Broken Arrow - the Case of the Missing H-Bomb (Reader's Digest, September 1966) (Palomares, Spain)

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IT was at once a great tragedy and a great mystery, and per haps it was a miracle of sorts. It happened on the feast day of San Anton de Abad, patron saint of Villaricos, a poor and ancient fish ing village tucked into the most re mote corner of southeastern Spain. There were many witnesses, because for years the fishermen of Villaricos and the farmers of nearby Palomares had noted the spectacle of the great aircraft refueling each morning in the clear skies above. To the villagers the event had become as routine as the church bell that called them to Mass. But at to :22 17, the routine was Strategic Air Command (SAC) aircraft, a B-52 bomber and a KC135 jet tanker, collided at 31,000 feet while attempting their refueling There was a thunderous explo sion, so loud that many who did not ordinarily watch the daily ritual ran out from their homes, six miles be low, to see what had happened. They saw the bomber, which had moved in directly behind and beneath the tanker, begin to break up; then it disappeared into a huge, burgeoning cloud of smoke and fire. The tanker seemed to rock ahead for a moment before it,, too, began disintegrating. Some 200 tons of aircraft debris, much of it wrapped in flame, scat CASE OF THE tered across the morning sky and fell toward the horror-struck ob Julio Ponce Navarro, a short, wiry, early-middle-aged farmer, had been irrigating the lemon grove by his house at the western edge of Palomares. He looked up from his work just in time to see the tremen dous explosion, then stood trans fixed. The wind was sweeping great balls of fire down the sky—they were heading straight toward him! looked for his wife, Maria, found her watering her luxury of red geraniums on the south side of the house. She had heard the explosion, but the building had blocked her view and she could not see what was happening. Pointing to the sky, Julio shouted, “There is grabbed Maria’s hand, and they ran away from the house. Julio looked back. One huge fire seemed certain to land on his roof, but at the last moment it passed low over it and crashed onto a narrow dirt road 30 A thick pillar of smoke swirled up from the wreckage. Running to. it, Julio and Maria found three men strapped to their seats in a portion of the tanker aircraft’s cockpit. Two could not be helped; they obviously were dead. But the third, although unconscious, was moving, groaning

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feebly. Julio and Maria tried to get at him, but the fire was too intense. They began scooping up dirt and throwing it onto the flames. Then, after several minutes, Julio motioned to Maria to stop. The man had died. Sweat-drenched, covered with dirt, the husband and wife crossed them selves and bowed their heads. Farmer Antonio Sabiote Garcia, working his field in a wide valley near the northern edge of Palomares, also saw the collision. Dumbfound ed, he watched thousands of tiny fires streaming down. Then an enor mous scythe of flame hurtled toward him. As he fled, he heard a rending crash. A great wave of heat slammed against his back, washed over and past him. Uninjured, but terrified, he looked back and saw the wing and four engines of a B-52 burning. Near the center of the village, monumental disaster came even closer. Concentrating on their les sons in their clean, bright schoolhouse, 5r young students and their teacher, Jose Molinero, heard but did not see the giant B-52 landinggear assembly crash into the ground little more than 30 yards from them. Multicolored parachutes had blos somed in the sky. The panels of some were alternately a bright or ange-red and white; others were gray; a few supported men; clusters of others held unidentifiable objects, some of which were drifting sea ward. One parachute landed hard in the field of Jose Toledo Alarcon. It held a large object with a man strapped tightly in it. On impact. the object toppled forward and the man lay still, face down. A woman Jose shouted, angrily. “Maybe there is something we can do!” Reaching the airman, Jose gently turned him over. He was not dead, but badly injured and in great pain. This was Maj. Ivens Buchanan, 34, a veteran of 16 years in the Air When he hit his ejection trigger, a hatch blew away from the bomber’s underside and Buchanan was shot downward, through the searing fire ball of the explosion. He got clear of the fireball, but was unable to free himself from the ejection seat. Tum bling through the sky, he somehow fought his chute out from between his back and the seat and got it open. But the added weight of the seat, some 200 pounds, brought him down much too rapidly. He suffered a ruptured vertebra. Also, he was burned and deeply gashed over his left eye, and was going into shock. In a weak voice he kept saying, “I Jose tried to soothe him. Then, with the help of two other men, he got Buchanan into a pickup truck and on his way to a nearby clinic. In the air, seven young, highly trained men had died: the entire crew of the tanker and three men from the bomber. Somehow three men besides Buchanan had been able to get out of the B-52 alive. And, miraculously, despite the storm of fiery steel raining earthward, not a

