Nuclear security

How to Find a Missing H-Bomb

Mathematical wizardry led to modern sea searches

When a routine Cold War operation went terribly wrong, two planes and seven men died, a village got contaminated and a hydrogen bomb disappeared.

The search and cleanup required 1,400 American and Spanish personnel, a dozen aircraft, 27 U.S. Navy ships and five submarines. It cost more than $120 million and a lot of diplomatic capital.

And it made an obscure 18th-century mathematical theorem a practical solution to finding veritable needles in haystacks.

Around 10 A.M. on Jan. 17, 1966, two B-52Gs of the 31st Bomb Squadron based out of North Carolina approached two KC-135 tankers over the Spanish coast southwest of Cartagena.

The bombers each carried four 1.5-megaton B-28 hydrogen bombs as part of Operation Chrome Dome, a U.S. deterrence mission that placed nuclear-armed bombers on the Soviet Union’s doorsteps.