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

Workers cleared a dense thicket of tomato stakes so fields could be decontaminated. The Air Force bought the tomatoes and fed them to airmen.

^{Courtesy of Lewis Melson}

To dilute plutonium in the soil, the Americans agreed to plow or water more than five hundred acres of land.

^{Courtesy of Lewis Melson}

The most contaminated dirt was packed into 4,810 barrels for shipment to the Savannah River nuclear processing center in South Carolina.

^{Courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories}

Manolo González (right) and Joe Ramirez (standing left) with a photo-mosaic map used for claims work.

^{Courtesy of Joe Ramirez}

Alvin being lifted from the Fort Snelling's well deck. The sub had completed only one mission prior to Palomares.

^{U.S. Naval Historical Center photograph}

Alvin pilots Bill Rainnie, Mac McCamis, and Val Wilson.

^{Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution}

Admiral Guest outlined four search areas, encompassing twenty-seven square miles of ocean. The area to search was larger than Manhattan.

^{Courtesy of Lewis Melson}

Aluminaut under water. Larger and less maneuverable than Alvin, Aluminaut could stay submerged for up to seventy-two hours.

^{Courtesy of Georgianna Markel}

Francisco Simó Orts, the Spanish fisherman who saw a “dead man” on a parachute fall into the sea. Guest centered a high-priority search area on Simó's sighting.

^{Courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories}

Lieutenant Commander DeWitt “Red” Moody, an EOD expert who joined Guest's inner circle.

^{Official U.S. Navy photograph, courtesy of D. H. “Red” Moody}

Brad Mooney, a thirty-five-year-old Navy lieutenant, was a veteran of the Thresher search and understood the submersibles' capabilities.

^{Courtesy of Brad Mooney}

Ambassador Duke (right) and Manuel Fraga Iribarne waving to photographers during their famous swim. The publicity stunt made papers around the world; Variety dubbed it the “Best Water Show since Aquacade.”

^{Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Special Collections Library, Duke University}

On March 15, 1966, Alvin took this photo at about twenty-five hundred feet below the surface. “How do you know it's not a parachute full of mud?” asked.

Guest. U.S. Naval Historical Center photograph

To retrieve the bomb, Red Moody helped construct POODL. One Navy man called it a “kludge.”

^{U.S. Naval Historical Center photograph}

CURV, a torpedo-recovery device, used a specially designed grapnel to attach lines to the parachute.

^{Courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories}

CURV twists a grapnel into the parachute.

^{U.S. Naval Historical Center photograph}