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

During World War II, Guest flew a dive-bomber in the Pacific and achieved a spectacular fighting record. He was the first carrier-based aviator to sink an enemy ship in that war, a feat that won him the Navy Cross, the second highest honor in the Navy. (The only higher award is the Medal of Honor.) During the rest of his service in World War II, Guest won the Air Medal, a Gold Star, the Legion of Merit, and the Bronze Star. The Navy also awarded him several Purple Hearts, which he never wore. After the war, he climbed the Navy hierarchy, becoming a rear admiral in 1962.

In Palomares, Guest hit the ground running, establishing a high-probability search area on the day he arrived, January 24. At the time, he already knew about the Spanish fishermen. But he also knew that the Air Force had found three bombs on land and that Navy divers and minesweepers were picking up debris and sonar hits near shore. It seemed clear that if bomb number four had fallen into the water, it had landed either in the area described by Simó and Roldán or in the shallow debris field adjacent to the beach.

However, at this early stage in the game, Guest couldn't afford to leave anything out. On a map, Guest found the point where the fishermen had plucked Larry Messinger from the sea. Guest knew that Messinger had opened his parachute immediately after ejection. If the bomb had done the same, he reasoned, it probably wouldn't have floated much farther than the airman. From Messinger's landing point, he drew two straight lines to shore, one reaching far north of Palomares, the other far south. This created a triangular-shaped search area encompassing every piece of debris, every sonar hit, and every parachute observed to have fallen into the ocean. The search area was massive: a giant pie-shaped wedge stretching from the Spanish shoreline to a point in the sea. The wedge measured just over fifty square miles, more than double the size of Manhattan. Guest knew he had to narrow it down. This was just too much ocean to search.

Oliver Andersen, left in charge of the divers by Red Moody, was doing his part to cover some ground. His divers, equipped with scuba gear, could make quick dives to 100 or 150 feet — maybe 200 feet, if they really pushed it — and spent much of the early search doing just that. Navy minesweepers collected sonar hits and handed the information to Andersen's divers, who made quick

“bounce” dives to see if the contact might be the bomb. The divers found a lot of debris in the first couple of weeks: fuselage sections, tubing, an instruction manual, a survival kit bag, a wing section, wiring, fuel cells, and a flashlight. No bomb.

After a week, Andersen decided that they needed a more systematic plan. He found the coordinates of the three bombs that had fallen on land and drew a line from those into the ocean, hoping that bomb number four had landed along the same path. Then he picked points to the north and south, farther than he thought the bomb could have drifted. Having no decent maps, he used a handheld compass to mark bearings and sketch out a search area. Then his divers methodically began to swim the full shoreline, back and forth, out to where the water was about eighty feet deep.

Underwater searching is complicated, since divers can't see far and their time beneath the surface is limited. So they use something called a “jackstay.” The setup for a jackstay search is simple. A line is attached to a “clump,” a weight that sits on the bottom, underneath the water. The other end of the line is attached to a buoy that floats on the surface. Then a second line and buoy are attached to a second clump. Finally, the two clumps, resting on the bottom, are joined together by a “distance line.” The distance line can be any length, depending on visibility and the size of the area to be searched.

To run a jackstay search, a diver swims down to a clump, puts a hand on the distance line, and swims to the other clump. (The search can also be done with two divers swimming on opposite sides of the distance line.) While swimming, the diver feels the way in front of him, hoping to find the object he's looking for. “You're basically searching like a blind man,” explained Master Diver Ron Ervin. Lights are not usually useful because of the silt, unless you find an object and want to take a close look.

After the diver swims the distance line and reaches the other end, he picks up the clump and walks, say, ten steps with it in a certain direction. (He's not exactly walking, though — it's more of a half stumble, half crawl, tripping over the fins on his feet.) Then he sets the clump down, taking care to keep the line taut so he stays on course, and swims the line back to the other end. The process continues, the diver slowly covering the search area.