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

That morning in Rota, a radioman found Red Moody at the Bachelor Officers Quarters. Moody had stayed out late the night before, drinking with an old friend. The messenger handed Moody a clipboard, the cover indicating that the note inside was classified. Red looked at the note and then at the messenger. “Tell them I'm coming back,” he said. He asked for an early flight.

That afternoon in Spain, Tony Richardson and John Bruce, the mathematician and oceanographer who had escorted Simó out to sea the day before, visited the fisherman at his house. Simó found the fathometer trace and unraveled it on the dinner table. John Bruce looked at the trace and questioned Simó. He saw nothing resembling the falling weapon.

The Americans told Simó that he would be paid for the previous day's excursion — his boat had lost an entire day of fishing. Then Bruce, curious to see Simó's fathometer, asked if they could visit the Manuela Orts. Simó agreed. The men boarded the ship, took a look around, and were impressed with the sleek vessel and its modern gear. When they finished, Simó offered to buy the men a drink, and they headed to a nearby tavern.

At the bar, Tony Richardson sipped a beer and watched news of the Gemini 8 space shot. The ship had launched from Cape Kennedy that morning and was due to orbit earth for three days. During that time, Gemini pilots planned to link the nose of their capsule with a satellite called Agena. If they pulled it off, it would be the first time two crafts had docked in space, a key component in the plan for landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

After a flawless start to the flight, Gemini docked to the satellite successfully. But shortly thereafter, a thruster on the spacecraft stuck open and set the linked vehicles spinning crazily The astronauts separated their capsule from the satellite and stabilized the craft, using rockets normally reserved for reentry. NASA ordered the crew to make an emergency landing in the Pacific. The astronauts were picked up after three hours at sea.

The outer-space drama received massive news coverage: a banner headline on the front page of The New York Times, with more than two full pages of stories. Alvin

and Aluminaut' s deep-sea rendezvous, the first time two submersibles had ever accomplished such a feat, remained secret.

The same day that General Wilson received Guest's report, he sent three nuclear weapons experts to the Fort Snelling to look at the

Alvin photographs. One man worked for the Atomic Energy Commission; the other two were EOD officers who had several years' experience with the Mark 28.

The weapons experts showed the Alvin crew photos of a Mark 28 bomb, and they recognized it immediately as the object they had seen. “That's it!” the crew said. The weapons team then examined the photos that Wilson had taken underwater. Although the parachute had wrapped itself around the object almost completely, the experts saw what appeared to be a lift lug. They also recognized the parachute as the right type for a Mark 28. Convinced that the Alvin crew had seen the bomb, the weapons experts took a boat to the flagship to tell Admiral Guest.

On board the USS Albany

, the experts found Guest resistant to their news. “It is the opinion of my team that they had difficulties in convincing CTF-65 of similarities between the two sets of photographs,” wrote General Wilson in a secret telegram to his Air Force superiors the next day.

“Offers by my EOD team to assist in recovery operations and provide technical assistance met with cool reception.” Wilson promised to keep his superiors in the loop as new developments arose.

In the same message, Wilson also mentioned that both he and Guest had received marching orders from the embassy in Madrid. The identification and recovery of the weapon must be handled secretly. Only the embassy, working with the government of Spain, could make public announcements on the matter.

In Madrid, Duke was determined to keep the rest of this story under his control. If he played his cards right, the weapon recovery could become a proud moment for the U.S. and Spanish governments, an example of how well the two countries had worked together to tackle a tough problem. In the upcoming base negotiations, Spanish officials would remember how well the Americans had handled the accident, scoring points for U.S. negotiators.