On January 17, 1966, the people of Palomares, a small village on the southern coast of Spain, witnessed a massive explosion in the sky. It was the result of a collision between two US Air Force planes that completely destroyed both, and cast debris and wreckage across the coastlands. One of the planes, a B-52 bomber, had been carrying four hydrogen nuclear bombs, and along with the rest of the twisted metal, these fell tens of thousands of feet to the ground. Three ended up on land (two of them exploded, but did not ignite their nuclear payloads), while the fourth plunged into the waters of the Mediterranean, its location known by only one man.
They had been conducting a mid-air refueling when everything went wrong. The B-52 was flying on a long-range mission out of North Carolina where, in a bid to show our Cold War adversaries just how quickly we could strike, it essentially patrolled the borders of the Soviet Union (while carrying hydrogen bombs) before returning home. This extremely long range mission - half way around the world and back - meant it had to refuel in the air. And so, the B-52 was met with a refueling plane as it passed over southern Spain. Due to pilot error, the planes came into contact during the refueling process and both caught fire and exploded, killing all but men of the twelve men involved.
The three bombs that fell to land were all located by the Americans within 24 hours, while the fourth was much harder to locate in the depths of the Mediterranean. The search called upon a Navy group of over 20 ships to come to the area and search to find this highly sensitive and dangerous piece of equipment. Things was expedited when a local fisherman, Fransisco Simó Orts, came forward claiming he had seen a fireball falling into the water. He’d initially thought it was a body, but later realized that he’d seen the missing bomb. With Simó Orts’ help, the Navy soon recovered the bomb from over twenty five hundred feet of water, ending what could have been a long and drawn out search.
But the episode wasn’t over. Simó Orts soon showed up in New York City at the Federal Court and claimed a salvage right to the downed bomb. Per typical maritime law, if a person helps locate a missing asset, he is entitled to a small portion of its value as a reward for his troubles. In the case of the United States’ two billion dollar hydrogen bomb, Simó Orts stood to be paid ten to twenty million dollars for helping find it. His action wasn’t exactly frivolous as his lawyer at the courthouse was Herbert Brownell, a former United States Attorney General. Ultimately, the government opted not to have the case in the spotlight and settled with Simó Orts out of court. We’ll never know how much they ended up paying him, but it said that Simó Orts never fished another day in his life.