiglas cone twelve inches in diameter on the outside, tapering to five inches diameter on the inside. Observers peeking out these tiny windows could see only a narrow, V-shaped sliver of the world outside. Their fields of vision did not overlap; they could not see directly above, behind, or beneath the sub. Their view was further obscured by shadows, silt, and the distortion of water, which made outside objects appear closer than they were.

  In Palomares, the visibility near the bottom was especially poor. On a good day, the crew could see about twenty feet. But if they accidentally brushed the bottom, the fine silt stirred into a dense cloud, an underwater sandstorm that could hang for fifteen to twenty minutes. And because the surface ship could position them within only a few hundred yards, pilots basically had to navigate on their own. In order to steer a straight line, a pilot had to look at his compass, peer out the tiny porthole, get a glance at the bottom, and look back at the compass. It was, said McCamis, like trying to walk “a straight line in a snowstorm.” In much of the search area, the bottom stretched before them gray and featureless, with no vegetation or landmarks for guidance.

  On March 1, as usual, Alvin was “flying a contour.” The area loomed with steep slopes and deep gullies, mimicking the mountains alongside Palomares. The plan called for Alvin to stay at a consistent depth while flying along an undersea slope, looking for something lying on the hillside and snapping photos along the way. When they had finished searching the area at one depth, they could move deeper.

  Mac McCamis, however, had lost patience with B-29. He noticed that Alvin was near an adjacent search area, C-4, closer to the actual point where Simó had seen the “dead man” hit the water. Mac asked the support ship's captain if he could “play stupid” and steer Alvin out of its assigned space. “You're the controller,” said the captain. “Why not?”

  McCamis seized the moment and sent the sub into the new area. Near the end of the dive, pilot Bill Rainnie spotted something on the bottom.

  “Wait a minute, I see something,” Rainnie said.

  “What?” Wilson asked.

  “I'm not sure, a little to the left, that's it, no, dammit, you went over it, to the right.”

  “What?”

  “To the right, dammit! That's it, right on target.”

  “What is it?”

  It's nothing, Rainnie said. Never mind.

  The pilots saw nothing else of interest
and surfaced soon afterward. Mac's gamble, it seemed, had been a bust.

  When they arrived back on the Fort Smiling, the pilots handed off their film for developing. That night at their briefing, the Alvin crew gathered around the latest batch of photos. Mac, looking at the pictures, spotted something odd—a curious track in the sediment. It looked, he said, “like a barrel had been dragged over the bottom, end to end.” Brad Mooney agreed with Mac. “To me, it looked like a torpedo had slid down,” said Mooney. “It had a curved shape to it, all the way down.”

  The pilots were excited. What they were seeing, they hoped, was the track of bomb number four sliding down the undersea slope. The next day, this time with official permission, the Alvin crew returned to the area to look for the track. They couldn't find it. They returned on March 3, 4, and 7, combing the bottom, going over and over the area where they had photographed the track. Nothing.

  On March 8, the day of Ambassador Duke's swim, the task force suddenly yanked Alvin off the trail and sent her to search a shallow inshore area. Near the beach, some undersea gullies plunged too deep for Navy divers to search. Most likely, Admiral Guest had sent Alvin to investigate these gullies so he could check another square off his chart. But whatever the admiral's intentions, the Alvin crew received no explanation for the sudden change and no information about when they could return to the promising track. The move, which seemed completely arbitrary, demoralized the crew and hardened their attitudes toward Guest. “My turn at surface control,” grumbled Mac, “and we're still messing around in 800 feet of water.”

  By the third week in March, the mood of the searchers had settled into a mix of frustration, boredom, determination, and despair. Alvin moved back to deeper water but couldn't find the mysterious track. Aluminaut, likewise, was coming up empty-handed. The Ocean Bottom Scanning Sonar, Task Force 65's only unmanned deep search system, made nine runs over a dummy test shape and couldn't find it. On March 12, an OBSS towed by the USS Notable snagged a ridge, snapped its line, and never came up from the bottom.

  The divers had wrapped up most of their inshore search, leaving Red Moody without much to do. Guest asked the long-faced Moody if he wanted to head home to Charleston. With little work left for him in Spain, Red agreed. On March 14, Red Moody flew to Rota Naval Air Station to catch a plane home.

  Ambassador Duke, picking up on the mood in Palomares and catching wind of the shifting tone in Washington, sensed that the search might soon be called off. Trying to ensure his role in the endgame, Duke wrote to Jack Valenti, special assistant to Lyndon Johnson:

  Madrid, March 14, 1966

  CONFIDENTIAL

  Dear Jack:

  Word has reached me that Cy Vance is heading up an interdepartmental group to cover all aspects of the search and recovery operations in connection with the nuclear weapon problems here in the Palomares area of Spain.

  This brings to mind the possibility that the search for the missing device might be called off. The Spanish Government, of course, is not unaware of this possibility, and I foresee no irreparable damage to our relationships if such a decision is handled extremely carefully and properly. Through other channels I am suggesting to the Department that thought be given to my being called back to go over in great detail how such a step should be handled. I have in mind recommendations such as a hand-carried letter from the President to the Chief of State here giving him personal reassurances in the matter.

  I write you now (events happen so fast) in order to head off any possibility of premature announcements, either at the White House level or State Department level, before I would be given an opportunity to be heard and subsequently empowered to handle the matter at this end. The manner in which the Palomares incident is terminated will be of great importance not only in Spain but to every nation in the world where there are nuclear overflights or bases.

