This morning in 1966 over Palomares, Spain, a B-52G bomber on airborne alert collided with a KC-135 tanker during a routine high-altitude refueling operation, killing all 4 tanker crew members and 3 of the B-52’s crew, and causing 4 1.45-Megaton B28 H-bombs to fall to earth. 
Conventional high explosives in two of the three bombs that hit land detonated on impact, contaminating local tomato fields with plutonium. Some 1,600 US and Spanish military and civilian personnel dug up 1,400 tons of contaminated soil and vegetation, but they didn’t get it all.
The contaminated debris was packed into 4,800 steel 55-gallon drums and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States for burial in unlined 10-foot-deep dirt trenches at the Atomic Energy Commission’s sprawling Savannah River Plant near Aiken, South Carolina.
An interesting fact from the article above: “Peculiarly enough, the radioactive material would have been buried in only 3 feet of earth, officials said, but due to the possible introduction of foreign pests in the plants included in the shipment, the trenches were 10 feet deep.”
Decades later, many USAF veterans involved in that cleanup effort are suffering and dying from a variety of ailments they link to being ordered to clean up the radioactive debris in Palomares without any protection. They seek recognition and medical care. nytimes.com/video/us/10000…
On Dec. 6, 2019, an appeals court granted class action status to some of the USAF veterans suing the Department of Veterans Affairs to demand coverage of their medical care for radiation-induced illnesses. But many of the 1,600 involved had already died. nytimes.com/2020/02/11/us/…
On September 2, 2020, the court accepted new evidence on behalf of the class, including a declaration by a former Strategic Air Command medical officer, Dr. Murray Watnick, that approximately 10 kilograms of plutonium-239 was released at Palomares. counterpunch.org/2020/12/18/air…
On August 10, 2022, President Biden signed the PACT Act (Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act)—the largest expansion of health care and benefits for veterans exposed to toxic substances since 1991—including veterans exposed to radioactive materials working at Palomares.
The fourth bomb fell into the Mediterranean Sea 12 miles off the coast and sank to a depth of 2,550 feet. It was lost for 80 days, creating a huge public relations problem for the United States and spurring a massive underwater search effort leading to its retrieval on April 7.
To try and allay public fears during the long search, US Ambassador to Spain Angier Biddle Duke (at left in second photo) took a highly-publicized dip in the Mediterranean off Palomares on March 8, 1966. Afterward, he declared to reporters, “If this is radioactivity, I love it!”
Once the missing bomb was recovered from the seafloor (the Navy submersible USS Alvin located it and it was retrieved by the unmanned torpedo recovery vehicle CURV-1), it was shown to the press aboard the USS Petrel, the first time a US hydrogen bomb had been publicly displayed.
Left to right: Sr. Don Antonio Velilla Manteca, chief of Spain’s Nuclear Energy Board in Palomares, Brig. Gen. Arturo Montel Touzet, Spain’s search & recovery coordinator, Rear Adm. William S. Guest, Cmdr US Navy Task Force 65, and Maj. Gen. Delmar E. Wilson, Cmdr 16th Air Force.
Here’s a color photograph from the opposite angle of the long-submerged B28 thermonuclear bomb aboard the USS Petrel, with the CURV in the background. The bomb’s nose was severely dented and it had two ~40-inch-long gashes in its tail section. Water had infiltrated all sections.
Here is how the New York Times reported the closely-watched recovery of the lost B28 thermonuclear bomb on April 8 and 9, 1966 (erroneously reporting its yield as 20 Megatons):
After years of unfruitful talks, in October 2015 the United States and Spain agreed in principle to remove additional contaminated soil from Palomares, without specifying the amount, where it would be buried in the United States, or who would pay for it. nytimes.com/2015/10/20/wor…
Subsequent inconclusive elections in Spain and the election of Donald Trump in the United States delayed further negotiations to finalize and implement the agreement, as did the failure of the Spanish Congress to ratify an essential international treaty. english.elpais.com/elpais/2017/01…
As of July 2022, 254 acres of contaminated land in Palomares remain fenced off and no cleanup pursuant to the 2015 agreement had begun. And a British developer plans to build 1,600 homes, a hotel, and a sports complex about a mile from the exclusion zone. theguardian.com/world/2022/jul…
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