"Chrome Dome" is the name given to the operation carried out by the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command during the Cold War. As part of this operation, several strategic nuclear bombers were constantly in the air, ready at any time to change course and strike at targets on the territory of the USSR. The constant presence of several aircraft in the air made it possible, in the event of a threat of the outbreak of war, to significantly reduce the time for delivering strikes and preparing bombers for departure.
In early 1966, a B-52G Stratofortress bomber under the command of US Air Force Captain Charles Wendorf took off for another patrol from the American Seymour-Johnson Air Base. On board, the aircraft carried four B28RI thermonuclear bombs, each with a yield of 1.45 mt. According to the plan, the plane was supposed to make two refueling in the air over the territory of Spain.
The first refueling was successful, but during the second bomber collided with the KC-135A Stratotanker tanker under the command of Major Emil Chapl, the collision occurred in the sky over the fishing village of Palomares.
The plane crash killed the entire crew of the tanker and three crew members of the bomber, the other four managed to eject.
A fire that broke out on board the bomber forced the crew to use an emergency discharge of hydrogen bombs. After four pilots managed to leave the plane, and then an explosion occurred. The dropped bombs were supposed to descend to the ground by parachutes, but the parachute only opened at one of the bombs.
The bomb, which opened its parachute, landed in the bed of the Almansor River, not far from the coast. One of the bombs, whose parachutes did not open, fell into the Mediterranean Sea, it was found three months after the fall. The most dangerous were the bombs that fell at a speed of three hundred kilometers per hour on the ground.
A day after the plane crash, three bombs were found, one of them fell directly into the courtyard of the house of one of the inhabitants of the village of Palomares. By a lucky coincidence, the two bombs found, the initiating charge of which was triggered by hitting the ground, exploded asynchronously opposite volumes of TNT and, instead of compressing the detonation radioactive mass, scattered it around. The search for the fourth bomb, as mentioned above, dragged on, they took place over an area of 70 square kilometers. After a month and a half of searches, tons of debris were recovered from under the water, but no bomb was found among them.
The bomb was found thanks to the fishermen who witnessed the disaster, who showed the place where the bomb had fallen. It was discovered at a depth of 777 meters above a steep bottom crevice by the manned underwater vehicle Alvin.
At the cost of incredible, inhuman efforts, after several unsuccessful attempts, the bomb was removed to the surface and defused. She lay at the bottom for 79 days. The operation to raise this bomb from under water was the most expensive rescue operation at sea in the 20th century, costing $ 84 million.
Also, the United States had to clean up the territory and satisfy 536 claims for compensation for damage, spending another 711 thousand dollars.
After the plane crash, the United States stopped flights of bombers with nuclear weapons on board over Spanish territory.
In the very village of Palomares, only the street named January 17, 1966 reminds of the plane crash.
