The Day We Lost the H-Bomb

by Barbara Moran

  Today, three weeks after their arrival in Spain, Alvin pilots Bill Rainnie and Val Wilson were piloting the sub, with Frank Andrews as a guest observer. Andrews had asked Earl Hays, the senior scientist for the Alvin group, for a ride in the sub. Hays, who didn’t feel compelled to tell Admiral Guest who rode in Alvin or why, much less ask the admiral’s permission, often gave the observer spot to old friends and VIPs. Andrews, being both, squeezed in for the ride.

  To dive, Rainnie and Wilson vented Alvin’s ballast, blowing a froth of bubbles to the surface. The sub, now five hundred pounds negatively buoyant, sank slowly toward the bottom. As Alvin descended, the passengers felt no sense of falling. The three men sensed movement only by looking out the portholes and watching the “snow”—swirling clouds of tiny organisms — moving upward as the sea grew dark. When Alvin neared the bottom, the pilot flipped a switch and dropped two stacks of steel plates weighing a total of five hundred pounds. Now neutrally buoyant, the sub could cruise the area without floating up or down. (To make smaller adjustments in ballast-up to two hundred pounds positive or negative — the pilot could use Alvin’s variable ballast tanks, which pumped seawater in and out.) When the time came to surface, Rainnie and Wilson would drop another five hundred pounds of steel plates and float to the surface. The plates would remain on the ocean floor, a trail of breadcrumbs marking Alvin’s path.

  The pilots and observer had their eyes glued to Alvin’s three viewports — one in the front center and one on either side. (A fourth viewport, on the sub’s belly, was hidden by the floor and rarely used.) Each window was a Plexiglas cone twelve inches in diameter on the outside, tapering to five inches diameter on the inside. Observers peeking out these tiny windows could see only a narrow, V-shaped sliver of the world outside. Their fields of vision did not overlap; they could not see directly above, behind, or beneath the sub. Their view was further obscured by shadows, silt, and the distortion of water, which made outside objects appear closer than they were.

  In Palomares, the visibility near the bottom was especially poor. On a good day, the crew could see about twenty feet. But if they accidentally brushed the bottom, the fine silt stirred into a dense cloud, an underwater sandstorm that could hang for fifteen to twenty minutes. And because the surface ship could position them within only a few hundred yards, pilots basically had to navigate on their own.

  In order to steer a straight line, a pilot had to look at his compass, peer out the tiny porthole, get a glance at the bottom, and look back at the compass. It was, said McCamis, like trying to walk “a straight line in a snowstorm.” In much of the search area, the bottom stretched before them gray and featureless, with no vegetation or landmarks for guidance.

  On March 1, as usual, Alvin was “flying a contour.” The area loomed with steep slopes and deep gullies, mimicking the mountains alongside Palomares. The plan called for Alvin to stay at a consistent depth while flying along an undersea slope, looking for something lying on the hillside and snapping photos along the way. When they had finished searching the area at one depth, they could move deeper.

  Mac McCamis, however, had lost patience with B-29. He noticed that Alvin was near an adjacent search area, C-4, closer to the actual point where Simó had seen the “dead man” hit the water. Mac asked the support ship’s captain if he could “play stupid” and steer Alvin out of its assigned space.

  “You’re the controller,” said the captain. “Why not?”

  McCamis seized the moment and sent the sub into the new area. Near the end of the dive, pilot Bill Rainnie spotted something on the bottom.

  “Wait a minute, I see something,” Rainnie said.

  “What?” Wilson asked.

  “I’m not sure, a little to the left, that’s it, no, dammit, you went over it, to the right.”

  “What?”

  “To the right, dammit! That’s it, right on target.”

  “What is it?”

  It’s nothing, Rainnie said. Never mind.

  The pilots saw nothing else of interest and surfaced soon afterward. Mac’s gamble, it seemed, had been a bust.

