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

by Barbara Moran

  Aboard the Mizar, Moody and his team rigged up a length of 3½-inch nylon line with a breaking strength of 22,000 pounds. At the end they attached an anchor; thirty-eight feet above the anchor, they fastened POODL with a wire strap. In addition to the lines carried by POODL, they attached another 300-foot line, with a grapnel on the end, to the anchor itself. The plan was to lower the entire contraption-anchor, POODL, and all—into the water and, they hoped, land it near the bomb. Then Alvin could swim over, pick up the three lines, and dig the hook and grapnels into the parachute.

  That was the plan, anyway. Lieutenant Commander Malcolm MacKinnon, a naval engineer on Guest's staff, took one look at the half-built POODL and winced. “Oh, my God,” he thought. “It was really a kludge.”

  MacKinnon was not being overly critical. Even Moody admitted that they had “gypsy-engineered” the rig. But POODL was the best and quickest option they had. The weapon's position was precarious, and the Navy worried that the bomb could slip down the slope into deeper water or fall into an underwater crevice and disappear forever. That fear overshadowed everything.

  So on March 23, the captain of the Mizar positioned the ship over the bomb. Red Moody and his team dropped the anchor, with POODL attached, off the Mizar. Soon, the anchor and POODL hit bottom, their line stretching to the surface. Sailors grabbed the line, hooked it to a buoy, and floated it on top of the water. Then they waited to see what Alvin could do.

  POODL was not the Navy's first recovery plan. Soon after Alvin had found the bomb, it had carried a light line down to the bottom. The end of the line was tied to a fluke, which the Alvin pilots dug into the sediment near the bomb. The Navy planned to slide a heavier line down this messenger line, but when they tried, the fluke pulled out of the bottom. On March 19, the task force members tried another tactic: they coiled some lines on the Mizar's instrument sled and tried to float the sled near the bomb. But the Mizar crew couldn't hold the sled steady, and they abandoned that plan, too. After this attempt, McCamis and Wilson visited the bomb in Alvin and reported that it had slid twenty feet downslope. That evening, Admiral Guest wrote a pessimistic situation report to his superiors. He faced bad weather, untested equipment, experimental techniques, a precarious target position, and submersibles that needed constant maintenance. He warned that the recovery might take a while.

  Other ideas arose. Art Markel thought Aluminaut could lift the bomb and devised a plan. On its hull, Aluminaut carried a camera mount that could pan and tilt, and Markel proposed building a makeshift arm by attaching a wooden or metal pole to the camera mount. The pole would carry a metal hook, which the pilot could loop into the parachute. The hook would be attached, via cable, to Aluminaut's emergency ballast, a 4,400-pound lead weight on its belly. Then, with the bomb securely hooked to the ship, Aluminaut could blow its ballast tanks and rise to the surface, with enough buoyancy to pull the bomb with it.

  Markel was excited about the plan, mentioning it in several letters to Reynolds. This was Aluminaut's chance, he wrote, to share some of Alvin's limelight. But Guest rejected the idea. If Aluminaut got into trouble, he reasoned, she might have to drop her emergency ballast, leaving him with a new problem: a two-ton bomb hooked to a 4,400-pound lead weight. Guest never explained his reasoning to the Aluminaut crew, however, and this brush-off—the latest in a string of them—left the crew bitterly disappointed. “It is quite apparent that CTF 65 does not want Aluminaut in the act if they can help it,” Markel wrote. “I am quite disgusted over this whole mess.” Markel had half a mind to take his lifting rig to the sunken ship of antiquity and hoist a cannon to the surface. That would show the world what Aluminaut could do.

  As the recovery plan slogged forward, the press got antsy. On March 22, the Los Angeles Times ran a pessimistic front-page article that was reprinted in the International Herald Tribune. The headline read, “H-Bomb May Slip into Deep Sea Crevice, Balk Recovery.” The article reported that the weapon was teetering on the edge of a steep undersea slope, in imminent danger of sliding into the abyss. “American officials here and at the scene are more pessimistic now about the situation than at any time since the search began,” said the article. “They are depressed at having come so near only to face the possibility that a stray undersea current and the peculiar bottom topography may rob them of success.”

