In January 1966, a B-52 carrying four hydrogen bombs collided with its tanker over southern Spain. One bomb fell into the sea. The Navy found it, lost it again, and had to find it a second time.
The Defense Nuclear Agency’s 1975 Palomares Summary Report says the B-52 and a KC-135 collided on January 17, 1966, during the final stages of a refueling hookup at 31,000 feet. Seven of the eleven men aboard the two planes were killed. Three bombs came down on land near the village of Palomares; the high explosive in two of them detonated without a nuclear yield and spread plutonium. The fourth came down offshore under its main parachute. A local fisherman saw where it entered the water. Alvin, a small research submarine from Woods Hole, was flown to Spain for the search. According to Woods Hole’s record, Alvin found the bomb in March; it lay about 2,550 feet down, still wrapped in its parachute. It was lost during an attempt to attach lift lines and slid down the slope into deeper water. It was found again on April 2, and on April 7 it was brought up intact with the Navy’s cable-controlled recovery vehicle CURV, eighty days after the crash.
The fisherman’s sighting and the depth before the loss come from a secondary summary (Wikipedia); the rest is from the 1975 Defense Nuclear Agency report and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s history of Alvin.
SOURCES
S1 Defense Nuclear Agency, “Palomares Summary Report,” January 1975 (DTIC ADA955702)
S2 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, History of Alvin (1966)
Footage: modern U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy file footage from DVIDS, public domain ( videos 553884, 343955, 673773, 573670, 574615, 574617, 614359, 588696, 151601). The recovery vehicle shown is CURV-21 in 2017, not the 1966 CURV. None of these shots shows the 1966 events; every shot is labelled FILE FOOTAGE. No endorsement implied. The text overlays are motion graphics.
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The 1975 Defense Nuclear Agency report says bomb 4 came up on April 7, 1966, essentially intact; Woods Hole's record says it had already been found once and lost during the lift in March. Which would you want next: how the fisherman's sighting shaped the search grid, or Thule 1968, the next B-52 crash with hydrogen bombs? Fisherman or Thule.
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