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ig66 THE CASE OF THE MISSING H-BOMB 243 soul on the ground was injured, not an animal or building hit. But not everything falling out of the sky was debris or men. At the eastern edge of Palomares, an object smashed against a stone retaining wall in a tomato terrace some 75 yards from the house of Eduardo Navarro Portillo. There was a jar ring explosion. Part of the wall— and hundreds of tomatoes—were damaged, and every window in Na varro’s house was blown out. Run ning to the terrace, Eduardo and some others found the object burn ing. They kicked it and threw dirt onto it, and eventually the fire went out. Eduardo did not know that what he and his friends were kick ing was a hydrogen bomb. There were two sets of tankers and receivers aloft that morning, but the other pair had not completed their connection. Immediately fol lowing the explosion, the second tanker radioed SAC flight control lers at Moron Air Force Base, near Seville: “A B-52 is on fire and spin Instantly, word was flashed to Maj. Gen. Delmar E. Wilson, com mander of the 16th Air Force, whose headquarters were at Torrejdn Air Force Base, a few miles east of Madrid. Knowing that a refueling rendezvous was involved, Wilson surmised that there had been a twoaircraft accident. He asked the calling tanker, “What about the Moments later came the reply: At once Wilson put through a hot line call to SAC headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska. It was 4 a.m. in Oma-

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THE CASE OF THE MISSING H-BOMB ha. Connected with the bedside phone of Maj. Gen. Charles Eisenhart, SAC’s chief of staff, Wilson reported: "Broken Arrow in south Eisenhart responded by instruct ing Wilson to ask for whatever tal ent and equipment he needed; they would be delivered on the double. Four H-bombs had been aboard the Next, Wilson briefed his Disaster Control Team—43 officers and en listed men who had been specially trained to handle accidents. They were doctors, experts in operations and maintenance, communications, boarded planes and headed south to the scene of the collision. In the two decades since the devel opment of nuclear weapons the United States had suffered n Bro ken Arrows, but never before one in foreign territory. The very thought of such an accident had long chilled the marrow of U.S. diplomatic and military leaders. In Madrid, Maj. Gen. Stanley J. Donovan, chief of the Joint U.S. Military Group and Military Assistance Advisory Group to Spain, knew that the accident was fraught with profound political implications. The fallen bomber had been a member of the Alert Force, that portion of the SAC fleet which stays constantly airborne, ready to move against assigned targets should the United States or any of its allies come under nuclear attack. The communists, therefore, could be ex pected to seize on the incident to whip up anti-American frenzy. So Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke, who set out at once to see the Spanish foreign minister. It was imperative that the Spanish govern ment be told immediately. Spain was a staunch friend, had willingly supplied the United States with strategic air bases and overflight rights, and had offered its naval facilities at Rota on the southwest coast as a Polaris submarine base when the United States needed it for Mediterranean operations, and had been turned away by other Meanwhile, other worried men were fast coming to grips with a sit uation without parallel in the nu clear age. Quickest recovery of the four missing bombs would be ac complished by searchers who knew exactly what they were looking for —and each type of H-bomb in the Strike Force’s inventory is unique, custom-tailored to its own mission. Each has a thermonuclear yield de signed to deal with a specific target; each has timing and sensing devices which react to, for example, the increasing density of the atmosphere as it falls over the target area; each has its own arming, fusing and fir ing devices and techniques. So, from secret files of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Atomic Support Agency, staffs be gan assembling the serial numbers