  Duke, disturbed by such gloomy press, asked permission to release regular progress reports without consulting the government of Spain. It is unclear whether he ever received a reply. But it is doubtful that Admiral Guest would have wanted to cooperate with such a plan; he had little interest in keeping the world press informed of his every move. In fact, he and his staff had become increasingly alarmed by the detailed information regularly appearing in the papers. There was a leak somewhere, and they didn't like it. The Air Force thought that someone in the Pentagon was talking to Washington reporters or that someone at Camp Wilson was chatting with the press. But Guest suspected the embassy in Madrid, perhaps even the ambassador himself. He didn't know Duke well, but he disliked the ambassador and didn't trust him. There is no evidence, however, that Duke passed illicit information to the press. Indeed, he seemed as mystified by the leaks as anyone.

  On the morning of March 23, soon after Red Moody sent POODL to the bottom, McCamis and Wilson flew Alvin over to have a look. Mizar had landed the anchor and POODL about eighty feet from the bomb. When Alvin arrived at the site, the pilots saw that POODL had landed on the bottom and fallen over, spilling its lines into a tangle. Alvin tried to reach through the metal bars to grab the lines but couldn't. It then picked the remaining line off the anchor and tried to attach it to the billowing chute. With the pilots still getting used to the mechanical arm, the job proved difficult. Finally, they hooked the line into the parachute. But by that time, Alvin's battery had run low and the sub had to surface. At the debriefing, the pilots reported that the bomb had moved about six feet and now rested in a small ravine.

  The next day, Wilson and McCamis dove again. Again, they couldn't clear the tangled lines from POODL. They returned to the anchor line, which was already attached to the parachute, and tried to connect it more firmly. Alvin grabbed the grapnel and slowly, painstakingly twisted it into at least six parachute risers. Then the parachute billowed, and Alvin backed off. The pilots reported the news to the surface: they had snarled the grapnel in the chute. And, they added, the other two lines remained fouled on the POODL. The pilots couldn't possibly reach them.

  Guest's staff met aboard the Mizar. The admiral did not want to lift the bomb with only one line, which seemed way too risky. But his staff pushed him to try. The breaking strength of the attached line, they argued, was ten times the weight of the weapon and rig combined. If they waited, the grapnel might work itself loose, or the line could tangle. Bad weather posed a constant threat. If the wind blew up, it could cancel operations for days. Washington and Madrid were losing patience. The sooner they recovered the bomb, the better.

  Guest didn't like the idea. But eventually he was persuaded.

  Guest's staff made a plan. Mizar would hover directly above the bomb, then winch it straight up through its center well, or moon pool. Once the bomb was safely off the seafloor, Mizar would pull it slowly toward shallow water, winching it up along the way. When the bomb was about 100 feet below the surface, EOD divers would attach two sturdy wire straps, and the bomb could be hoisted aboard a ship.

  McCamis, still underwater in Alvin, heard that Mizar was going to attempt the lift. He asked if Alvin could stay submerged so the pilots could observe the operation. The answer came from the surface: No. It was too dangerous for Alvin to linger during the lift. The pilots were ordered to surface.

  Meanwhile, Red Moody was having his own argument with the captain of the Mizar. Moody worried that the Mizar couldn't hold position directly above the weapon. He suggested that the captain place landing craft, known as Mike boats, on either side of the ship to hold the Mizar steady. The captain refused, saying he could maneuver his ship wi
thout help. Moody gave up, and the lift got under way.

  The Mizar's crew snagged the floating buoy tied to the anchor and the POODL. They jettisoned the buoy and attached the lift line to the ship's winch. Moody and Jon Lindbergh stood by the Mizar's moon pool to watch the operation. Guest and members of his staff waited in the ship's laboratory, watching the instrument panels. At about 7:30 p.m., Mizar's winch began to turn. Guest started to pray.

  After about an hour, the instruments noted a slight strain as POODL rose off the seafloor. Fifteen minutes later, the rope took a heavy strain: the anchor had cleared the bottom. Slowly, the winch turned. The line grew steadily more taut, but the instruments showed that the strain was not severe. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. Thirty. The instruments showed another strain. The bomb had lifted off the bottom.

