The Palomares Accident.
Accidents happen, some are worse than others, and when an accident involves a nuclear bomb it is called a Broken Arrow. One such Broken Arrow incident happened in the small town of Palomares, Spain in 1966. On January 17, 1966, a B-52 bomber flew over the small fishing town on its way back to North Carolina. It was supposed to meet up with a KC-135 jet tanker for refueling, but the B-52 collided with the tanker. The fuel ignited and consumed the jet tanker and all four of its crewmen as well as three of the seven men crewing the B-52. Four men from the bomber managed to safely eject and escape the mid-air inferno. Four other "passengers" also escaped. Three, 70 kiloton Hydrogen bombs plummeted to the earth below, and one crashed into the Mediterranean. Though the bombs were not armed only two were recovered intact, the other two that hit the town exploded and sprayed plutonium over the homes and fields of Palomares. Spanish civil guards and a couple thousand US military personal flooded the small town to clean up and decontaminate. The two intact bombs were safely recovered and 1,400 tons of radioactive dirt were shipped back to the United States for disposal. Because of the international nature of the accident the news spread, but there have been several other Broken Arrows that occurred with in the US. For more on those Broken Arrows check out the link below.
http://www.history.com/news/9-tales-of-broken-arrows-thermonuclear-near-misses-throughout-history












