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

The CURV crew waited in the control shack, killing time by playing cards. Eventually, a member of the CURV team came down from the wardroom, looking grim. You're not going to believe this, he told his colleagues. The admiral wants to cut CURV's umbilical cord, tie it off to a buoy, and retrieve the bomb later. The men in the control shack were shocked. They had two lift lines solidly in place; why not just raise the bomb?

The same argument flew about the wardroom. The atmosphere grew so tense that Howard Tarkington, the CURV division head, fainted from the stress. Guest had vowed not to make another lift attempt without three lines attached. Yet if they strained to free CURV, the only vehicle that could attach a third line, the bomb might be dragged out of reach. Guest wanted to cut CURV loose.

He turned to each member of his staff and asked his opinion. Red Moody and Brad Mooney argued against cutting CURV free. CURV, in a way, was the third line they were looking for. They should lift the bomb now.

Cliff Page, the admiral's chief of staff, agreed. Knowing that Mooney enjoyed a strong rapport with Admiral Guest and had excellent diplomatic skills — one Navy man called Mooney “the snake charmer”—Page took charge. He cleared out the wardroom, leaving the lieutenant and the admiral to slug it out. They stayed there, behind a closed door, for hours. “I tried to be as respectful as I could, but I was saying, ‘Admiral, this is dumb as hell to cut this thing loose,’” recalled Mooney. “‘It's totally enmeshed in there, and they can't help but lift it now.’” By early morning, Mooney had beaten the admiral down. At 5:02 a.m. on Thursday, April 7, Guest sent a message to General Wilson. The message said that Admiral Guest had a broken leg, code that the lift would soon begin.

Red Moody and Max Harrell, the commanding officer of the Petrel, had already started preparations. The two men went over every detail: they didn't want any lift lines snapping this time around. Harrell designed a system of blocks and pulleys that would haul the two lines up, distributing the load equally between them. He attached a dynamometer to measure the total lifting stress.

Both lines were wound around one capstan, ensuring that the ship would hoist both at the same speed. Moody made sure that the capstan was smooth, free from any imperfections that might cut the lines. A second capstan would wind CURV's umbilical cable. CURV, though hopelessly tangled in the chute, was slightly buoyant and didn't pose much of a lifting problem. But to keep it neutral during the lift, it had to be raised at the same speed as the weapon.

Harrell positioned the Mike boats that would hold Petrel steady for the lift. Looking at the weather, he knew that today would prove particularly difficult. April 7 dawned with little breeze and a calm sea, beautiful for a spring picnic but less than ideal for ship control. It was easiest to judge and hold position when a breeze or surface current offered a force to work against. With neither of these, Harrell's difficult job would be that much harder.

Guest and his staff gathered in the wardroom to watch the lift on CURV's video monitor.

Meanwhile, Moody cleared all nonessential personnel—“tourists,” he called them — off the Petrel's stern, or fan-tail. The only people allowed on deck were those actually recovering CURV or the bomb. Moody wanted to give the recovery team space to work, not necessarily protect the men who hustled belowdecks. Moody was certain the bomb wouldn't explode. But if it somehow did, it wouldn't matter if a man were abovedecks or below. As one EOD diver put it, there'd be nothing left but a greasy stain.

At 5:50 a.m., the Petrel began to raise the weapon. Guest worried most about the bomb lifting off the bottom. He had been told that when the bomb was within 100 feet of the bottom and 100 feet of the surface, vibrations in the nylon line could reduce its strength by as much as 75 percent. The admiral was not the only man in the wardroom worried about this possibility; one scientist paced back and forth with such a scowl that Red Moody and Herman Kunz had to take him outside and tell him to cheer up. Guest, powerless to do anything but wait, looked sick to his stomach. He turned to the man next to him and said, “I'd prefer combat any day to this.” As it turned out, the weapon came up so smoothly that they hardly noticed it leaving the bottom. For an hour and forty-five minutes, the capstans turned slowly, gently raising the weapon. Finally, the top of the parachute broke the surface. Two of Red Moody's divers jumped into the water to inspect the bomb. The weapon, they found, wasn't dangling below the chute but remained tangled about a third of the way up. The fact that they saw the weapon was a huge relief; for the first time, Guest knew he really, truly had the bomb.