  When they arrived back on the Fort Smiling, the pilots handed off their film for developing. That night at their briefing, the Alvin crew gathered around the latest batch of photos. Mac, looking at the pictures, spotted something odd — a curious track in the sediment. It looked, he said, “like a barrel had been dragged over the bottom, end to end.” Brad Mooney agreed with Mac. “To me, it looked like a torpedo had slid down,” said Mooney. “It had a curved shape to it, all the way down.” The pilots were excited. What they were seeing, they hoped, was the track of bomb number four sliding down the undersea slope. The next day, this time with official permission, the Alvin crew returned to the area to look for the track. They couldn’t find it. They returned on March 3, 4, and 7, combing the bottom, going over and over the area where they had photographed the track. Nothing.

  On March 8, the day of Ambassador Duke’s swim, the task force suddenly yanked Alvin off the trail and sent her to search a shallow inshore area. Near the beach, some undersea gullies plunged too deep for Navy divers to search. Most likely, Admiral Guest had sent Alvin to investigate these gullies so he could check another square off his chart. But whatever the admiral’s intentions, the Alvin crew received no explanation for the sudden change and no information about when they could return to the promising track. The move, which seemed completely arbitrary, demoralized the crew and hardened their attitudes toward Guest. “My turn at surface control,” grumbled Mac, “and we’re still messing around in 800 feet of water.”

  By the third week in March, the mood of the searchers had settled into a mix of frustration, boredom, determination, and despair. Alvin moved back to deeper water but couldn’t find the mysterious track. Aluminaut, likewise, was coming up empty-handed. The Ocean Bottom Scanning Sonar, Task Force 65’s only unmanned deep search system, made nine runs over a dummy test shape and couldn’t find it. On March 12, an OBSS towed by the USS Notable snagged a ridge, snapped its line, and never came up from the bottom.

  The divers had wrapped up most of their inshore search, leaving Red Moody without much to do.

  Guest asked the long-faced Moody if he wanted to head home to Charleston. With little work left for him in Spain, Red agreed. On March 14, Red Moody flew to Rota Naval Air Station to catch a plane home.

  Ambassador Duke, picking up on the mood in Palomares and catching wind of the shifting tone in Washington, sensed that the search might soon be called off. Trying to ensure his role in the endgame, Duke wrote to Jack Valenti, special assistant to Lyndon Johnson: Madrid, March 14, 1966

  CONFIDENTIAL

  Dear Jack:

  Word has reached me that Cy Vance is heading up an interdepartmental group to cover all aspects of the search and recovery operations in connection with the nuclear weapon problems here in the Palomares area of Spain.

  This brings to mind the possibility that the search for the missing device might be called off. The Spanish Government, of course, is not unaware of this possibility, and I foresee no irreparable damage to our relationships if such a decision is handled extremely carefully and properly. Through other channels I am suggesting to the Department that thought be given to my being called back to go over in great detail how such a step should be handled. I have in mind recommendations such as a hand-carried letter from the President to the Chief of State here giving him personal reassurances in the matter.

  I write you now (events happen so fast) in order to head off any possibility of premature announcements, either at the White House level or State Department level, before I would be given an opportunity to be heard and subsequently empowered to handle the matter at this end. The manner in which the Palomares incident is terminated will be of great importance not only in Spain but to every nation in the world where there are nuclear overflights or bases.

  With every best wish,

  Sincerely,

  Angie

  On the following
day, Tuesday, March 15, Tony Richardson, the baby-faced mathematician analyzing the search for Admiral Guest, sat on a small boat skipping across the waves toward Camp Wilson. Along with a WHOI oceanographer named John Bruce, Richardson planned to pick up Simó Orts and revisit, once again, the area of his parachute sighting. The Navy searchers worried that they had misread Simó’s point and were searching the wrong area. Perhaps another outing with Simó, now widely known as “Paco de la Bomba,” could set their minds at ease.

  Richardson arrived at Camp Wilson around 10 a.m. to meet Simó and the Navy men who had driven the fisherman from Aguilas. The group climbed back onto the boat and headed out to the minesweeper USS Salute. Over coffee, the men discussed the search. Simó told the group that he had taken a fathometer tracing on the day of the accident — perhaps it contained some clues. He also let the men in on a plan. By attaching some small lines and hooks to his trawling nets, he said, he could probably grab the bomb’s parachute. If the Navy didn’t find it soon — or abandoned the search — he just might go out there and snag it himself.