  With every best wish,

  Sincerely,

  Angie

  On the following day, Tuesday, March 15, Tony Richardson, the baby-faced mathematician analyzing the search for Admiral Guest, sat on a small boat skipping across the waves toward Camp Wilson. Along with a WHOI oceanographer named John Bruce, Richardson planned to pick up Simó Orts and revisit, once again, the area of his parachute sighting. The Navy searchers worried that they had misread Simó's point and were searching the wrong area. Perhaps another outing with Simó, now widely known as “Paco de la Bomba,” could set their minds at ease.

  Richardson arrived at Camp Wilson around 10 a.m. to meet Simó and the Navy men who had driven the fisherman from Aguilas. The group climbed back onto the boat and headed out to the minesweeper USS Salute. Over coffee, the men discussed the search. Simó told the group that he had taken a fathometer tracing on the day of the accident—perhaps it contained some clues. He also let the men in on a plan. By attaching some small lines and hooks to his trawling nets, he said, he could probably grab the bomb's parachute. If the Navy didn't find it soon—or abandoned the search—he just might go out there and snag it himself.

  While Simó and his group chatted, Admiral Guest sat on the USS Boston. His response to the Cyrus Vance committee was due in Washington that day, and Guest and his team had been working on it for four days. The long memo answered all the committee's questions in comprehensive detail. In it, Guest explained Richardson's search effectiveness probability, estimating that he needed thirty more working days to bring Alfa 1 to 95 percent. For Alfa 2, he would need only twelve more days. There was, however, an undersea canyon stretching between the two search areas, its slopes and floor slimy with ooze. The weapon could be lying there, completely buried in the mud, invisible.

  On that same morning, the Alvin crew prepared for their last dive in the area where they had seen the track. They were supposed to get a new transponder installed that morning to allow the Mizar to track them within about 130 feet. After that, they would be transferred to Bravo, a secondary search area. However, when the new gear arrived, it required two days of bench testing before installation in Alvin. Knowing that Alvin would be sitting idle, Brad Mooney nagged Admiral Guest for another day in C-4. Guest brushed him off. The area had already been searched to 98 percent. It was time to move on. But Mooney persisted. “All right, goddamn it,” Guest told Mooney. “One more day, and that's all.”

  That day Mac McCamis and Val Wilson piloted the sub, with a WHOI technician, Art Bartlett, tagging along as the observer. As the sub descended, Mac spoke to Bill Rainnie, who was the surface controller that day. Mac told Rainnie to put them right on the elusive track, because today was his son's birthday.

  Alvin drifted down, and almost as soon as the sub reached the bottom, Wilson saw the track. He snapped pictures and shouted directions to McCamis, as the pilot struggled to hover near the track without stirring up clouds of silt. Soon Mac could see the track out the front window—it seemed to head down a steep slope, about 70 degrees. Mac decided to follow the track by backing down the slope, so he could see it out the front window. Slowly, Mac edged down as Bartlett and Wilson called out directions. The sub reached about 2,500 feet. Then, the two men started shouting, “That's it!” “That's it!”

  Outside, on the gray bottom, lay a massive parachute. Underneath, the men saw the shape of a bomb.

  The task force had established code words for the search. If the Alvin pilots spotted the bomb, they were supposed to say the words “instrument panel.” Wilson, in his excitement, forgot the code and shouted over the phone, “We found a parachute and we believe we have a fin of the bomb in sight! It's underneath the parachute!”

  “Had a hell of a time shutting him up,” said Mac.

  That morning, the USS Albany had arrived to relieve the Boston as Task Force 65's flagship. Admiral Guest invited the Albany's captain to lunch before the ceremonial transfer of the flag. During lunch, an aide burst into the room to hand Guest a slip of paper. The note read, “ALVIN reports INSTRUMENT PANEL.” Guest read it, rose from the table, and hurried off without explanation. Someone else woul
d have to handle the ceremony.

  On board the minesweeper USS Salute, lunch was also under way. Tony Richardson, Simó Orts, and the others had just started eating when the commanding officer entered the wardroom to tell the group that Alvin had sighted the weapon. The Navy men rushed off, leaving Richardson and Bruce to escort Simó back to the beach. When the group arrived at Camp Wilson, an Air Force helicopter flew them to Aguilas. John Bruce, the oceanographer, arranged to visit Simó the next evening to look at the fathometer trace. After all, there was still a chance that the Alvin crew was wrong.

  Deep below the surface, Val Wilson snapped pictures of Alvin's prize. Then Mac eased Alvin away from the parachute to avoid tangling the submersible in the straps or shrouds. He wedged the sub into a crevice just below the chute, so they could keep an eye on it and not accidentally drift away in the current. Then he shut off the lights to conserve power and waited for instructions from the surface. One of the men reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. Smoking was, of course, prohibited in the sub. But the three men, all heavy smokers, knew they might be down there for a while and decided to give it a go. Bartlett, the technician, knew the air system inside and out and figured he could pull this off without incinerating or suffocating the crew. He turned up the oxygen, gave the crew a good blast, then shut it off. They lit the cigarette and passed it around, inhaling deeply. Then Bartlett cranked up the CO2 scrubber, hoping for the best. McCamis and Wilson, having both served on submarines, could sense when the CO2 approached the danger zone. At least that's what they told Bartlett, who watched the gauges and hoped they were right.

  While they waited, the men discussed what to do if they accidentally hooked the bomb or the chute. They all agreed that they could just drop a battery and surface, dragging the bomb with them. Alvin's total battery weight, however, was only about 750 pounds. The bomb weighed more than two tons. There was no way they could pull it up. The military had never told the Alvin crew how much the secret weapon weighed. It was the mushroom theory, said Bartlett: “Feed them shit and keep them in the dark.”