234 LANGHAM: . DASA 2019-2 Quite some time. FREMONT-SMITH: How long was it? Are you going to come to that? LANGHAM: rather strongly. Yes. FREMONT-SMITH: LANGHAM: I think it will be brought out in the discussion Physically. I had none of the problems Merril had, and I don't think it's that I'm that much better than he is! [Laughter] Of course, I think the problem was not nearly as great either. I don't intend to make any long speech, but I want to set the stage and see you wrestle with why the problems I faced were different from the ones that Merril had. DESCRIPTIONOF THE ACCIDENT LANGHAM: Aas all of you know, there was an incident involving the loss of four nuclear weapons, each rated in the megaton class, and it has attracted its share of publicity. Here are three examples. The Saturday Review gave it a great play (Reference 45). There were two books written on it in this country (References 46 and47), and an Englishman came out with a paperback (Reference 48) within two menths after the incident was over. The two American books are rather good, and they're not bad accounts of the incident if you'll give, of course, the author's privilege of introducing a little trauma here and there, Flora Lewis' book, One of our H- Bombs 1s Missing (Reference 46), concentrated more on the sea search for the one that was lost for weeks, Tad Szulc's book, The Bombs of Palomares (Reference 47), concentrated more on the land operation and went a little more deeply into the philosophy and where and why than did Flora Lewis. They both are relatively good books, There are mistakes, of course, like calling a scintillation counter an oscillation counter, The English book (Reference 48) is absolutely abominable. It gives everything wrong, and it's the type of unfortunate thing that so frequently occurs. The Reader's Digest carried a very nice article (Reference 49) on the incident, also. The incident occurred about 40 kilometers from Granada, about 80 miles up the Mediterranean coast from Gibraltar, about 70 miles