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

The villagers of Palomares, from their vantage point above the playa, watched the scene below with interest. To them, the rows of flapping canvas tents looked less like a military invasion than a curious patchwork quilt laid out by the sea. Among themselves, they called Camp Wilson “Villa Jarapa.” Jarapa is a regional word that doesn't translate exactly into English. It's something like a crazy quilt or a colorful rug woven from scraps and rags.

Judging by the size and scope of Camp Wilson, an observer could tell there was more going on than a simple search for debris. Everyone knew, and the press had widely reported, that the Americans were searching for a missing H-bomb. But, much to the frustration of the gathering hordes of international reporters, the military remained tight-lipped. It admitted that the crashed planes had carried nuclear armaments but said nothing about radioactive contamination or missing bombs.

According to the Air Force, the seven hundred men at Camp Wilson were simply cleaning up accident debris. The Navy was ordered to refer all news queries to the Air Force. “There are no denials. There are no confirmations,” said CBS News reporter Bernard Kalb. “Only ‘no comment’

again and again.” Kalb reported airmen wearing masks and radiation badges but could squeeze no information out of the Air Force, even after villagers told him where the first three bombs had been found. A rumor circulated that Paris Match was offering a week in Paris for information on the search. “So stringent is the official secrecy,” reported Newsweek, “that for once the men in the Pentagon have refrained from coming up with a catchy name for an operation, preferring to let this one go discreetly unidentified.”

Press briefings were maddening. New York Times reporter Tad Szulc described a typical exchange:

Reporter: Tell me, any sign of the bomb?

Air Force Spokesman: What bomb?

Reporter: Well, you know, the thing you're looking for …

Air Force Spokesman: You know perfectly well we're not looking for any bomb. Just looking for debris.

Reporter: All right, any signs of the thing that you say is not the bomb?

Air Force Spokesman: If you put it that way, I can tell you that there is no sign of the thing that is not the bomb….

Even the Spanish reporters, no strangers to official secrecy, were impressed. They started calling Air Force spokesman Barnett Young “Señor No Comment.”

The information vacuum quickly filled with misinformation and propaganda. London papers reported that Palomares had been sealed off and evacuated. The Sydney Sun ran a story under the headline “Death Rain from an H-Bomb.” Radio España Independiente (REI), the Spanish-language Communist radio station, leapt in with both feet. Almost every day, beginning on the day of the accident, REI broadcast news of Palomares. This was no small achievement, given that it usually had no actual news to report. Sometimes the coverage simply reminded listeners that a nuclear bomb was missing and called, vehemently, for the Yankee imperialists to get out of Spain and Vietnam.

But sometimes reports carried lengthy features, such as poems and songs sent in by listeners, interviews with authorities on radiation, and surveys of local farmers. (All of whom, of course, wanted the Yankee imperialists to get out of Spain and Vietnam.) The REI stories, reporting mass hysteria and poisoned produce, sounded shrill and absurd to many.

But in the absence of real information, they held power and resonance. Palomares was fertile ground for propaganda. Many of the villagers were illiterate, and the Americans told them little. For many of them, news came from gossip, and gossip often started with the radio. The radio said that the bombs had contaminated Almería with dangerous radiation, and the Americans offered little information to counter that. In fact, some Americans were walking around in masks, gloves, and sterile suits, talking about radioactivity and alpha particles. No wonder many of the villagers soon became worried.

At Camp Wilson, life for most of the enlisted men settled into a routine. The men woke at dawn, climbed into buses, and bumped across the countryside. At the appointed patch of desert, they stumbled out of the bus for another day of searching. According to the SAC final report, “It was a long, and a very trying and tiring task. Day after day, the entries in the daily operations log at the accident site simply stated: ‘Ground search continued.’” Walter Vornbrock, the base comptroller at Torrejón who helped organize the search parties, estimated that searchers covered about thirty-five square miles on foot, much of it two or three times. Despite the drudgery, the SAC report said, about 20 percent of the men “found they liked the outdoor life and volunteered to remain.” Of course, this meant that 80 percent did not.