H-BOMB LOST IN SPAIN:

I usually wouldn't make note of something like this but the very last sentence caught my attention since I live in the Puget Sound area.....................PEACE..................Scott


January 17, 1966

On this day, a B-52 bomber collides with KC-135 jet tanker over Spain's
Mediterranean coast, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of
Palomares and one in the sea. It was not the first or last accident involving
American nuclear bombs.As a means of maintaining first-strike capability during
the Cold War, U.S. bombers laden with nuclear weapons circled the earth
ceaselessly for decades. In a military operation of this magnitude, it was
inevitable that accidents would occur. The Pentagon admits to more than
three-dozen accidents in which bombers either crashed or caught fire on the
runway, resulting in nuclear contamination from a damaged or destroyed bomb
and/or the loss of a nuclear weapon. One of the only "Broken Arrows" to receive
widespread publicity occurred on January 17, 1966, when a B-52 bomber crashed
into a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain.The bomber was returning to its North
Carolina base following a routine airborne alert mission along the southern
route of the Strategic Air Command when it attempted to refuel with a jet
tanker. The B-52 collided with the fueling boom of the tanker, ripping the
bomber open and igniting the fuel. The KC-135 exploded, killing all four of its
crew members, but four members of the seven-man B-52 crew managed to parachute
to safety. None of the bombs were armed, but explosive material in two of the
bombs that fell to earth exploded upon impact, forming craters and scattering
radioactive plutonium over the fields of Palomares. A third bomb landed in a dry
riverbed and was recovered relatively intact. The fourth bomb fell into the sea
at an unknown location.Palomares, a remote fishing and farming community, was
soon filled with nearly 2,000 U.S. military personnel and Spanish civil guards
who rushed to clean up the debris and decontaminate the area. The U.S. personnel
took precautions to prevent overexposure to the radiation, but the Spanish
workers, who lived in a country that lacked experience with nuclear technology,
did not. Eventually some 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and vegetation were
shipped to the United States for disposal.Meanwhile, at sea, 33 U.S. Navy
vessels were involved in the search for the lost hydrogen bomb. Using an IBM
computer, experts tried to calculate where the bomb might have landed, but the
impact area was still too large for an effective search. Finally, an eyewitness
account by a Spanish fisherman led the investigators to a one-mile area. On
March 15, a submarine spotted the bomb, and on April 7 it was recovered. It was
damaged but intact.Studies on the effects of the nuclear accident on the people
of Palomares was limited, but the United States eventually settled some 500
claims by residents whose health was adversely affected. Because the accident
happened in a foreign country, it received far more publicity than did the dozen
or so similar crashes that occurred within U.S. borders. As a security measure,
U.S. authorities do not announce nuclear weapons accidents, and some American
citizens may have unknowingly been exposed to radiation that resulted from
aircraft crashes and emergency bomb jettisons. Today, two hydrogen bombs and a
uranium core lie in yet undetermined locations in the Wassaw Sound off Georgia,
in the Puget Sound off Washington, and in swamplands near Goldsboro, North
Carolina.