dissemination. Pele eet ud
- On January 17, however, Spain unexpectedly received a supply of nuclear weapons -- four,according to the first rumors. A B-52. of the Strategic Air Command collided with a KC-155 aerial tanker while taking on fuel over Almeria, the two planes. crashing near Cuevas del Almanzora, a town of 10,000 inhabitants.
The B-52--was part of the big fleet:, armed with H-bombs, kept constantly in-the air by the -Pentagon to guard the "free world" from the "threat of Communism," :a threat. that .is particularly grave in such bastions of freedom as--the one nuled by the fascist dictator Franco. Ban ES CLP GL re o
More than 1,000 American military personnel and Spanish soldiers immediately went into action in accordance with Johnson's principle of doing everything possible to block further dissemination of nuclear arms. They combed the countryside while navy vessels swept the nearby Mediterranean. Be :
Spokesmen of the Pentagon had only "no comment" to inquiries about whether four bombs had actually been disseminated in the crash. They admitted oniy that the B-52 had, been carrying "nuclear armament." They added reassuringly that a "radiological study" had shown there was "no danger whatsoever to the public health and safety." - -
~ -Qhis'was good to hear in view of the fact that B-52's: are. said to be able to carry nine tons of thermonuclear bombs, two:of. the .~ devices reaching 25 megatons capacity each, (One megaton = 1,000,000 tons of dynamite.,. By way of comparison, the bomb that Truman ordered dropped on Hiroshima was equivalent. to 20,000 tons of dynamite.)
Rumor had it that three bombs were recovered from the Mediterranean by frogmen, What about the fourth bomb? There was’ some mystery to this. Military personnel were deployed over the country-
side with Geiger counters. Peasants were warned not to eat any of their ripening vegetables or other crops, particularly not to drink milk from their cows.
- The Spanish= authorities: ‘announced January - 21 that all the inhabitants of-the-three*towns..of Garrucha, Vera and. Cuevas del Almanzora were. being submitted to medical examination. Already, they reported, two civil guards had been found ‘showing traces of radioactivity. . oo.
The editor of the Paris daily Le M Monde (January 23- -24) observed:
"Despite the assurances given last Thursday by the American army air staff in Spain, according to which there is no risk of. contamination whatsoever, it can bé assumed that the protective ‘shield of one of the bombs cracked open when it came - downs. Permit bing some material to escape." ; vo 23 In brief, the shell of one of the nuclear eggs couldn' 4 ‘take the. impact, and the area was doused with the radieactive - charge.
still another version was provided by unnamed "official . Spanish spokesmen." According to the January 27 Le Monde, ‘they revealed that: only -two e25-megaton nuclear bombs were on Board the B-52. “When the collision occurred witn the tanker plane, ,the. B-52 pilot egected the two bombs before parachuting down himself. The bombs presumably camé down slowly on their parachutes and sank into the sea near two Spanisn fishing boats, who rescued the pilot and two other. members of the crew."
The two H- _bombs, “according to this’ version, are now lying in water 900 to 1,200 feet deep. "Some maritime experts are of the opinion that only a bathyscaphe will be able to reach this depth, but this s01ueL on appears. at the moment to still face some technical difficulties. =
As for the radioactive. contamination. in the area of the three Spanish towns, the unnamed authorities said.nothing. Le Monde -reports that only attachments beLonging t.o. the two 25-megaton bombs -were found in the 1,000-man search that went on for ten days. These, Le Monde deduces, could have belonged to the "atomic detonators." ~ > s:The detonator of an H-bomb, it should be noted, is not a mere mechanical device like the trigger of a Colt six-shooter. It is an atom bomb of the size used over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. . The dissemination of the materials in the two 25-megaton H-bomb detonators would thus explain the measures taken in the affected area to seal off radioactive contamination.
qn ‘Cuevas del Almanzora, as the mass medical examination proceeded, some fifty persons, braving the frowns of the Caudillo and his ally Johnson,.'marched in a picket line, shouting, "Down with the Americans and their bombs!"
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BEN BARKA WAS CAST FOR