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Declassified record · U.S. Department of Energy

Broken Arrow - U.s. Discloses Two 'weapons' Blasted Apart (Albuquerque Journal, Mar 4, 1966) (Other News Clippings Same Subject, Albuquerque Journal, Feb 28, 1966 and Mar 2, 1966) (Palomares, Spain)

Dated
Mar 4, 1966
Document type
Newspaper article
Length
1 page
Open the original scanArchive record OSTI ID 1084958 · public domain

Document text

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

Page 1

Will Be Found Spain ffl — For 40 days and 10 nights, they've been look ing for a missing XJ.S. nuclear lornh in this southern corner jf Spain and doubt is growing that it ever will be found. search, 'which began after a crashing B-52 bomber scat tered wreckage and ■ arma ment along the Spanish coast Jan. 17, remain as mum as they have been for 40 days Search goes on by land and sea. Some sources say the hunt will go on until midMarch, perhaps much longer. But it begins to look more and more, now as if the XJ.S. Air Force and Navy are just going through the motions. ■ Three of the four nuclear weapons the big jet bomber was carrying when it collided with a refueling tanker were recovered promptly. None of the bbmbs was armed, that is ready for use as a weapon, at the time of the crash. The three were found on [land near the crash area but the fourth — some say it was not be located where human and computer calculations said it shoud have been. On the beach, hundreds of Air Force personnel assisted by Spanish officials and civil ians have combed and re combed the crash zone, which was about two - thirds on land, one-third in the Mediter At sea, a sophisticated nav al task force, including half a dozen diving vehicles, searched the area and picked up nearly 100 pieces of wreck age. Then the task force, un der Rear Adm. William S. Guest, moved farther to sea, in the area into which three of the four surviving crew-j men of the bomber parachut ed about four miles from the| beach. There was no acknowl-| edged result from this! commission Tuesday made thel first public admission that a| Ing In southeast Spain. Nuclear scientist Jose Maria Otero Navascues emphasized, however, that there ■was no danger of a nuclear explosion because the device was • un The great bomb search, now in its seventh week, has failed to turn up any trace of the nuclear device which was lost in the crash of a Strategic Air Command B52 bomber Jan. 17. Three of the four bombs on but the fourth was lost. f A massive land search was conducted by hund reds of American airmen for the first few weeks. Then the search switched to the sea, where it was speculated that the device, bomb, was lying in 200 fathoms two midget submarines and an armada of 17 ships from the U. S. Sixth Fleet had no luck In finding the bomb. Although the search Is con tinuing on land and at sea, the feeling is growing that the bomb may never be found. United States has disclosed' hat two unarmed nuclear weapons were blown apart by teir conventional explosives id scattered some radioac re material when accident ly dropped at Patomares, Spain, 44 days ago, j “There was no nuclear ex plosion, and “no evidence of la health hazard,’’ stateuifnd One of the four nuclear weapons carried by the U.S, 3-52 which collided with a JKC-135 tanker plane in re fueling Jan. 17 is still miss ing. An intense underwater fearch for it is continuing off' The < announcements by State Dept. Press Officer | Pentagon spokesman were the [ment of the nuclear bomb as pects of thg incident which has had wide international reSpanish authorities had want ed a secrecy lid. According to the details dis closed this is what happened: [bombs — at the time of the Twb of the bombs were blown apart by their conven tional explosive charges which were set off by the impact when, they hit the ground. This scattered some Piutpniclear bomb materials, over an estimated 100-foot area. Of the remaining two bombs lone has been recovered, prejsumably more or less intact. The fourth one is the object Conventional explosives are [Used in the detonating mech anism triggering nuclear guards have been devised lover the years to prevent any