  Three minutes later, the instruments jumped. Moody and Lindbergh, watching the line, saw it suddenly go slack. Staring at the loose line, Lindbergh felt a terrible sinking feeling. Moody thought, “Oh, shit.”

  The winch took another long hour to reel in the anchor. The line below the anchor—the one that had been attached to the bomb—ended in a frayed stump. The bomb itself was gone. Looking at the mangled rope, Lindbergh guessed that about three fourths of the strands had been cut cleanly on some sharp object. The rest had just split.

  Moody later discovered that Mizar had, in fact, drifted off course while raising the bomb. The captain had cut power while the winch turned, sending the ship drifting toward shore and likely dragging the bomb upslope before lifting it. But it's not clear if Mizar's drift snapped the line. The line could have fouled on the anchor flukes, rubbed on a sharp rock, or even cut itself on the POODL. Perhaps the nylon line was too prone to splitting or this particular line was defective. Nobody ever figured it out for sure.

  McCamis and Wilson were eating dinner when they heard the bad news. “Oh, boy,” said Mac. “Now we got to go find it again.”

  Alvin needed a battery charge and repairs to her ballast system and couldn't dive again for almost a full day. The admiral ordered Aluminaut to head down and look for the bomb. Several times, Mizar reported that the sub passed within 100 feet of the weapon's former position, but the Aluminaut crew saw no sign of it. After five hours of searching, they were ordered to surface to avoid disturbing the bottom further. When Alvin returned to the weapon site on the evening of March 25, the bottom was scored with deep gouges. “The slope looked [as] if it had been torn up by bulldozers,” said Mac. The pilots found chunks of stone, clay, and mud, but no bomb.

  The broken line seemed like a small mishap—an unlucky break rather than a tragedy. The recovery team hadn't moved the weapon far from its original resting place, and they knew where they had dropped it. How far could it have gone? Surely, the subs would soon find it again. So, as Task Force 65 combed the ocean floor, the embassy staffers didn't panic. Instead, they continued to argue about how to display the bomb when Guest finally brought it up. Ever since word had leaked out that the bomb had been found, an international chorus had been offering suggestions and making demands. The Soviet newspaper Izvestia called for an international commission to verify the discovery, witness the bomb raising, and judge if the bomb had leaked any radiation. U.N. Secretary General U Thant privately suggested inviting the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) to verify the recovery. American officials balked at both suggestions. The Soviet Union was a member of the IAEC, and the military certainly didn't want a mob of Communist scientists poking around its top secret weapon.

  There was still the question of logistics, as well. The embassy wanted Duke, Spanish Vice President Muñoz Grandes, and other VIPs to witness the actual bomb raising. Wilson opposed this idea: the bomb might be dangerous and should be rendered safe before VIPs showed up. Should he keep Muñoz Grandes, the number two man in Spain, waiting in a tent, maybe for days? Guest agreed. Military officials hated the idea of displaying the bomb in public. If they had their way, they would raise the bomb in secret, pack it into a box, and ship it back to the United States under cover of darkness.

  Duke knew this was impossible. Finding this slender bomb in the depths of the Mediterranean had been a nearly impossible task. If the Americans didn't show the bomb to the world, nobody would believe they had really found it. Rumors would linger for years; the story of the accident would never die. So when Duke reached an impasse with Wilson and Guest, he broke protocol and called Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. A serious breach of diplomatic decorum, the call was the only time, Duke claims, that he directly crossed the divide between State and Defense. McNamara was a friend, and the ambassador was desperate. On the phone, Duke argued his position, and McNamara agreed that the find had to be verified. Together, the Departments of Defense and State ordered Wilson and Guest to come up with a plan that would satisfy everyone.

  Developing a plan for public display soon seemed less urgent, however. As one day stretched into another with no sign of the bomb, Guest's hope faded. Days passed. Then a week. The bomb seemed to be hiding.

