The Foreign Service Journal, December 2009

D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 63 Keeping His Head The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History Barbara Moran, Presidio Press, 2009, $26, hardcover, 321 pages. R EVIEWED BY S TEVEN A LAN H ONLEY On Jan. 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the sleepy Spanish farming village of Palomares during what should have been a routine midair refueling. The explosion killed seven airmen and scattered the plane’s payload — four unarmed thermo- nuclear bombs—across miles of coast- line. Three of them were recovered within the first 24 hours without inci- dent, but tracking down the fourth re- quired the largest search-and-salvage operation in U.S. military history. That operation is the subject of sci- ence journalist Barbara Moran’s first book, The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History . But in keeping with that rather expan- sive subtitle, she weaves many other topics into her narrative: the evolution of the Strategic Air Command, the de- sign and deployment of nuclear wea- pons around the world, life in Spain under the Franco dictatorship and de- pictions of the arms race in popular cul- ture, to name just a few. While this hopscotch approach occasionally called to mind Victor Hugo’s disquisition on the Paris sewer system during Les Mis- erables , it generally works well, con- veying helpful background without bogging down the story. Gripping as the quest for the miss- ing H-bomb is in Moran’s telling, what Foreign Service readers will probably findmost interesting is the role the U.S. embassy in Madrid played in the crisis (a facet only hinted at in the dust-jacket description, by the way). Indeed, I would argue that the book’s unsung hero is Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke, though Moran does not portray him in quite so flattering a light. Angie, as he was known, was the product of a century of American aris- tocracy. His grandfather, Benjamin Duke, helped found Duke University (and the American Tobacco Company). And his Uncle Tony—Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr. — was hailed in a 1943 Time magazine profile as the first “sextuple ambassador” in U.S. history. With that lineage, it is understand- able that Angie was drawn to diplo- macy, though it is somewhat surprising that he wanted to work his way up the career ladder rather than be a political appointee. However, because he drop- ped out of Yale before graduating, he was not considered qualified to take the Foreign Service exam. He instead tried — and failed at — several other pro- fessions until an investment banker named StanfordGriffis, the Truman ad- ministration’s new ambassador to Bue- nos Aires, took a shine to him. Griffis pulled some strings so Duke could take the test, which he passed in 1949. Just three years later, he was named ambassador to El Salvador in 1952 at the age of 36, making him the youngest U.S. chief of mission up to that point. ThoughDwight Eisenhower’s elec- tion cut short his tenure there, Duke took his responsibilities seriously, as he would continue to do throughout his diplomatic career. One Salvadoran re- porter wrote: “He has dedicated more sewers, slaughterhouses and clinics than half a dozen politicians.” But as Moran notes, “to his continued dismay, most of his colleagues considered him more adept at parties than policy.” That may explain why, in 1960, John F. Kennedy asked Duke to serve as di- rector of protocol rather than giving him an overseas post. Despite his dis- appointment, Duke excelled at the job, The book’s unsung hero is the U.S. ambassador to Spain in the mid-1960s, Angier Biddle Duke. B OOKS