The 1966 Palomares Incident: When a Mid-Air Collision Nearly Nuked a Spanish Village
In short: In 1966, a routine refueling mission over Spain turned catastrophic when two U.S. Air Force planes collided, scattering four hydrogen bombs across the countryside. This video recounts the frantic search for a missing nuclear weapon and the radioactive fallout that followed this forgotten Cold War disaster.
On January 17, 1966, a B-52 Stratofortress carrying four hydrogen bombs collided with another aircraft over Palomares, Spain. Each bomb possessed a yield of 1.1 million tons of TNT. While one weapon was recovered intact from a riverbed, two others suffered conventional explosions upon impact, spreading toxic plutonium across the local landscape.
The incident triggered one of the most significant naval operations in peacetime history, as the U.S. Navy mobilized a fleet to locate the fourth missing bomb in the Mediterranean Sea. The collision resulted in the deaths of seven of the eleven crew members involved.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Accidentally Nuking a Country
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