During the height of the Cold War US B-52 bombers carrying nuclear bombs were in the air around the clock, 365 days a year. Officially 11 bombs went missing but it is estimated that 50 were lost. (Photo Der Spiegel)From Der Spiegel:
In a 1968 plane crash, the US military lost an atom bomb in Greenland's Arctic ice. But this was no isolated case. Up to 50 nuclear warheads are believed to have gone missing during the Cold War, and not all of them are in unpopulated areas.
It was a little early to be swimming in the Mediterranean that year. But in early March 1966, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, the Spanish information minister at the time, and Biddle Duke, the American ambassador in Madrid, together with their respective families, plunged into the chilly waters off the Costa Cálida. Journalists from around the world had gathered on the beach of the small village of Palomares to report on the two families' spring bathing outing. Their interest would have been surprising, if it hadn't been for the hydrogen bomb lying on the ocean floor only a few kilometers away, a bomb with more than 1,000 times the explosive force of the one that flattened Hiroshima.
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My Comment:I can understand unexploded ordinance on a battlefield .... but this piece of ordinance is not a normal piece of ordinance. I can only hope that all of the components were retrieved.