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

Wilson had sent a message to Torrejón earlier in the day by using a helicopter radio to talk to a KC-135, which relayed the message to Morón and then sent it on to Madrid. But the chopper was gone and he needed to talk to headquarters. The Air Force team set up a single sideband radio, and Wilson ordered more men, better maps, food, water, and a secure communications link. Because anyone could easily tap into the radio channel, Wilson used the code name “Warner,” which would stick for the rest of the mission. He also sent a messenger to Vera to find a telephone and call Madrid with the news of bomb number one.

When Wilson's message arrived in Torrejón and Morón around midnight, available airmen were rousted from their barracks and ordered onto buses. Most carried only the clothes on their backs and maybe a blanket. Two convoys left Torrejón by 3 a.m., with 175 men on six buses and an ambulance trundling along with the group. Two additional convoys left Morón by around 4 a.m., with 126 men on six buses. The convoy from Morón also included an ambulance, as well as one van and one truck carrying bedding, food, water, and radios.

In Palomares, Ramirez and the rest of the disaster control team set off to find somewhere to spend the night. Ramirez and a handful of others drove to Cuevas, where, they were told, the Guardia Civil had made some arrangements. The group bumped along over the dark, unfamiliar roads, and eventually found Cuevas and the office of the Guardia Civil. Ramirez, the designated spokesman for the group, pounded on the door and woke up the guardia. The bewildered soldier had no idea who these Americans were or why they were waking him up in the middle of the night asking for somewhere to sleep. Ramirez explained the situation. “It doesn't have to be a hotel,” he said.

“Anyplace where we can get a bed.” The guardia suggested a couple of boardinghouses, and the Air Force men fanned out across the dark town to see what they could find. Ramirez wound up in an old house and spent the night in a cold, sagging bed, happy to have a blanket and a roof over his head.

In the morning, Ramirez and the rest of his group headed back to Palomares and gathered at the tail section in the riverbed. By 7:30 a.m., they were joined by a seven-man disaster control team from SAC headquarters, who had left Omaha a few hours after the accident and traveled all night. The busloads of men from Morón and Torrejón wouldn't arrive until early afternoon.

The small teams moved out from the tail section and began searching nearby for the missing bombs, in the hope that they had landed near bomb number one. Aircraft debris — scraps of metal, shards of plastic — lay scattered all around. Radar-jamming chaff resembling silver tinsel hung from the trees.

The teams walked slowly, scanning the ground and marking searched areas with string or toilet paper tied to bushes and poles.

At 9 a.m., helicopters arrived from Morón and began reconnaissance flights. At 10 a.m., a chopper pilot sent word that he saw a metal tube in the rocky hills behind the cemetery, about a mile west of the village. Ramirez and others went to look. There, in the same area he had explored the previous night, Ramirez saw a circular crater, twenty feet across and six feet deep. In the middle of the crater sat a parachute and a bomb. Or rather, part of a bomb.

Bomb number two was in bad shape. Some of the high explosive around the primary had detonated, digging the crater and exploding weapon fragments up to a hundred yards in all directions. What was left in the crater was the secondary — the fusion section of the bomb. Fragments of metal, parts of switches, and connecting rings lay all around. The ready/safe switch lay among the wreckage but was so damaged that its position was unreadable. Ten pounds of high explosive littered the area in small pieces and slivers. The afterbody — the tail section of the bomb, which held the parachutes—

had been blasted apart from the rest and lay a hundred yards away. Next to the crumpled afterbody sprawled a ribbon parachute. The chute looked beat up, like a fishing net washed up on a beach after a storm. Another parachute, still tightly packed in its canvas bag, stuck halfway out of the afterbody.

The nuclear core, or pit, was nowhere in sight.

Ramirez didn't know it, but the area around bomb number two was highly contaminated with plutonium. Although there had been no nuclear explosion, some of the high explosive lenses had detonated from the force of the impact, scattering radioactive plutonium across the countryside. It was, in effect, a dirty bomb. “I didn't know how an H-bomb worked,” said Ramirez. “But we had been told that if there was radioactivity, it would be low and not harmful. It's alpha type [that] we could brush off or wash off.”