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

Guest himself said it was “like going up here in the hills behind Palomares at midnight on a moonless night, and taking a hollow can and putting it over one eye, and covering the other eye and taking a pencil flashlight and starting to look through 120 square miles of area in these hills. It's not easy.” One diver described it as “throwing a needle into a swimming pool and then blindfolding a guy and telling him to go pick that needle up.” Time magazine compared it to “finding a needle in a haystack — or perhaps in a hayfield.”

But a SAC colonel perhaps put it best. “This must be the devil's own work,” he said. “If someone had sat down to figure out the hardest way to lose a hydrogen bomb, he could not have come up with anything more devilish.”

FEBRUARY

7. Villa Jarapa

By early February, the residents of Palomares who walked to the edge of their village and looked down toward the Mediterranean saw a curious sight. On the windswept Playa de Quitapellejos, edged up against the sea, sat a full-blown military camp. “The once-deserted Mediterranean coast at Palomares,” said Life magazine, now “looks like a World War II invasion beachhead.” Around the time that Joe Ramirez was visiting Tarzan the Shepherd, General Wilson decided that his men should not be camping in a dry riverbed. A flash flood — though a remote possibility — could easily wreck the camp. Even worse, airmen tromping around in the soft sand released an awful lot of dust — possibly contaminated — into the air. Looking around, Wilson decided that the barren, hard-packed playa near Palomares would serve his needs. He ordered a section of the beach leveled, and on Friday, January 21, Camp Wilson moved to its new home.

By February 1, Camp Wilson served as home and office to more than seven hundred people, who lived and worked in seventy-five canvas tents. General Wilson had his own command center, the walls hung with photomosaic maps and status boards listing aircraft movements, available vehicles, and the number of working radiation monitors. Air Force staff manned the command post twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. General Wilson held a briefing every morning at 9 a.m., where staff presented summaries of the last twenty-four hours and plans for upcoming projects. Every day, Wilson sent a report to SAC Commander General Ryan in Omaha, summarizing the search and cleanup activities.

To deliver mail and supplies, Wilson established a daily courier nicknamed the “Red-Eye Special.” The courier, either a truck or a helicopter, left Camp Wilson around 5 a.m. with a list of needed supplies. The courier made its way to San Javier, handed over the shopping list, and picked up the goods that had arrived from Torrejón, Morón, or elsewhere in Europe the previous day.

The Air Force sequestered all the enlisted men in Camp Wilson and told them to avoid contact with the villagers. Officers had a looser rein, however, and a few were lucky enough to find berths in town or at a seaside hotel within driving distance. Robert Finkel, the squadron commander who had slept with his head in a cardboard box, roomed above a gas station. The quarters had no shower but sported a bathtub with enough hot water for one bath. Finkel and his roommates rushed to get home at the end of each day — only the first arrival got the hot water; it was cold baths for the rest. Joe Ramirez, also rooming happily above a gas station, didn't mind the cold showers as much as the meager breakfasts. One day, he complained about his grumbling stomach to a Spanish agricultural expert, who gave the young lawyer some life-altering advice. He told Ramirez to ask for a bocadillo de lomo de cerdo—a grilled pork sandwich — for breakfast. Ramirez took his advice, and after that his outlook improved considerably.

Even for the enlisted men, camp life had its pleasures. Gone were the days of sleeping under buses and choking down cold C-rations. Though not luxurious, Camp Wilson offered amenities that even the villagers on the hill didn't have. Medical personnel ran a dispensary to treat sprains, blisters, and chest colds. A steady supply of water from the Navy allowed full laundry and bath facilities. The cooking staff set up an outdoor cafeteria that served three hot meals a day.

The Air Force provided entertainment as well: it borrowed a movie screen and projector from the Navy, so the men could sit on the sand and watch films at night. During the day, if the men had time and energy to spare, they played beach volleyball or touch football. The tough ones could swim in the sparkling but chilly sea.

Someone at Camp Wilson even designed a semiofficial emblem. It pictured a camp tent perched on the edge of the sea with a broken arrow — the military term for this kind of nuclear accident — in the sky overhead. Airmen took to wearing the emblem on black berets, the favored hat of the local Spanish men.