Broken Arrows

As we wrap up the Cold War unit and move into discussing the Civil Rights Movement, I think it’s interesting to look over some of the accidents surrounding the transportation of nuclear weapons that happened as a result of US-Soviet tensions. Since 1950, there have been 32 “Broken Arrows,” which are undocumented nuclear weapon accidents, and to this day, there are 6 Broken Arrows that still haven’t been recovered.

One of the more famous Broken Arrows occurred on January 17, 1966 when a B-52 started from North Carolina and flew towards the European borders of the Soviet Union, carrying four 1.5 megaton Mark 28 hydrogen bombs. The B-52 was on a mission known as Operation Chrome Dome, in which bombers flew around armed with thermonuclear weapons in order to provide the US with a first strike capability over the USSR.

Since the B-52 was flying a long route, two mid-air refuelings over Spain would be necessary. However, as the B-52 started its second aerial refueling, the B-52 and the fueling plane collided, snapping off the left wing and igniting both planes. As the B-52 started spiraling down, its unsecured load of four bombs were released.

All four bombs landed near the fishing village of Palomares in Spain, and three of the four were found within three hours. None of the bombs initiated their nuclear blast, but the first two bombs’ conventional explosives detonated on impact, spreading radioactive dust all throughout the village and its surroundings. The third was found on a riverbed mostly intact after it parachuted to the ground, and the fourth was nowhere to be found.

The US initially denied reports of a missing hydrogen bomb to the press, but they were frantically engaged in a recovery mission, sending in mini-subs, ships, and hundreds of divers. After two months of searching, the US finally admitted to the world that they were hunting for a bomb, but strongly denied Soviet claims that the bomb was contaminating the ocean. In fact, US Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke held a largely-publicized event where he went swimming in one of the Palomares’s beaches. When the interviewer chuckled and asked “Do you detect any radioactivity in the water?” Biddle Duke responded with “If this is radioactivity I love it!”

When Francisco Simo, a Spanish fisherman, saw small units of the US army land in Palomares, he was quick to point out that he saw a bomb-like object fall and that he might know the location of the missing bomb. Experts on the recovery mission initially ignored him, committed to using their supercomputers and only searched in the vicinity of their calculated trajectories. For weeks, they only found airplane debris, and not the bomb. Realizing that Francisco could offer some help, experts summoned him back. Indeed, Francisco pointed recovery forces in the right direction, and within a few days, the mini-sub Alvin found the bomb.

Now that they had located the hydrogen bomb, it seemed as if the hardest part was over, but little did they know, it wasn’t. After Alvin surfaced to recharge its batteries and headed back down for the bomb on April 7, 1966, the bomb disappeared (the crew later found that it rolled 400 feet down a hill). Many attempts to grab the bomb with mechanical arms failed, causing the bomb to roll even further downhill. By the time the bomb was secured, it lay near a 5,000-foot-deep abyss.

The Palomares Incident was only one Broken Arrow incident, but it brought many complications for the small town. Since the detonation of the bombs cause plutonium dust to spread across the town, the US launched Operation “Moist Mop”. The operation removed the top three inches of topsoil, sealed it in barrels, and shipped it back to the US to be safely contained. The operation ended four months later, but it definitely didn’t clean up all of the leaked plutonium. To this day, high amounts of radioactivity can be detected in the dirt, and the US holds an empty promise to help clean up the remaining radioactivity.


https://www.history.com/news/the-palomares-h-bomb-incident
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18689132
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/broken-arrow-accidents
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-aug-24-adfg-nightmare24-story.html
https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-06-01/palomares-h-bomb-and-operation-moist-mop