  Among the members of Guest's staff, the tension ramped up a notch. Red Moody felt personally responsible. The dropped bomb had been an accident, but Moody had played a large part in the recovery operation and shouldered his share of the blame. The mood on the USS Albany was bleak. “Here we were in the ninth inning, and the score is zero to zero,” said George Martin, a Trieste pilot who had been sent to Palomares to augment the task force. “And the fans—we'll call that the world opinion— was also at zero.”

  The crew of the USS Albany, already operating at a higher state of readiness than usual, responded to the heightened tension. The flagship carried long-range TALOS missiles, which could deliver either conventional or nuclear warheads. Usually, the crew armed the missiles with conventional warheads. But on March 29, the gun crews aboard the Albany made the switch. The flagship now bristled with nukes of her own. The task force was ready for anything.

  At the end of March, Duke received a secret cable from the Departments of State and Defense regarding nuclear overflights of Spain. The tone was urgent:

  Because arrangements for overflights of Austria, Switzerland, France or Morocco with nuclear weapons for various reasons not feasible, resumption such overflights of Spain extremely important not only in maintaining our tactical alert and dispersal plans but also in providing nuclear logistics support to forces in Mediterranean area. Restoration US overflights could have favorable in fluence elsewhere in world where such flights involved. Early approach Spanish authorities is desirable to seek resumption such flights through Spain…. Would like views on timing such approach in light current request on three squadrons and in relation recovery B-52 weapon.

  Duke responded in a secret cable to the secretary of state. His tone was patient but annoyed, like a father explaining, once again, why his son could not play baseball in the living room. He reminded Washington that the Department of Defense had just asked the Spanish government to station three fighter plane squadrons at Torrejón and had considered transferring France-based Air Force engine facilities to Spain. He pointed out that the United States soon faced the problem of extending, and probably renegotiating, its valuable base agreement with the Spanish government. And, in case anyone had forgotten, there was still a hydrogen bomb lost somewhere in the Mediterranean. “Timing of our demands, with an eye to international context, is important,” he wrote. “It would be patently inopportune to raise subject of resuming overflights carrying nuclear weapons before lost weapon safely recovered and entire incident well behind us.”

  Guest assumed that the weapon now rested upslope from its former position. Mizar, he guessed, had probably been dragging the bomb uphill before it lifted off the bottom. Bolstering this theory, when Alvin went down to look, the crew found a track leading up the slope. Everyone hoped that this track, like the one before, would lead them to the bomb.

  But it didn't. And after a few days of fruitless searching, the Alvin pilots began to imagine a different scenario
. They suspected that the uphill track had been dredged by the dragging anchor, not the bomb. Maybe the bomb had dropped into its old track and skidded down the slippery slope. The Alvin pilots wanted permission to search downhill.

  At a meeting with Guest, a member of the admiral's staff raised the idea of letting Alvin look downhill. They even sweetened the pot by encouraging Guest to ride along as an observer. Admiral Guest turned down the offer: there was no way he was diving in a submersible, especially one built by civilians. But just to get the Alvin pilots off his back, he agreed to let them search downslope. And he suggested that George Martin, who was standing nearby, take his place as observer.

  On the morning of April 2, Alvin dove again, with Rainnie, McCamis, and George Martin inside. The sub had cruised down to about 2,800 feet when Mac spotted an anomaly—a clod of dirt that seemed out of place. Nearby, they saw some more dirt that looked oddly displaced. Then, suddenly, they saw a parachute, still tightly wrapped around an object that they knew was the bomb. They had been searching for just over a half hour.

  The elated crew announced their find to the surface and settled in to wait for another rendezvous with Aluminaut. As they had suspected, the bomb and chute had slid downslope, landing about 120 yards south of its previous position. It was deeper now—resting at about 2,800 feet—but lying on a gently sloping plain that seemed far less precarious. George Martin marveled at the sight; this long-sought object, so far under the sea. To commemorate the occasion, he pulled a 100-peseta note out of his pocket and asked his companions to sign it. Then he sat back, ate the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he had packed for lunch, and wrote a letter to his wife.

  Red Moody heard a buzz on ship and asked what was going on. He was told that Alvin had found the weapon but it was wrapped tightly in the parachute and nobody knew if it was the same bomb or not. Moody laughed. “How many bombs do we have down there?” he asked. “Let's just go get her, but do a better job this time.”