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

Then he turned to Brad Mooney, who had witnessed the exchange, and said, “What the hell do you do with a guy like that?”

Mooney, used to dealing with both admirals and scientists, knew that the two men came from vastly different cultures, one that demanded obedience and one that questioned authority. But Mooney also knew that no matter what their differences, these people had to work together to find the bomb. He said to Guest, “Admiral, he's a researcher. Why don't you not talk to him anymore and let me talk to him?” From that day on, says Mooney, Guest never spoke to Earl Hays. Such events soured the already strained relationship between Guest and the Alvin crew. Some of the crew understood the admiral, but many, according to Mooney, just “locked into their minds what a bastard Guest was.” By the end of February, Guest had all the deep-search tools he was going to get. Despite the personnel difficulties, Aluminaut and

Alvin were diving and searching. The USNS Mizar had arrived, with hydrophones that could navigate Alvin more effectively. Mizar

also brought a deep-towed camera sled to photograph the bottom. Often, the Mizar spent its days tracking Alvin and its nights taking photographs. The Ocean Bottom Scanning Sonar was up and running, at least for now.

One Navy captain estimated that if all the deep-ocean gear worked well every day, they could cut the search time from three years to two.

Catching glimpses of divers, minisubs, and high-tech gear, the press played up the James Bond angle. Life magazine reported, “At first the Thunderball aspects of the great search were not discernible. But gradually the search force took on the familiar trappings: squads of frogmen emerged on the beaches, and tiny two-and three-man subs prowled the waters. Now the spirit of James Bond is all over this tiny coastal area of southern Spain.” Admiral Guest would probably have disagreed. He was working with temperamental gadgets, experimental subs, and disrespectful scientists. He had nothing like the custom gear designed by James Bond's Q.

11. The Fisherman's Catch

One Sunday morning in February, Joe Ramirez sat in the claims tent at Camp Wilson, poring over legal documents. Ramirez plunged deep into the villagers' claims, trying to place a value on each farmer's patch of alfalfa, peas, or tomatoes. As Ramirez worked, the phone rang. General Wilson wanted to see him.

Ramirez scampered to Wilson's tent to find an irritated general. “Your friend the fisherman,” Wilson said, looking at Ramirez with annoyance, “has run the blockade.” Early that morning, Simó had sailed his fishing boat into the Navy's restricted area (which, as it happened, covered some prime fishing grounds). Simó had lowered his nets and caught something heavy, which he believed was the bomb. He had dragged the object to a small cove in nearby Terreros and tried to haul it up, but it had proved too heavy to reel in. Simó had radioed the Air Force with the news. I have your bomb, he said. If you want it, come get it.

Ramirez's first thought was “Damn, we finally found this bomb!” General Wilson gave the orders: Ramirez and two EOD divers should fly to Terreros and check out the situation. If Simó had the bomb, Ramirez should secure the area and report back to him.

So, at about 11:30 in the morning, Ramirez climbed into a helicopter with Red Moody and Oliver Andersen and headed up the coast.

By this point, Air Force searchers had accepted that bomb number four was probably not lying intact in an open crater. Many assumed that the bomb had fallen into the sea. But as the sea search dragged on, several other possibilities arose.

A Palomares schoolteacher said that he had seen something on the day of the accident: a large cloud of dust near the B-52 tail impact point. Perhaps, thought investigators, the bomb had buried itself in the desert sand. Searchers were ordered to mark any sort of crater, depression, or patch of earth that looked disturbed. The problem was, nobody knew what the crater above a buried bomb might look like. General Wilson asked the Sandia engineers to arrange some drop tests. They contacted their colleagues in Albuquerque, and they quickly organized a test at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, in a stretch of desert that resembled the land around Palomares.