What geekworthy technique was used to locate the lost Palomares hydrogen bomb?

Image via WikipediaForty-five years ago today, the US Air Force suffered a real-life Broken Arrow when a hydrogen bomb was lost in a mid-air collision over rural Spain. The so-called Palomares Incident occurred on Jan. 17, 1966 when a KC-135 airborne refueling tanker collided with a B-52G bomber that was carrying four Mk28 hydrogen bombs. The entire crew of the KC-135 was killed, three of the seven men aboard the B-52G died, and all four hydrogen bombs separated violently from the destroyed aircraft.

This is a classic Broken Arrow event, wherein US-owned nuclear weapons are lost in a fashion that does not lead directly to nuclear war. (The film Broken Arrow actually depicts an Empty Quiver incident, wherein a nuclear weapon is stolen by hostile forces. The thieves attempt to disguise the theft as a mere Broken Arrow. The result is a Nuc Flash, as the stolen nuke is detonated.)

Two of the Palomares hydrogen bombs detonated their conventional explosive components upon impact with the ground, spreading plutonium fallout over a 2-square-kilometer area of Spain. A third bomb landed intact in a riverbed. The fourth bomb was lost when its descent parachute miraculously deployed after the collision, allowing the weapon to drift into the Mediterranean Sea.

It took nearly three months for a massive naval expedition to locate what was a essentially a metal cylinder 22 inches wide by 170 inches long in the vast expanse of the Mediterranean. Fortunately, the US Navy had some serious math geeks around to help them increase their odds of tracking down the nuclear needle in the aquatic haystack.

What geekworthy technique was used to locate the lost Palomares hydrogen bomb?

Nerd Word of the Week: 5G War

Image by Army.mil via Flickr

5G war (n.) - Also known as 5GW, fifthgen war or fifth generation modern warfare. Any of several theoretical successors to fourth-generation modern warfare, which describes the primary strategies and tactics of a new type of conflict, particularly one that is indisputably superior to the previous generation. It is becoming the preferred buzzword for imagined futuristic conflicts, supplanting previous trope-words like hyperwar or infowar.

What exactly constitutes 5G War is up for debate, which is part of the reason it's slowly starting to catch on in the sci-fi set, as it can give the appearance of authenticity to a mil-SF work without actually contradicting any canonically established sources. 5G war is generally imagined to involve guerilla tactics enhanced by modern consumer communications technology and/or cyberattacks, but it's a good bet that as other techno-fads come and go, they'll make appearances under the 5G war banner as well.

I bring it up because: Friday is the eighth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, which thrust the concept of fourth generation, assymetric warfare into the public consciousness. As the world continues to grapple with the various implications of that tragedy, science fiction does likewise, helping us prepare for future conflicts by imagining impossible ones.

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