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THE CASE OF THE MISSING H-BOMB346 of the component parts of each bomb and matching them with the names of the men who had designed them and supervised their fabrica dard Time, an Air Force transport left Kirtland Air Force Base, near Albuquerque, N.M., for Torrejon. Aboard were the members of an Air Force Nuclear Accident Investigat ing Team. They would confer with General Wilson at the accident scene, and survey the countryside to determine what kinds of expertise and equipment were needed. One thing that knowledgeable men did not have to worry about was a nuclear explosion. So foolproof are the safeguards built into the handling and use of America’s nu clear weapons, and into the weapons themselves, that explosion could not not be fired except deliberately. This is the way the system works: To explode, the nuclear materials in an H-bomb must first be tight ly compressed. Compression is achieved by a measured quantity of high explosive like TNT, surround ing the nuclear core. The TNT must implode (explode inwardly) so as to apply perfecdy uniform force around the entire periphery of the core. Should the explosive detonate even slightly unevenly—as a result, for example, of fire or the shock of impact—there can be no release of nuclear energy because there would be no uniform squeezing of the nuclear mass. In such a situation. the shock wave from the explosive would simply seek to escape out of the weapon. Perhaps it would break the casing and scatter radioactive materials, but the bomb itself could not go off. Furthermore, a U.S. nuclear blast cannot be accomplished unless sev eral trained men, all certified to be physically and mentally fit by com petent, painstaking medical author ity, agree that a “Go to War” code, originating with the President, has been received. The code is pro grammed to come in voice, not through any device subject to mis interpretation or failure. Only when a bomber is at last irrevocably committed do the men, each working controls from widely separated stations in the aircraft, begin the arming, fusing and firing procedures which must be followed by the numbers and to the letter if there is to be a nuclear explosion. The safety of U.S. unarmed nu clear weapons has been thoroughly tested. In a rigorous, years-long pro gram at various test sites,-such wea pons were subjected to experiments which simulated the shock of being dropped from great altitudes, blown up with high explosives, burned, dragged at high speeds over rough surfaces, smashed against concrete walls. The United States has tried hard, but has never been able to achieve an accidental nuclear blast. Down at Sea Trawling at sea five and a half miles off Villaricos, Bartolome

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34S SPECIAL FEATURE September Roldan Martinez, master of the fish ing smack Dorita, saw a number of parachutes headed for the water. “Pull in the nets!” he shouted to his Before they could comply, he pushed his diesel engine to full pow er, calculating that the nearest air man would laud about a mile from him and hoping he could reach him before he went under. Bartocrazy. How could they pull m the heavy nets when he was traveling atlome roared. The nets were muscled The offshore winds were strong— perhaps 40 knots—and the sea was rough. Reaching the spot where he thought the nearest airman had gone in, Bartolome began circling oyer one high swell after another, his crew looking everywhere for the man. After several anxious minutes they found him and Bartolome lifted him aboard. The survivor was Capt. Charles J. Wendorf, 30, commander of the B-52. Wendorf’s left arm was Some 200 yards farther on, another parachute had fallen. The Dorita headed for it, and soon came upon another survivor. The crew heaved him a life-ring and dragged him more than lucky to be alive. His ejec tion seat had failed to fire. Freeing himself, he had climbed down a ladder and fought his way along a catwalk in the burning, violently spinning bomber to the navigator’s open ejection hatch. For desperate neuvermgs of the disintegrating bomber had kept him pinned against one side of the hatch. But at last he managed to dive through it and get his chute open. He had a long, deep cut across his buttocks. Bartolome’s crew stripped him, bandaged him, dressed him in dry clothes and bundled him into a half-dozen Francisco Simo Orts, master of the Manuela Orts SitnD, named for his mother, had been working two miles beyond the Dorita. He saw two parachutes in his area. One was drifting farther out, so he radioed his cousin Alfonso, on another boat, to go after it. In fact, Alfonso already had his craft running fast to sea ward, and he picked up the survivor almost as quickly as he hit the water. This was Maj. Larry G. Messinger, 44, a SAC staff pilot who had been spelling Wendorf on the long mis sion. Messinger was uninjured. The chute that Francisco Simo Orts went for was coming down rapidly, and the object it held did not appear to be a man; it was some sort of cylinder, rigid and silvery. Simo saw it splash on the water, but when he reached the spot there was …