DocJax

Declassified record · U.S. Department of Energy

Broken Arrow - Spain Dunderball (Time, February 04, 1966) (Palomares, Spain)

Dated
Feb 4, 1966
Document type
Magazine article
Length
1 page
Open the original scanArchive record OSTI ID 1084945 · public domain

Document text

Machine-read from the scan, so expect some errors. Lines that couldn’t be read are left out.

Page 1

In Madrid the joke was that the I farmers of Almeria were no longer growing tomatoes but, rather, mush-| rooms. Another yuk had it that resi dents of the Mediterranean coast near I Almeria had renamed their region] laugh about all right—a missing Amer Object of an extensive search was one of four hydrogen bombs—each, if deto nated, capable of wiping out a city— when it collided with a refueling tanker over Spain’s coast on Jan. 17. Three of the bombs 'landed on Spanish soil and were readily recovered. The fourth fell into the sea just short of Almeria. Fishermen quickly rescued the bomber’s four survivors but not the bomb. Some 2,000 American servicemen from Span ish bases undertook the search. To be sure, none of the deadly, multimegaton nuclear-bomb cases was armed, and all were packaged in radiation-proof shells. But, just the same, everyone wanted all of them found. A U.S. Navy minesweeper located what was thought to be the missing bomb 1,200 ft. under water. Though frogmen were readily available, the bomb lay far below the depth at which I SPECTRE’S flippered villains so easily re covered the “Thunderball” of James Bond’s latest cinematic adventure. The real thing was far harder to lift. In I order to recover the bomb, American officials called on devices that even Ian Fleming had never conceived: the J vised by General Dynamics Corp. to ] probe 17,000 ft. beneath the sea’s sur sub named the Alvin, which can work | as deep as 6,000 ft. There was little question that the missing nuke would be recovered, but I there were predictable repercussions from the Spaniards. After a twelvehour Cabinet session, the regime of I General Francisco Franco discreetly suggested that armed U.S. nuclear I bombers henceforth stay in the airspace | out over the ocean, well clear of the j Please go near the water.