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THE DENVER POST To Worry About the Bomb By Harvey meyerson PALOMARES, Spain—One; night last week, five farmers from the vil lage of Palomares embraced tear ful wives and children and then marched off down a rutted path to the town of Vera, four miles away. There they boarded a battered old Fiat taxi, hired for the occasion at unheard of expense, and headed north into the mountains. Behind them, as the taxi climbed upward, stretched the peaceful Mediterranean coast of the region called Andalusia in southern Sometime near dawn, the ride leveled off on the Meseta Castellano, the high plateau that forms the heartland of Spain, and it was under a bright blue sky that they entered the capital city The farmers breakfasted on bread and coffee before presenting themselves to a surprised receptionist at the U.S. embassy. They asked for Ambassador Angler Biddle Duke. In considerably less time than it takes many diplomats, the five ragged farmers were in the ambassador’s of fice. They exchanged greetings with him and explained their grievances. The ambassador listened, smiling sympatheticaHy,-promised to do all he could, and the farmers returned to THOUGH none of them had ever been to Madrid before, though none ex pected to return again, no one sug gested sightseeing. They only wanted to get home and the taxi driver started immediately back to Palomares. So it wasn’t for publicity that the farmers traveled farther than they ever had in their lives. Nor was it with anyj special hope. It was (as one of themadmits) an irrational act, illustrative of j the climate of bewilderment and fear that has settled over Palomares since its peace was invaded on the now-his toric morning of Jan. 17, 1966. On that day a violent explosion over head brought down upon the village the flaming wreckage of two giant air planes as well as three hydrogen The explosion also brought together two • vastly different worlds and it is from the collision of these worlds that the people of Palomares are finding it very difficult to recover. "HERE IN PALOMARES, WE USED TO GROW THE LARGEST TOMATOES One of the worlds belongs to Delmare Wilson of the Torrejon Air Base near Madrid. He is a major general, com manding officer of the U.S. 16th Air Force, and ranking officer in Europe of the U.S. Strategic Air Command. The other world belongs to Antonio Saviote of Palomares, which has 250 people, mostly tomato farmers, no paved roads and no telephones. Antonio is a farmer; proprietor of eight cows, 20 chickens, one burro and about three acres of dusty alluvial soil planted ON THE morning of Jan. 17, both Saviote and Wilson rose at about /General Wilson breakfasted with his wife in their rambling three-bedroom home on the base and then drove to the After breakfast on Jan. 17, Mrs. Savi ote dressed their two little children and sent: them off to the school while An tonio milked the cows ip the adjoining bam. After the children left, the Saviotes started for the home of her par ents, a few hundred yards away. They had .covered a few yards when there was a tremendous explosion. The couple looked up. Hurtling down from the sky, directly toward them it seemed, was a huge ball of flame. They began to nm. Seconds later, they instinctively threw themselves to the ground. The earth trembled under them and there came a second explosion so loud that, as Antonio recalls it, it seemed to come from inside him. And then silence AT ABOUT this time, General Wilson reached for the ringing phone on The silver-haired general, 55, looks every inch a military leader. He stands a strapping 6 feet 4 inches, and he ex udes authority and sincerity. The call was from the command post Moron Air Force base near Seville had reported a tanker on fire in the South ern Refueling Area which covers most of southern Spain. Here jet tankers from one of three SAC bases in Spain armed B-52 jet bombers ranging throughout the globe on missions from SAC bases in the United States. Wilson asked that Moron be called for details, Two minutes later the re port came that a B-52 was “on fire and Wilson walked into the command post and picked up a beige telephone. Al most instantly, he was in communica tion with SAC headquarters in Omaha, The general reported the inddent, hung up and set in motion a carefully prepared sequence of events that would continue through several days. Within minutes, the 48 members of Ms aircraft accident board and his dis aster control team were assembled in the command post. In less than an hour, they were in the air aboard a C-97 transport. The general, accompa nied by his Spanish adviser, left a few minutes ahead of the others Ip a faster son’s jplane had located the wreckage. BELOW the circling T-39, the peoplft of Palomares were beginning to recover their sense. When the Saviotes and their neigh bors had succeeded in dousing the fire, they paused to look in awe out across the plain, now Uttered with simmering hunks of silvery metal, some bigger than a Palomares farmhouse. Then they descended to inspect, what had been the “ball of fire.’’ It was ah engine from one of the planes that had clipped the edge of the Saviote home before careening down the slope into; the tomato patch. t The debris was not confined to Me plain behind the Saviote borne. In an parts of the village groups of wideeyed peasants were gathering to stare lad -
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The Denver Post article cont*d wonder. In the early afterttdon, «I«- meats of the National Civil Guard, alerted by the Spanish Air Force, uv rived and organised search parties. HThat evening, the townsfolk assem-? bled in the dark, cavernous load bar to receive an explanation. Two Ameft' ican planes had collided in midair, th^r' were told. It was as simple as that The villagers first were uneasy, th*p The third day after the crash words that now have become part ofAs the radio reports described i things that had happened to the 1_____ ants of a place called HiroshluaHUl’' other word mentioned frequently &ew«~: and as the villagers were forced to submit to a series of medical tests, their ' THE air above Camp Wilson, as the tent city was named, soon was filial, with helicopters dropping men and fljgK piles. Heavy trucks brought additimuti' equipment, which had been ferried told' Santa Vera from the United States, Libya, Germany, France, and other parts of Spain. The people of Palomares, where the arrival of a single ear had been ah event, began finding it mare ami au** ! difficult to distinguish between fantasy I And so it goes in Palomares, andeht village of. Mediterranean sunlight The menfolk now appear to be con-' l centrating their attention on damage j claims, which many of them afe pur-“ | suing with uncharacteristic intensity. - 1 The Americans, for all their good will —and one can find nothing but good will In Americans here, from the g«v-r eral on down — cannot seem to get through to the natives, perhaps because the men of Camp Wilson have responded ; so well to the demands of the sitttatich. Sitting in his tent command post Oh L the beach one day this week, Gene£tf | Wilson praised his men for their tireless giants overnight,” He said. And therein lies the difference he* tween the worlds of the SAC general and the Andalusian tomato fanner. There is no place in the imag^natioa ef the people of Palomares for iNatit - A long missing American H-bomb located at tbe bottom of the Mediterranean has been lost again iri the soft mud of the seabed, informed knew roughly where it was,I but was unable for the mo-l ment to pinpoint its new rest-J The development was an-l in the atomic-age saga of al major power losing an H-f bomb by accident. The thermonuclear monster has been the target of a mul timillion dollar hunt by a massive modern war fleet for nearly 11 weeks. There was a brief moment of relief a week ago when a cable was attached j to the 1 o s 1 ing operations and the l.ll lowed” by the Soft mud at thel bottom of the sea — a kind ofJ the sea five miles off Palo mares when a B-52 carrying it collided in the air last Jan. 17 with a- refueling tanker plane. Three other bombs aboard the "bomber were quickly found on land. The sources said the new! accident could delay recovery! For Hydrogen Bomb PALOMARES, Spain, Apnl 4 (UPI)—A Navy task force resumed its search today for a missing hydrogen bomb off the coast near here. The weapon, in deep mud on the seabed some 2,500 feet below the surface, disap peared Saturday into, what in formed sources called “a At the time of its disappear ance, the searchers were in volved in the third attempt to raise the weapon.