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

That same year Spain hit another milestone: the per capita income reached $500 a year, meaning that the United Nations no longer classified Spain as a “developing country.” The Spain that Ambassador Duke saw in 1966 was a far cry from the broken, impoverished country he had seen in 1951 with Stanton Griffis. But the country remained a land of deep contrasts, at once utterly modern and shockingly primitive. The Spanish magazine ¡Hola! , somewhat akin to Life magazine in the United States, provides an insightful glance into Spanish society at the time. The issues in early 1966 offered endless fluff and photos covering the comings and goings of the rich and famous: royal weddings, debutante balls, and Jackie Kennedy's ski trips with John-John and Caroline. Photos showed women wearing the latest fashions and hairstyles, sandwiched between full-color ads for TVs, dishwashers, and Johnnie Walker Red Label.

This modern, high-fashion Spain was a world away from the hard-scrabble desert of Palomares, where indoor plumbing was still a luxury. The modern beach resort of Marbella, with its high-rise hotels, manicured golf courses, and glassy apartment buildings, was just a couple hundred miles down the coast from Palomares. Yet it seemed like another planet. It was hard to imagine the tomato farmers of Palomares lounging by the pool, sipping iced cocktails, and flipping through ¡Hola! for news of Mia Farrow's daring new haircut.

So great was the divide between these two Spains that ¡Hola! never mentioned the Palomares incident. Angier Biddle Duke, however, fit perfectly into its pages, appearing in two articles in early 1966. One showed him and Robin gazing at a painting as they inaugurated a new American cultural center in Madrid. The other included a two-page photo spread of a hunting trip with the ambassador, various government ministers, and Generalissimo Franco himself. Duke posed with a shotgun, sharing a drink with Franco around the bonfire. He looked perfectly at home amid wealth and power. And that was a good thing for him. The ambassador would need every bit of his charm and connections in early 1966; the accident in Palomares would ruffle a lot of feathers, and Angie would have to smooth them.

In the days immediately following the accident, the main concern of the Spanish government — and of Duke — was keeping a lid on the press. The Spanish government wanted the word “nuclear” kept out of the news entirely, lest the public learn about nuclear overflights, radioactivity, or possible contamination. The accident was an unfortunate plane crash, no more. But the international press had quickly gotten wind of the accident, and reporters were already sniffing around. Both the U.S. and Spanish governments agreed to tell them as little as possible in the hope they would go away.

On the day of the accident, at 9:45 p.m. in Madrid, the U.S. Information Service, the Department of Defense, and the State Department released a joint statement about the accident to UPI, the Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, and Stars and Stripes. It read, in its entirety: A B-52 bomber from the 68th Bomb Wing, Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C. and a KC-135 tanker from the 910th air refueling squadron, Bergstrom AFB, Texas, crashed today southwest of Cartagena, Spain, during scheduled air operations. There are reports of some survivors. An Air Force accident investigation team has been dispatched to the scene. Additional details will be made available as the investigation progresses.

Over the next couple of days, Duke kept an eye on the papers as the story bubbled through the international press. The embassy sent a steady stream of reports back to Washington. On the days following the accident, short, straightforward stories ran in British and American newspapers. A few papers speculated that the planes might have been carrying nuclear weapons. At the same time, the Spanish press ran newspaper, television, and radio stories without any critical comment, treating the accident as simply an unusual news event.

By Wednesday, January 19, two days after the accident, the story seemed to be fizzling out, much to the relief of Spanish and American officials. On that day and the next, Duke sat down to discuss the situation with his key contact in the Spanish Foreign Ministry, Ángel Sagáz, who ran the North American section. At the meetings, Sagáz seemed calm but concerned about repercussions if the Spanish public discovered that nuclear-armed American bombers regularly flew over Spain. “Sagáz also mentioned, without great stress, that sensational stories about missing bombs and radiation could excite Spanish public,” Duke reported in a cable to the secretary of state.