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HYDROGEN BOMB INCIDENT On January 17 1966 a B-52 Bomber of the USAF Strategic Air Command crashed into a KC-135 tanker while refuelling. Of the four Hydrogen Bomb s that it carried, three were found on land, while the fourth was lost at sea. It was recovered eighty days later. 1,750 tons of contaminated material were excavated and sent to South Carolina for disposal. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara publicly assigned a value to the lost bomb of two billion U.S. dollars. The search for the fourth bomb was carried out by means of a novel mathematical method, Bayesian Search Theory , which assigns probabilities to individual map grid squares, then updates these as the search progresses. The mathematical team, from Wagner Associates , was led by Dr John Craven . The method requires as input initial probabilities for the grid squares, and these probabilities made use of the fact that a local fisherman, Francisco Simó Orts, witnessed the bomb entering the water at a certain location. Simó Orts contracted with the US Air Force to assist in the search operation. After the bomb had been located, Francisco Simó turned up at the First District Federal Court building in New York City with his lawyer, Herbert Brownell , formerly Attorney General of the United States under President Dwight Eisenhower , claiming Salvage Rights on the recovered hydrogen bomb. According to Craven: "It is customary maritime law that the person who identifies the location of a ship to be salvaged has the right to a salvage award if that identification leads to a successful recovery. The amount is nominal, usually 1 or 2 percent, sometimes a bit more, of the intrinsic value to the owner of the thing salvaged. But the thing salvaged off Palomares was a hydrogen bomb, the same bomb valued by no less an authority than the Secretary of Defense at $2 billion — each percent of which is, of course, $20 million." The Air Force settled out of court. REFERENCES
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