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

B-52 CRASH

A B-52 and a KC-135 Tanker collided while conducting a refueling operation 180 miles from Gibraltar. The B-52 crashed on the shore in Spain and the Tanker went down in the sea. Four survivors have been picked up, and three additional life rafts have been sighted. The B-52 was carrying four Mark 28 thermonuclear bombs. The 16th Nuclear Disaster team has been dispatched to the area.

President Johnson picked up the phone and asked for Bob McNamara.

3. The First Twenty-four Hours

Manolo González Navarro believed in fate. He believed in visions. As a boy, he had sometimes seen a plane flying far overhead — a strange and wonderful sight. Since that time he had experienced a specific, recurring premonition. In it, he saw an airplane crash and went to look at the wreckage.

Over the years, the thought came again and again, until it seared into his mind's eye with the permanence of memory.

González did not find the premonition disturbing; he simply accepted it. But even he would have to admit that the vision was an odd one, given that he had grown up in the tiny farming village of Palomares, far from any airport or air base. In recent years, however, he had had a daily, fleeting encounter with the U.S. Air Force. Each morning, just after 10 a.m., a set of American jets passed high over his town. They had not inspired his vision, but they would certainly fulfill it.

At 10:22 a.m. on January 17, 1966, González was sitting on his motorcycle talking to his father. The white contrails marking the paths of the American planes appeared overhead, just as they did every morning, and the two men looked up. They saw the contrails in the sky and then an explosion.

Fiery debris rained onto Palomares. A section of landing gear smashed through a transformer in the center of town, cutting off electricity to a handful of homes. The B-52's right wing crashed into a tomato field, the fuel inside igniting and blazing orange. The tanker's jet engines, filled with fuel, screamed down to earth, thudded into the dry hills, and burst into flame. Black smoke hung in the air; twisted shards of metal lay everywhere.

González and his father watched in horror. Immediately Manolo's thoughts turned to his young wife, Dolores. Five months pregnant with their first child, she was teaching at a local school that morning.

Worried that debris would hit the school, he sped to his wife on his motorcycle.

Dolores had just opened the school doors when the windows started to rattle. At first she thought a small earthquake was shaking the building. Then one of the students shouted that fire was falling from the sky. Everyone ran to the windows, watching the fire and smoke. Soon the storm passed, leaving the school unscathed. A passel of worried mothers arrived to collect their children, and Manolo roared up on his motorcycle. He made sure that his wife wasn't hurt, then rode off to see if anyone else needed help.

González dropped off his motorcycle, climbed into his Citroën pickup truck, and rumbled off to the hills surrounding the town. The village had no paved roads, making travel slow and dusty. Even the main road into town was hard-packed dirt. Not that it mattered — usually nobody was rushing to get in or out. Palomares was just a tiny farming village in the back of beyond. It didn't even appear on most maps of Spain.

Palomares sat on the southeastern coast of Spain, about forty miles south of Cartagena. To the south lay the Costa del Sol, booming with foreign tourists and high-rise hotels. To the north stretched the Costa Blanca, also popular with European travelers. Between them lay a Costa without a catchy name and the town of Palomares. Palomares had a beach, the Playa de Quitapellejos, but its sand was hard-packed and windswept, unattractive to both tourists and townspeople. The town itself rested on a gentle rise about a half mile inland.

Despite their proximity to the Mediterranean, the villagers of Palomares worked the land, rather than the sea. Around the town lay the evidence of their labor — flat plains furrowed with farmers' fields.