The Palomares Incident: The Day America Dropped 4 Hydrogen Bombs on Spain

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On January 17, 1966, a US Air Force B-52 bomber collided with its refueling tanker high over Palomares, a small farming village in southern Spain — and dropped four hydrogen bombs. This is the full story of the Palomares incident: the "broken arrow" that scattered plutonium across the village's fields, the H-bomb that vanished into the Mediterranean for 80 days, and the cover-up that outlived almost everyone involved.

Three bombs were found within a day. Two had cracked open on impact, blowing plutonium dust over hundreds of acres of farmland. The fourth was gone — carried out to sea under its parachute — and finding it became the most expensive search in naval history to that point, guided by a Spanish fisherman the Navy almost ignored.

But the real story is what happened after. The United States denied a bomb was missing for 44 days. An American ambassador swam off the beach for the world's cameras to "prove" the water was safe — while the plutonium sat in the soil, not the sea. Sixteen hundred servicemen shoveled radioactive earth with bare hands and no masks. And sixty years later, the contaminated soil is still fenced off in Palomares — with 1,600 new homes just approved beside it.

CHAPTERS
0:00 The Palomares B-52 Crash
0:49 Operation Chrome Dome
2:39 The Plutonium Contamination Lie
4:10 The Search for the Missing H-Bomb
6:54 The Ambassador's Swim at Palomares
8:41 The Airmen and the Radiation Claims
10:17 The Contaminated Soil Today

#Palomares #BrokenArrow #ColdWar #NuclearHistory #HydrogenBomb #History #Documentary #Declassified #ColdWarHistory #Spain

— MORE FROM BROKEN ARROWS —
▶ The Thule Accident: America's Nuclear Disaster Denmark Tried to Bury: https://youtu.be/qrRGiiBSv40
▶ The Goldsboro B-52 Crash: The Night One Switch Stopped a Nuclear Explosion: https://youtu.be/yhj3MPnHuVo
Full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ0PHg8a7lTw