  While Simó and his group chatted, Admiral Guest sat on the USS Boston. His response to the Cyrus Vance committee was due in Washington that day, and Guest and his team had been working on it for four days. The long memo answered all the committee’s questions in comprehensive detail. In it, Guest explained Richardson’s search effectiveness probability, estimating that he needed thirty more working days to bring Alfa 1 to 95 percent. For Alfa 2, he would need only twelve more days. There was, however, an undersea canyon stretching between the two search areas, its slopes and floor slimy with ooze. The weapon could be lying there, completely buried in the mud, invisible.

  On that same morning, the Alvin crew prepared for their last dive in the area where they had seen the track. They were supposed to get a new transponder installed that morning to allow the Mizar to track them within about 130 feet. After that, they would be transferred to Bravo, a secondary search area. However, when the new gear arrived, it required two days of bench testing before installation in Alvin. Knowing that Alvin would be sitting idle, Brad Mooney nagged Admiral Guest for another day in C-4. Guest brushed him off. The area had already been searched to 98 percent. It was time to move on. But Mooney persisted. “All right, goddamn it,” Guest told Mooney. “One more day, and that’s all.”

  That day Mac McCamis and Val Wilson piloted the sub, with a WHOI technician, Art Bartlett, tagging along as the observer. As the sub descended, Mac spoke to Bill Rainnie, who was the surface controller that day. Mac told Rainnie to put them right on the elusive track, because today was his son’s birthday.

  Alvin drifted down, and almost as soon as the sub reached the bottom, Wilson saw the track. He snapped pictures and shouted directions to McCamis, as the pilot struggled to hover near the track without stirring up clouds of silt. Soon Mac could see the track out the front window — it seemed to head down a steep slope, about 70 degrees. Mac decided to follow the track by backing down the slope, so he could see it out the front window. Slowly, Mac edged down as Bartlett and Wilson called out directions. The sub reached about 2,500 feet. Then, the two men started shouting, “That’s it!” “That’s it!”

  Outside, on the gray bottom, lay a massive parachute. Underneath, the men saw the shape of a bomb.

  The task force had established code words for the search. If the Alvin pilots spotted the bomb, they were supposed to say the words “instrument panel.” Wilson, in his excitement, forgot the code and shouted over the phone, “We found a parachute and we believe we have a fin of the bomb in sight! It’s underneath the parachute!”

  “Had a hell of a time shutting him up,” said Mac.

  That morning, the USS Albany had arrived to relieve the Boston as Task Force 65’s flagship.

  Admiral Guest invited the Albany’s captain to lunch before the ceremonial transfer of the flag.

  During lunch, an aide burst into the room to hand Guest a slip of paper. The note read, “ALVIN reports INSTRUMENT PANEL.” Guest read it, rose from the table, and hurried off without explanation. Someone else would have to handle the ceremony.

  On board the minesweeper USS Salute, lunch was also under way. Tony Richardson, Simó Orts, and the others had just started eating when the commanding officer entered the wardroom to tell the group that Alvin had sighted the weapon. The Navy men rushed off, leaving Richardson and Bruce to escort Simó back to the beach. When the group arrived at Camp Wilson, an Air Force helicopter flew them to Aguilas. John Bruce, the oceanographer, arranged to visit Simó the next evening to look at the fathometer trace. After all, there was still a chance that the Alvin crew was wrong.

  Deep below the surface, Val Wilson snapped pictures of Alvin’s prize. Then Mac eased Alvin away from the parachute to avoid tangling the submersible in the straps or shrouds. He wedged the sub into a crevice just below the chute, so they could keep an eye on it and not accidentally drift away in the current. Then he shut off the lights to conserve power and waited for instructions from the surface. One of the men reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. Smoking was, of course, prohibited in the sub. But the three men, all heavy smokers, knew they might be down there for a while and decided to give it a go. Bartlett, the technician, knew the air system inside and out and figured he could pull this off without incinerating or suffocating the crew. He turned up the oxygen, gave the crew a good blast, then shut it off. They lit the cigarette and passed it around, inhaling deeply. Then Bartlett cranked up the CO2 scrubber, hoping for the best. McCamis and Wilson, having both served on submarines, could sense when the CO2 approached the danger zone. At least that’s what they told Bartlett, who watched the gauges and hoped they were right.

