Barbara Moran marshals a wealth of new information and recently declassified material to give the definitive account of the Cold War's biggest nuclear weapons disaster. On Jan. 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the sleepy Spanish farming village of Palomares during a routine airborne refueling. The explosion killed seven airmen and scattered the bomber's payload — four unarmed thermonuclear bombs — across miles of coastline. The book tells the riveting true story of the nuclear buildup that led to this deadly accident, the far-reaching consequences of the crash, and the massive search for the missing bombs.