Errant Bombs
Mathes, William
Errant Bombs The Bombs of Palomares, by Tad Szulc. The Viking Press. 274 pp. $6.50. One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing, by Flora Lewis. McGraw-Hill. 270 pp. $5.95. Reviewed by William Mathes "Doth...
...It is possible to hope and it is possible to rationalize, but it is not possible to become free of fear and to accept the situation as a way of life...
...But Palomares had shown that the danger has not faded with familiarity, that it must not be forgotten or wished away lest it fall from a blue sky, on a day of peaceful harvest, who knows where...
...Yet this news story from Palomares has a special urgency, a special bitter relationship to the dreadful canopy of nuclear weapons hanging over the world...
...Strategic Air Command (SAC) flies nuclear weapons all over the world twenty-four hours a day, week after week, month after month, year after year...
...At the end of each book there are brief afterthoughts about the wider implications of the events at Palomares...
...In spite of all precautions, the potentiality for detonation always accompanies serious mishaps...
...Radioactive contamination is virtually a certainty—as in Palomares...
...The flaw of each book is that neither author took the time to explore the wider implications of Palomares...
...One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing and The Bombs of Palomares adequately report the events of Palomares, both in an easy-flowing newspaper journalism...
...When something does go wrong and the nuclear loads are spilled on the earth, there are always opportunities for detonation, for nuclear explosion—suddenly, grotesquely, irrevocably...
...Reviewed by William Mathes "Doth of these highly-readable ac-counts of the nuclear accident at Palomares, Spain on January 17, 1966 —when a B-52 collided with its refueling plane and crashed, spilling out four H-bombs, one of which was nearly lost in the sea—suffer the flaw of most contemporary journalism: neither adequately broaches the consequences of the documented events...
...Both are too willing to leave speculation and history to readers and historians...
...The U.S...
...when you have seen one H-bomb, you have seen them all...
...Despite the reassurances of the militarily sophisticated and despite authoritative disclaimers, this canopy is flawed...
...These questions must be faced...
...human frailties are such that it is possible to lose four hydrogen bombs, radioactively contaminate an innocent village, raise the specter of massive nuclear poisoning, and distort, perhaps forever, the lives of a community of people...
...The odds of mishap play with men...
...Miss Lewis: "It is trite now to say that nuclear bombs are very dangerous, and that it is excruciatingly dangerous to swing them across the world above peoples' heads, no matter how silently they fly and how high...
...These rather casual closing remarks point to the primary importance of the accident at Palomares: the realities of the nuclear canopy under which we all live...
...today mishap means holocaust...
...But neither author—Flora Lewis is a correspondent for The Washington Post, Tad Szulc for The New York Times —attempts to place the news story in the perspective of relevant history...
...The stigma of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Lucky Dragon, and now Palo-mares cannot be dispelled in a world over which hydrogen weapons are carried, or must be carried, day and night...
...Has anyone, in government or out, adequately faced the possibility of accidental nuclear detonation...
...One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing and The Bombs of Palomares are virtually flawless examples of newspaper journalism: stylistically exciting, beautifully organized, and persistently accurate...
...Szulc's account is tighter, less given to amassing trivial detail for its own sake...
...With so many opportunities for mishap, each flight assumes statistical importance...
...Miss Lewis' book is illustrated, but this is not significant...
...Is the possibility of nuclear detonation worth the alleged advantage of having nuclear weapons in the air at all times...
Vol. 31 • July 1967 • No. 7
