In many cases, the weapons were dropped by mistake or jettisoned during an emergency, then later recovered. There have been at least 32 so-called "broken arrow" accidents – those involving these catastrophically destructive, earth-flattening devices – since 1950. In fact, the Palomares incident is not the only time a nuclear weapon has been misplaced. Now the hunt was on to find it – along with its 1.1 megatonne warhead, with the explosive power of 1,100,000 tonnes of TNT. Three were quickly recovered on land – but one had disappeared into the sparkling blue expanse to the south east, lost to the bottom of the nearby swathe of Mediterranean Sea. "It was supposed to be a secret but my friends were telling me why I was going."įor weeks, newspapers around the globe had been reporting rumours of a terrible accident – two US military planes had collided in mid-air, scattering four B28 thermonuclear bombs across Palomares. "It was kind of embarrassing," says Meyers. When he attended a dinner party that evening and announced his mysterious trip, its intended confidentiality became something of a joke. "It was not a surprise to be called," says Meyers. However, the mission was not as covert as the military had hoped. He was told that there was a top secret emergency in Spain, and that he must report there within days. At the time, he was working as a bomb disposal officer at the Naval Air Facility Sigonella, in eastern Sicily. A few weeks later, Philip Meyers received a message via a teleprinter – a device that could send and receive primitive emails.
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