Dunderbail

In Madrid the joke was that the farmers of Almeria were no longer growing tomatoes but, rather, mushrooms. Another yuk had it that residents of the Mediterranean coast near Almeria had renamed their region "Costa Boom." It was something to laugh about all right--a missing American H-bomb.

Object of an extensive search was one of four hydrogen bombs--each, if detonated, capable of wiping out a city--that fell from a U.S. Air Force B-52 when it collided with a refueling tanker over Spain's coast on Jan. 17. Three of the bombs landed on Spanish soil and were readily recovered. The fourth fell into the sea just short of Almeria. Fishermen quickly rescued the bomber's four survivors but not the bomb. Some 2,000 American servicemen from Spanish bases undertook the search. To be sure, none of the deadly, multimegaton nuclear-bomb cases was armed, and all were packaged in radiation-proof shells. But, just the same, everyone wanted all of them found.

A U.S. Navy minesweeper located what was thought to be the missing bomb 1,200 ft. under water. Though frogmen were readily available, the bomb lay far below the depth at which SPECTRE's flippered villains so easily recovered the "Thunderball" of James Bond's latest cinematic adventure. The real thing was far harder to lift. In order to recover the bomb, American officials called on devices that even Ian Fleming had never conceived: the whale-shaped Aluminaut (TIME, Sept. 11, 1964), a 51-ft., three-man sub devised by General Dynamics Corp. to probe 17,000 ft. beneath the sea's surface, and a 22-ft. two-man U.S. Navy sub named the Alvin, which can work as deep as 6,000 ft.

There was little question that the missing nuke would be recovered, but there were predictable repercussions from the Spaniards. After a twelve-hour Cabinet session, the regime of General Francisco Franco discreetly suggested that armed U.S. nuclear bombers henceforth stay in the airspace out over the ocean, well clear of the Spanish mainland.

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