1966 Palomares B-52 Crash - Political Consequences

Political Consequences

President Lyndon B. Johnson was first apprised of the situation in his morning briefing the same day as the accident. He was told that the 16th Nuclear Disaster Team had been sent to investigate, per the standard procedures for this type of accident. News stories related to the crash began to appear the following day, and it achieved front page status in both the New York Times and Washington Post on 20 January. Reporters sent to the accident scene covered angry demonstrations by the local residents. On 4 February, an underground Communist organization successfully initiated a protest by 600 people in front of the U.S. Embassy in Spain.

Four days after the accident, the Spanish government stated that "the Palomares incident was evidence of the dangers created by NATO's use of the Gibraltar airstrip", announcing that NATO aircraft would no longer be permitted to fly over Spanish territory either to or from Gibraltar. On 25 January, as a diplomatic concession, the U.S. announced that it would no longer fly over Spain with nuclear weapons, and on 29 January the Spanish government formally banned U.S. flights over its territory that carried such weapons. This caused other nations hosting U.S. forces to review their policies, with the Philippine Foreign Secretary Narciso Ramos calling for a new treaty to restrict the operation of U.S. military aircraft in Filipino airspace.

Palomares and another accident involving nuclear bombers two years later near Thule Air Base, in Greenland, made Operation Chrome Dome politically untenable, leading the U.S. Department of Defense to announce that it would be "re-examining the military need" for continuing the program. Forty years later in the town of Palomares, most people prefer to forget the incident, and it is now noted only by a street named "17 January 1966".