  While they waited, the men discussed what to do if they accidentally hooked the bomb or the chute.

  They all agreed that they could just drop a battery and surface, dragging the bomb with them.

  Alvin’s total battery weight, however, was only about 750 pounds. The bomb weighed more than two tons. There was no way they could pull it up. The military had never told the Alvin crew how much the secret weapon weighed. It was the mushroom theory, said Bartlett: “Feed them shit and keep them in the dark.”

  On the surface, Admiral Guest and Brad Mooney discussed options. Alvin could remain submerged for twenty-four hours — tops — if the pilots conserved power, meaning it had about twenty hours left.

  Mooney suggested sending Aluminaut down to rendezvous with Alvin. If the larger sub carried a transponder, the surface ship Mizar could fix her position when she got near the bomb. The rendezvous was a risky proposition, and Mooney knew it. At that depth, the silt and snow scattered light, allowing even powerful beams to pierce only about sixty feet. And depending on a sub’s momentum, sixty feet might be too short to stop if the pilot suddenly saw trouble ahead. Generally, pilots avoided running two submersibles anywhere near each other under the sea. Mooney wanted to break this rule. What he proposed was much like sending two cars to meet in a midnight blizzard, on an icy road unfamiliar to both drivers. It would be dangerous, but it was their best option.

  Guest readily agreed to the plan, liking the idea of keeping human eyes on the target. But he had difficulty comprehending the risk involved. “I can fly my F4s wingtip to wingtip at Mach speed and they don’t hit each other,” he told one staffer. “You guys can’t even go in the same area and stay out of each other’s way?”

  Mooney summoned Aluminaut. The sub picked up a transponder, got a quick battery charge, and hustled over to the search area. Though disappointed that Alvin had found the bomb first, the crew was glad they had an important role to play On the way down, Admiral Guest and his staff told the Aluminaut crew, more than once, not to touch the bomb or try to recover it. “He thought we were a bunch of wild cowboys down there,” grumbled Art Markel.

  The Alvin crew sat in the dark, on the bottom of the cold sea, for eight hours, waiting for Aluminaut.

  Finally, peeking through their windows, the
crew saw the glow of lights in the distance. “It was beautiful, the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” said McCamis. “A great silvery-pink monster, it looked like, with great green phosphorescent eyes coming up silent through the water.” Mac flipped on Alvin’s lights, giving Aluminaut a clear target. Aluminaut approached slowly, cautiously parking herself about twenty-five yards behind Alvin, in clear sight of the parachute. The Aluminaut held steady as Alvin left her station and rose to the surface.

  Alvin surfaced after ten hours and twenty-three minutes underwater, her longest dive of the mission.

  Mac sailed her to the Fort Snelling and entered the well deck at 8:12 p.m., just about the time that Guest and his staff arrived on board. The Alvin crew sent their photographs to be developed, then told the admiral what they had seen. The photographs were ready about midnight. The weary Guest gathered his key staff members to look at the pictures. They didn’t see a bomb. They saw a parachute. Everyone agreed that the weapon probably lay shrouded underneath, but they couldn’t tell for sure.

  Mac McCamis was outraged. He knew it had to be the bomb. Guest asked him, “How do you know it’s not a parachute full of mud?” To which McCamis replied impatiently, “What else is going to be down there with a parachute and a bomb rack hanging on to it?” McCamis went to bed that night discouraged. “In all my life,” he said, “I’d never had my intelligence so insulted.” After the meeting, Admiral Guest wrote a situation report to his superiors, sending it at 2:50 a.m. on March 16. In it, Guest said that Alvin had photographed a large parachute covering an object. The contact was promising but not conclusive; positive identification was impossible. However, he was starting to plan the recovery. He planned to proceed as slowly and deliberately as possible, but if the object started to slide down the slope, he might have to take immediate action. He would use three ships, Mizar, Privateer, and Petrel, as the primary support vessels for the recovery, with two minesweepers on security patrol. All other ships would attend to business as usual. Guest didn’t want the newsmen on shore to notice anything odd.