Sixth Fleet made a brief stopover at Palomares on the morning of 15 March 1966; Forrestal anchored at 09:03 and departed at 12:19. The recovery operation was led by the Supervisor of Salvage, Captain Searle. Hoist, Petrel and Tringa brought 150 qualified divers who searched to with compressed air, to with mixed gas, and to with hard-hat rigs; but the bomb lay in an uncharted area of the Rio Almanzora canyon on a 70-degree slope at a depth of . After a search that continued for 80 days following the crash, the bomb was located by the DSV Alvin on 17 March, but was dropped and temporarily lost when the Navy attempted to bring it to the surface. After the loss of the recovered bomb, the ship's positions were fixed by Decca HI-FIX position-locating equipment for subsequent recovery attempts. Alvin located the bomb again on 2 April, this time at a depth of . On 7 April, an unmanned torpedo recovery vehicle, CURV-I, became entangled in the weapon's parachute while attempting to attach a line to it. A decision was made to raise CURV and the weapon together to a depth of , where divers attached cables to both. The bomb was brought to the surface by . The was diverted from its Naples destination, stayed on scene until recovery, then took the bomb back to the United States. Once the bomb was located, Simó Orts appeared at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York with his lawyer, Herbert Brownell, formerly Attorney General of the United States under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, claiming salvage rights on the recovered thermonuclear bomb. According to Craven: The Air Force settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. In later years, Simó Orts was heard to complain that the Americans had promised him financial compensation but had not kept their promise. Contamination At 10:40 UTC, the accident was reported at the Command Post of the Sixteenth Air Force, and was confirmed at 11:22. The commander of the U.S. Air Force at Torrejón Air Base, Spain, Major General Delmar E. Wilson, immediately traveled to the scene of the accident with a Disaster Control Team. Further Air Force personnel were dispatched later the same day, including nuclear experts from U.S. government laboratories. The first weapon to be discovered was found nearly intact. However, the conventional explosives from the other two bombs