Oops! My bad! These are expressions you never want to hear from your doctor. There are all sorts of scenarios that might come to mind right now where you wouldn’t want to hear the doctor mutter those words under his breath during the exam. And even though you would be anesthetized while on an operating table, the surgical team doesn’t want to hear the surgeon say, “Oops!”
Another situation where those expressions would be unnerving comes from the person cutting your hair. You hear the smooth sound of the trimmer buzzing until the sound changes dramatically. The barber says, “Oops!” as a large chunk of hair hits the ground.
While none of those situations are good, I’m pretty sure an “oops” at 43,000 feet is one of the worst places imaginable. A simple, “Oops, my bad,” isn’t going to fix this one.
It was January 17, 1966 when the United States bombed Spain. Some of you are racing for your history books because you can’t remember the last time we were at war with Spain. We weren’t! But that didn’t stop us from dropping four H-bombs on them – accidentally.
It’s hard to imagine the days of the Cold War (1945-1991), even though I lived through the last half of it. It was a term that was thrown around and you knew that it had a lot to do with Russia but other than that, it didn’t seem to have much impact in day to day living. If you were serving in the military, that would have been a different story.
To be ready at all times for first-strike capability, the United States had B-52 bombers in the air at all times, strategically circling the globe. In order to fly great distances, they would be refueled while in the air. On this day, a “B-52 collided with the fueling boom of the [KC-135 jet] tanker, ripping the bomber open and igniting the fuel. The KC-135 exploded, killing all four of its crew members, but four members of the seven-man B-52 crew managed to parachute to safety. None of the bombs were armed, but explosive material in two of the bombs that fell to earth exploded upon impact, forming craters and scattering radioactive plutonium over the fields of Palomares. A third bomb landed in a dry riverbed and was recovered relatively intact. The fourth bomb fell into the sea at an unknown location.
“Palomares, a remote fishing and farming community, was soon filled with nearly 2,000 U.S. military personnel and Spanish civil guards who rushed to clean up the debris and decontaminate the area. The U.S. personnel took precautions to prevent overexposure to the radiation, but the Spanish workers, who lived in a country that lacked experience with nuclear technology, did not. Eventually some 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and vegetation were shipped to the United States for disposal.
“Meanwhile, at sea, 33 U.S. Navy vessels were involved in the search for the lost hydrogen bomb. Using an IBM computer, experts tried to calculate where the bomb might have landed, but the impact area was still too large for an effective search. Finally, an eyewitness account by a Spanish fisherman led the investigators to a one-mile area. On March 15, a submarine spotted the bomb, and on April 7 it was recovered. It was damaged but intact.”1
A lot of credit is due the U.S. government and military for their rapid response to this situation. I wish I could report that this was the only time something like this has happened but it’s not. “Because the accident happened in a foreign country, it received far more publicity than did the dozen or so similar crashes that occurred within U.S. borders.
As a security measure, U.S. authorities do not announce nuclear weapons accidents, and some American citizens may have unknowingly been exposed to radiation that resulted from aircraft crashes and emergency bomb jettisons. Today, two hydrogen bombs and a uranium core lie in yet undetermined locations in the Wassaw Sound off Georgia, in the Puget Sound off Washington, and in swamplands near Goldsboro, North Carolina.”2
Doesn’t that make you tremble a little bit?
Without going into the strategies and politics of keeping infected Americans in the dark, let’s just consider this from a spiritual standpoint. Proverbs 28:13 seems to be clear. “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”
We often wonder how some people can sleep at night, knowing what they’ve done. David wrote in Psalms 32:3-4, “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. (4) For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.” Covering up transgressions, whether done intentionally or accidentally, must be exhausting!
Don’t just shrug off indiscretions and transgressions. Acknowledge them. Own them. Seek to make things as right as possible and as quickly as possible. Follow David’s example in Psalms 32:5.
“I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.”
1https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-17/h-bomb-lost-in-spain
2Ibid.
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