237 SESSION V this was done. So, the first group that flew in by helicopter looked to see if there had been any indication of a criticality yield and then started searching for the injured and the dead. There were seven American Air Force people killed and three injured. The next effort was to find the weapons, primarily because they included a lot of secrets, so-called, of our weapon technology, and so they were to be found at all costs, THE SEARCH FOR THE LOST H-BOMBS LANGHAM: Within two or three days a base camp was organized on the shores of the Mediterranean which grew to house 850 people before the operation was over, Almost immediately a search was started on land with these people lining up finger tip te finger tip and walking across the countryside looking for something that looked like a nuclear weapon even though, of course, nobody in the crowd had ever seen a nuclear weapon, They searched 49 square miles three times by this technique and part of that 49 square miles they searched seven times trying to find one lost weapon. The Bureau of Mines flew out a team which even inspected all of the old mine shafts and all of the old wells. It was obvious that some of the weapons, one or two of them, could have dropped inthe sea. So, the Navy was brought in on the operation and within two or three wecks the Navy Task Force had grown to 14 ships. They brought in the Alvin and the Aluminaut and the experimental devices that are used for deep sea recovery; and this turned out probably to be the greatest Navy exercise in deep sea salvaging and recovery that has ever occurred. The sandy beach was a part of the economic and psychological aspects of the incident. The mines having run cut, this was a de- pressed region. It has eight miles of the most beautiful Mediterranean beach you will ever see, All one would have to do is clean up some of the slag dumps and things left by the miners and one would have a resort possibility that could actually rival the French Riviera. The Spanish Government had actually underway a developmental program to develop this into one of the tourist resorts which are doing so much now for the economy in Spain. One can imagine the great concern of the Spanish Government; here was this development, and if there was a hydrogen bomb lurking around somewhere just waiting to go off, the tourists might not come. And so, this incident could jeopardize their entire program to relieve this depressed area by making it a tourist area.