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

As the two reporters headed back toward the village, a young Air Police trooper flagged down their car. Readying themselves for another confrontation, the reporters were struck instead by a bolt of luck. Looking desperate, the airman asked if either of the men spoke Spanish. Del Amo replied that he did. “Great,” the air policeman said. “There's a fellow in that bean field, and I've got to get him out of there.” Del Amo said he would be happy to translate.

The two reporters trudged into the bean field, and Del Amo translated the airman's message, telling the farmer that he had to leave the field because of dangerous radioactivity. On the way back to the car, del Amo asked the airman if the Air Force was worried about the bombs. Their conversation, recorded in The Bombs of Palomares, would break the Palomares story wide open:

“How do you know about the bombs?” the airman asked, suddenly suspicious.

“Hell,” del Amo told him, “I've just come back from the camp.” The air policeman was reassured. “Well, they found three of them very shortly after the crash, but they're worried because they haven't found the other one,” he said. They reached the car, and he pointed to the sites where the three bombs had been found. “One was in the river bed where the camp now is,” he explained. “The second bomb was near that white house over there, you see? And the third one way over in those hills in front of you. Now they're all worried about the fourth bomb.” Del Amo sped back to Vera. He called the Madrid bureau and told it about the four bombs, radioactivity, and a missing nuclear weapon — everything the governments wanted to keep covered up.

That evening, in Madrid, Duke got wind of del Amo's dispatch. At 9:46 p.m., he sent a terse cable to Washington: “Have just learned local UPI correspondent filed story today on B-52/KC-135 accident to effect three atom bombs recovered from wreckage but one still missing and that hundreds of US

troops combing countryside with Geiger counters.” He added, “Foregoing may lead to escalation of media treatment and rapid change in present circumstances.” The following morning, January 20, 1966, The New York Times ran the UPI story on page one. The headline read, “U.S. Said to Hunt Lost Atom Device.” The article began: United States Air Force men today were reported searching the Spanish countryside for an atomic device that was understood to be missing after the collision of a B-52 nuclear bomber and a jet tanker Monday during a refueling mission.

United States officials in Madrid and here in Southeastern Spain refused to confirm or deny that a nuclear bomb was carried by the B-52, which crashed into the KC-135 jet tanker near here.

But they gave every sign they were looking for one. Hundreds of American servicemen were searching the crash scene, some of them armed with Geiger counters. Palomares is a village a little more than a mile inland on Spain's southeastern coast, about 95 miles east of Granada.

When asked what the Geiger counters were being used for, Col. Barnett Young, chief information officer for the 16th Air Force at Torrejón Air Force base, near Madrid, asked in return, “what do you normally use Geiger counters for?”

The article, which went on to describe the massive search under way near Palomares, made no splash in Spain on January 20. Exercising its iron grip on the press, the Spanish government allowed no major foreign newspapers into the country that day. When Foreign Minister Fernando Castiella summoned Duke to a meeting that evening, they spent most of the time discussing the long-contested territory of Gibraltar and barely mentioned Palomares.

But the storm had only been delayed. The following day, the UPI article landed on Franco's desk, sent by the Spanish Embassy in Washington. The generalissimo was not pleased.

Shortly after noon on January 21, the Spanish foreign minister called Duke to report that Franco had read the UPI article and was extremely concerned. Ángel Sagáz, the director of North American affairs, was on his way to the U.S. Embassy to discuss the situation.

Sagáz arrived at the embassy agitated and upset. Franco fired people at will, and Sagáz undoubtedly felt the gun sights turning in his direction. This was a crisis. He gave Duke an earful: Who were these “United States officials” mentioned in the article? And what were these other reports, citing

“Spanish inhabitants of the accident area” who had complained about nuclear overflights? If this turned into a radiation scare, it could wreck the tourism industry. He thought that the United States and Spain had been working together to contain the press, but since that obviously wasn't the case, the Spanish government might take matters into its own hands. Maybe it would convene its own press conference, to at least spin the story in Spain's favor.