There have been at least 32 so-called "broken arrow" accidents – those involving these catastrophically destructive, earth-flattening devices – since 1950. In fact, the Palomares incident is not the only time a nuclear weapon has been misplaced. Now the hunt was on to find it – along with its 1.1 megatonne warhead, with the explosive power of 1,100,000 tonnes of TNT. Three were quickly recovered on land – but one had disappeared into the sparkling blue expanse to the south east, lost to the bottom of the nearby swathe of Mediterranean Sea. "It was supposed to be a secret but my friends were telling me why I was going."įor weeks, newspapers around the globe had been reporting rumours of a terrible accident – two US military planes had collided in mid-air, scattering four B28 thermonuclear bombs across Palomares. "It was kind of embarrassing," says Meyers. When he attended a dinner party that evening and announced his mysterious trip, its intended confidentiality became something of a joke. "It was not a surprise to be called," says Meyers. However, the mission was not as covert as the military had hoped. He was told that there was a top secret emergency in Spain, and that he must report there within days. At the time, he was working as a bomb disposal officer at the Naval Air Facility Sigonella, in eastern Sicily. Many of the war’s most fearsome inventions, including poison gas and tanks, were intended specifically to aid armies on the attack and by 1917-1918, were being used effectively to break into and out of enemy trench lines.A few weeks later, Philip Meyers received a message via a teleprinter – a device that could send and receive primitive emails. In addition to the development of better and more varied weapons and tools for the infantry and engineers, the war also saw the use of poison gas, underground mining, airplanes, airships, submarines, and tanks. The Canadians soon acquired a reputation as fierce raiders, despite the heavy casualties they often incurred. These raids were meant to kill the enemy, to gather intelligence, and to win control of No Man’s Land. From late 1915, the Canadians engaged in a series of hit-and-run assaults on enemy trenches. Unofficial weapons, including knives, hand-made clubs, and small catapults were particularly useful in raids. Training for raids and attacks emphasized how firepower, movement, and innovation could be used to go through, or around, enemy strong points. Small units, of eight to 30 soldiers, came to rely on a balance of rifles, machine-guns, and other weapons. As the war progressed, armies used a wider variety of weapons to better equip their troops for trench fighting and attacks across No Man’s Land, including grenades, rifle grenades, mortars, and several types of machine-guns. Personal Weapons and Small-armsĪt the start of the war, most soldiers carried only a rifle and a bayonet, and most soldiers within the same small unit were similarly armed. New weapons were introduced throughout the war to help break the deadlock. Most attacks against these trenches ended in failure. The first shallow, temporary ditches gradually expanded into deeper trench systems. The enormous firepower of machine-guns, quick-firing artillery, and modern rifles forced the infantry to dig into the ground. The static battlefield on the Western Front led to the development of new and more effective weapons, and the improvement of old ones.
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