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

Rooney tumbled through the air as hot chunks of debris hissed by. A flaming engine pod passed so close that it singed the hair off his arms and neck. When he was clear of the disintegrating plane, he pulled his rip cord. As his chute caught the wind and floated him gently over the water, he pulled his gloves over his cold, bleeding hands and inflated his life vest. He splashed down about three miles out to sea. He unstrapped a Buck knife from his boot and cut himself free from his parachute. Then, bobbing in the waves, he prayed for help.

Charles Wendorf was knocked unconscious when he ejected from the plane and woke with a jerk when his parachute opened automatically at 14,000 feet. With a sudden burst of cheer, he realized that he was still alive, with his left arm intact. He took stock of the situation: though happily still attached, his left arm seemed badly broken, with a bone sticking out of the wrist. His helmet was gone, and there was a bloody tear on his left leg where a pocket used to be. With a shock of dismay, Wendorf realized that the pocket had held his wallet. “Shoot,” he remembers thinking, “now I'm going to have to get a new driver's license.” Then he had another realization — his parachute didn't seem to be working so well. And he smelled smoke.

Looking up, Wendorf put it all together. Part of his chute was on fire, and the rest was tangled and flapping wildly. He saw his boxy survival kit caught in the lines, preventing the chute from opening fully. “I tried to reach up with my left arm, but it wasn't working,” he said. “So I reached up with my right arm and shook out the lines.” A few shakes put out the fire and untangled the lines. The parachute opened and slowed his fall. Wendorf breathed a bit easier.

Floating out over the sea, Wendorf saw several small fishing boats below. When he got closer to the sea, he tried to steer for one of them. But as he pulled the riser, he accidentally collapsed his chute and plummeted into the cold water. He swam to the surface, buoyed by the rectangular survival kit that was somehow tucked under his right arm. He inflated his life preserver and floated in the water, waiting for help. Like Rooney, he had landed about three miles out from shore. The two men had hit the water astonishingly close to each other but didn't know it. The waves rolled too high for them to see very far. Within ten minutes, the fishing boat Dorita was chugging toward Wendorf. The crew threw him a life ring and pulled him on board. Wet and shivering uncontrollably, Wendorf was stripped of his clothes and wrapped in blankets. As he lay on the deck, he glimpsed Rooney, bobbing on the waves as the boat approached. Rooney had been in the water for about an hour, growing increasingly frustrated that he had survived a plane crash but was now going to die of hypothermia.

The fishermen pulled Rooney aboard; he was bleeding badly from a gash in his leg. As they wrapped him in blankets and gave him hot coffee, Francisco Simó—the fisherman who had tried and failed to rescue the unconscious man — approached in the Manuela Orts. The captains agreed that the Dorita should hustle the injured men back to shore while Simó looked for more survivors.

Simó headed toward his brother, who was steering the Agustín y Rosa toward a floating parachute some five miles distant. The Dorita headed to Aguilas.

As they motored toward shore, Rooney and Wendorf lay on the deck, shivering under a pile of blankets. Wendorf turned to Rooney and tried to make a joke. “The only thing that could complete this day,” he said, “is if this was a Russian trawler.” Rooney doesn't remember laughing.