Posted on 09/15/2019 4:23:43 PM PDT by Enlightened1
Navy veterans speak about when the nuclear bomb blew up near them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8O8sBIsKHI
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
What happened during the blast and after.
My Dad was at Bikini.
Wow!
That is pretty insane what these Navy vets said happened.
My old supervisor was one of the army troops placed in slit trenches near one of the tests. I want to say only a hundred yards away but that doesn’t sound right.
He said that when it went off they all had their eyes closed but they could still see right through their hands.
None of them were seriously hurt but they never tried it again.
My brother in law was the photographer for a number of the blasts in the desert of the US.
My dad saw 12-15 of them go off early 50’s. He was in the Army but worked with the Atomic Agency.
I have all of his citations: Operation Ivy, Greenhouse etc.
In late 80’s my dad and I sat at a table with Paul Tibbets at a Atomic Veterans conference in Columbus Ohio dealing with veteran with health issues related to the blast
Interesting. Watched Godzilla off and on today. The opening shows vintage footage of nuclear tests. Thought to myself, “read up on this and hear some testimony from those who were present.” Voila!
My father was at Trinity. He was a flight trainer at White Sands, about to take up a squad to train in formation flying. As they were taxiing out they were suddenly given an order to stop & cut engines. A moment later he said it was as if the sun had risen in an instant. He could see every rivet in the airplane.
My mother was about 20 miles away at home & heard the blast. They were told an ammo dump had blown up.
” I want to say only a hundred yards away but that doesn’t sound right.”
No one that close would survive the blast or Fireball. Also their would be no oxygen.
His father was one of those atomic bomb exposed troops.
His father also suffered a series medical conditions starting in the mid-to-late 1970s.
>
I knew a retired Army Air Force then Air Force Colonel who flew nearly every U.S. plane from WWII until he retired in the 70’s.
Part of the time he was stationed in Alaska. He would fly B-29’s through radioactive clouds, collecting samples from Russian nuclear tests. He said some of those clouds were really hot.
He died of leukemia caused by radiation.
These were Brit/Australian sailors on the HMS Warrior a Brit aircraft carrier completed at Harland & Wolff (same Belfast/brit yard as many other famous ships- Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic) in 1946— a new Colossus class aircraft carrier.
The Grapple British series (3) of atomic tests were done near/on Christmas Island (Kirimati). They were all air bursts to minimize fallout... at 18,000 feet or higher. The HMS Warrior was more than 10 miles away of the lethal blast zone— this was a new ship, for one thing. The blast, being overhead, more energy was expended in the form of ionizing gamma radiation and X-rays (these rays not interrupted by solid walls if the sailors were on deck as the photos seem to show). The x-rays could not be “seen” by human eye— the bones of the hands could be seen as bright light shadows.The sailors who were below deck did not experience the light or x and gamma ray exposure.
So was mine. He saw Able and Baker.
BTW the sailors in the very first frames of the film— they were all US Navy, not British. Also— the aircraft is a US B-29 (which was NOT used by the Brits- they were Vickers Valiants— Jet bombers— the tests were in 1957 in Operation Grapple). The bomb briefly shown out the bomb-bay door looks like a US device from the earlier 50’s with a drogue chute.
Complete overview of all nuclear weapons ever tested— all countries there is this archive (large number, depressing to learn how many and where)
http://www.nuclearweaponarchive.org/
The power of the exotic criticality of the metals is always in memory from the scene in “Fat Man & Little Boy” of the scientist Harry Daghlian on 21 August 1945, who dropped a tungsten brick onto a 14 1b. sphere of solid plutonium while testing the plutonium’s effectiveness as a “core” for a bomb. The plutonium went critical instantly glowing blue light and he was dosed with 510 rem of radiation in a few seconds and died of severe radiation in 25 days. After another scientist died in the same manner— this actual core or plutonium was named “the demon core”— reformulated to another later bomb.
The demon core play a role in Robert Mayer’s The Rift. Enjoyed the book.
My grandfather worked for Hughes at Yucca Flats, NV in the 40’s. He witnessed numerous nuclear blasts.
My Dad was in Hiroshima several weeks AFTER the bomb. He was a super healthy guy til he suddenly developed lymphatic lukemia and died at 71.
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