Palomares
Spanish village in Almería where a US B-52 crash dropped four hydrogen bombs in 1966
On 17 January 1966 a US B-52G collided with a tanker over Palomares and dropped four hydrogen bombs: two scattered plutonium on land and one sank offshore. Recovering that bomb took 80 days and a cable-controlled robot, CURV-I.
Last refreshed: 7 October 2026
Timeline for Palomares
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Autonomous Systems: Land & SeaBackground
Palomares is a village in the Cuevas del Almanzora municipality of Almería province, in south-east Spain. It is known for a 1966 US nuclear-weapons accident.
On 17 January 1966 a US B-52G bomber collided with a KC-135 tanker during refuelling at 31,000ft. It carried four B28 thermonuclear bombs. Three fell on land near the village, and the conventional explosives in two of them detonated without a nuclear blast, spreading plutonium over about 2km². The fourth fell into the SEA. The clean-up removed about 1,750 tons of soil to the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina.
The SEA bomb was recovered intact after an 80-day search. The crewed submersible Alvin found it on 17 March, lost it, and found it again on 2 April at 2,900ft. The US Navy's cable-controlled CURV-I fouled its parachute on 7 April, a job divers could not do, and USS Petrel raised it. That recovery is an early landmark for remotely operated underwater vehicles, a class that European navies and universities still buy one at a time for single tasks, as procurement notices from September and October 2026 show.