The Navy raced to search the ocean floor for the bomb in what would become the most complex ocean recovery operation in history involving more than 100 divers, minesweepers, military submarines and deep water subs. The thing was, all the airmen were accounted for and officials realized Orts had likely seen the fourth nuclear bomb dip into the Mediterranean a few miles from land. One, Francisco Simo Orts, claimed he saw a man falling with a parachute to the ocean. Soon, it became clear that the bomb had not fallen on land, but had splashed down somewhere in the Mediterranean.Īt the time Palomares supported itself in part through fishing and several fishermen witnessed the crash from the ocean. After hours of searching, no one seemed to have any idea where it was.Īt first only a few dozen American soldiers were called in, but as the search for the last bomb stretched into days and then weeks, more and more came until more than 600 American military servicemen were on site – many spending their time walking an arms-length from each other in straight lines, scouring the arid Spanish countryside. Soldiers removed the debris, but American officials quickly grew anxious over the location of the fourth bomb. Just an hour later, searchers found the third bomb, which suffered a similar fate as the second. Radiation detection equipment indicated the presence of significant alpha contamination in the area,” the report says. “The primary concern with Number 2 was the plutonium contamination that must have been released by the high explosive detonation. The second bomb was discovered the next morning but it had been “substantially damaged upon impact” and some of the weapon’s high explosives had detonated, according to the 1975 report. There was no explosion and no radiation had leaked from this one. Within hours, Spanish troops pointed American searchers to the first bomb, which had landed totally intact just off the beach. Of the 11 airmen involved in the crash, four survived - three of whom were rescued from the Mediterranean by Spanish fishermen.Īt the beginning, Spanish and American military officials who raced to the scene had some luck. Tea 16, however, was carrying four nuclear weapons,” the report says. Other aircraft, on other days, and at other places had collided in mid-air. “Tea 16 and had collided while engaged in the final stages of hookup for refueling. local time, the pilot of the refueling tanker servicing Tea 12 “observed fireballs and what appeared to be a center wing section in a flat spin.” The 1975 report says that at about 9:22 a.m. As the military’s 1975 report describes it, the first sign of any problem came when the pilot of the tanker paired to Tea 12 noticed something disconcerting while the planes were in the middle of refueling at 31,000 feet. The plane that would later break up over Spain, dubbed Tea 16, took off from an airstrip in North Carolina with four bombs, each 70 times as powerful as the bomb that fell on Hiroshima in 1945, according to “The Day We Lost the H-Bomb.” The plane flew its long route alongside another B-52, Tea 12.
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