Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

The W-47 warhead had a far more serious problem: I learned about the unreliability of the W-47 warhead during my interviews with Bob Peurifoy and Bill Stevens. Some of the details can be found in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume VI, pp. 433–41. Hansen called the W-47, without its safing tape, “an explosion in search of an accident.” Sybil Francis touched on the subject briefly in “Warhead Politics: Livermore and the Competitive System of Nuclear Weapons Design,” thesis (Ph.D.), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Politic Science, 1995, pp. 152–53.

“almost zero confidence that the warhead would work”: Quoted in Francis, “Warhead Politics,” p. 153.

perhaps 75 percent or more: Cited in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume VI, p. 435.

a B-52 on a Chrome Dome mission: The Palomares accident was the most widely publicized Broken Arrow of the Cold War. In addition to weeks of coverage in newspapers and magazines, the event inspired a fine book by Flora Lewis, a well-known foreign correspondent, One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). Randall C. Maydew, one of the Sandia engineers who helped to find the weapon, later wrote about the search in America’s Lost H-Bomb! Palomares, Spain, 1966 (Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1977). Barbara Moran made good use of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in writing The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes, and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009). I relied on those works, as well as on a thorough description of the accident’s aftermath—“Palomares Summary Report,” Field Command, Defense Nuclear Agency, Kirtland Air Force Base, January 15, 1975—and other published sources.

so poor and remote that it didn’t appear on most maps: See “Palomares Summary Report,” p. 18

“450 airmen with Geiger counters”: Quoted in ibid., p. 184.

“unarmed nuclear armament” … “there is no danger to public health”: Quoted in ibid., p. 185.

“SECRECY SHROUDS URGENT HUNT”: Quoted in ibid., p. 203.

“MADRID POLICE DISPERSE MOB AT U.S. EMBASSY”: Quoted in ibid.

NEAR CATASTROPHE FROM U.S. BOMB”: Quoted in ibid.

“There is not the slightest risk”: Quoted in “The Nuke Fluke,” Time, March 11, 1966.

“the politics of the situation”: “Palomares Summary Report,” p. 50.

Almost four thousand truckloads of contaminated beans: Cited in ibid., p. 56.

About thirty thousand cubic feet of contaminated soil: According to the Defense Nuclear Agency, about 1,088 cubic yards were removed — roughly 29,376 cubic feet. Cited in ibid., p. 65.

“a psychological barrier to plutonium inhalation”: Ibid., footnote, p. 51.

the American ambassador brought his family: For this and other efforts to control public opinion, see David Stiles, “A Fusion Bomb over Andalucía: U.S. Information Policy and the 1966 Palomares Incident,” Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 8, no. 1 (2006), pp. 49–67.

who claimed to have seen a “stout man”: Quoted in “How They Found the Bomb,” Time, May 13, 1966.

“It isn’t like looking for a needle”: Quoted in Lewis, One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing, p. 182.

the first time the American people were allowed to see one: For the proud display, see ibid., p. 234; Stiles, “Fusion Bomb over Andalucía,” p. 64.

“The possibility of an accidental nuclear explosion”: Quoted in Hanson W. Baldwin, “Chances of Nuclear Mishap Viewed as Infinitesimal,” New York Times, March 27, 1966.

“so remote that they can be ruled out completely”: Quoted in ibid.

“But suppose some important aspect of nuclear safety”: “The Nuclear Safety Problem,” T. D. Brumleve, Advanced System Research Department 5510, Sandia Corporation, Livermore Laboratory, SCL-DR-67, 1967 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 5.

“The nation, and indeed the world, will want to know”: Ibid., p. 5.