No One Knew Us
Bob Knipes
Published by Bob Knipes at Smashwords
Copyright © 2005 by Robert E. Knipes
This book is available in print at most online retailers.
Front cover map courtesy of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
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PROLOGE
"Somebody ought to write a book about this place. We've accomplished some great science here and our efforts in doing that should be documented somewhere."
Dr. Roger Ide a Lawrence Livermore Lab Nuclear Chemist is talking about the Nevada Test Site
This book covers the era of underground nuclear testing. Once the scientist designed his nuclear bomb he had to have a place to test it. That place was the Nevada Test Site. This book is about a select group of people who prepared the test bed for nuclear tests. They were the ones that buried the bomb, detonated it and recorded the data. Sounds simple doesn’t it? If you think so then I suggest you got to Hawaii and try to contain a volcano. Yes my friends each bomb tested is a volcano in miniature and each test had its own unique set of problems.
Roger’s right. Someone should write a book. No one was willing so I wrote “No one knew us.” It gives the public a glimpse into activities that went on behind the confines of that secret area known as the Nevada Test Site or NTS. This is the new and revised version. It corrects grammatical and historical mistakes.
My book tells about the people who did the HOW of underground nuclear testing. The interviewees I chose, set the standards for a task thought impossible or impractical at best.
Scientists roam the halls of congress selling nuclear bombs. They start testing in the atmosphere but later are told they can design their bombs but they must test underground. They specify the tests needed to prove their designs and ideas but they have little knowledge on how to build the structures needed for the tests. It took the dedication and talent of skilled craftsmen to bail them out.
In 1963 nuclear testing went underground. That presented a problem to the scientific community. "Where" do we test a nuclear bomb underground? Answer: Pick a location in a remote area, an area that no one wants, like the Nevada Desert.
Okay! We have a location: How do we test? Once we decide that; how do we get people to work in a hostile desert climate? How do we them to spend long, unpaid hours away from their families? On top of all that; how do we get them to accept little pay?
The answer to these questions is found in the selected group of dedicated workers who did outstanding, high quality work with exacting standards.
The scientists received their data from the tests. The people who build the systems that make it possible are rewarded with conditions that ran the gamut from extreme cold to blistering heat, dust, and long hours away from their families
As I said previously, this book is mostly about a select group of people that worked for the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. When it came time for nuclear testing underground they rose to the challenge and conquered all obstacles. They tell their story in the following pages.
A difficult task in writing this book is choosing the cast. I deliberately chose the people who worked in the forward area and were directly involved in preparing the test site and executing the test. My apologies to those that worked in the background and helped make our job easier. All who work at the Nevada Test Site deserve to have their story told. Maybe someday someone will
Faced with this difficulty, I decide to choose those I consider a representative group. The workers who typify most of the work force at the Test Site, role models if you will. I know them personally and admire their dedication.
They are pioneers who travel more than one hundred miles one-way. They set the standards for excellent quality craftsmanship.
Most of the material is from personal interviews with those involved in the different topics I chose for the book. People I worked with for 28 years. They did the job that kept the free world free.
I did not have a set of pre-established questions, other than questions about their families, where they come from and their educational background. Asking canned questions turns the interviewees' off. They sit waiting for the next question. Oh! Occasionally I’ll throw in a question or two just to clarify a point. Other than that, I let them tell their story. For the first three or four interviews I took notes. However, my note taking got in the way of listening, so I started taping. It’s a method that frees me to participate in the interview. Like in a bull session, if you will. The interviewees' spin their story in any direction their fancy takes them. I start the interview off with; "Tell me about your work, starting from the time you first went there."
They are free to talk about any subject they chose. I cannot do justice to these stories by asking a fixed set of questions but occasionally I will ask about a nuclear test whose legend joins those of the Indians who roamed the mesas and canyons of the NTS.
Eighty-four percent of the material is from interviews. Six percent, from sources listed in the Sources section and ten percent from personal experiences.
How do I know it was eighty-four percent? I don’t, it’s a guess. Okay?
The first Chapter delves into the history of nuclear testing and the paranoia that has two major powers (the United States and Soviet Russia) believing they have to test in order for their form of government to survive. Their survival is based on the doctrine of “Mutual Assured Destruction”.
Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two opposing sides would effectively result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender, becoming thus a war that has no victory nor any armistice but only total destruction. It is based on the theory of deterrence according to which the deployment of strong weapons is essential to threaten the enemy in order to prevent the use of the same weapons. The strategy is effectively a form of “Nash Equilibrium” in which neither side, once armed, has any incentive to disarm.
Material for chapter one is from a variety of sources, including some Russian material. The sources and others are listed at the end of the book. Bear with me dear reader it gets more interesting.
The NTS News & Views, a newspaper published by the Department of Energy for the people who worked at the Test Site, was a starting point for research into the history of NTS.
A word of caution, throughout the book the term "shot" and “event” are used interchangeably. I'm not trying to confuse anyone but that's the way of the Test Site.
I start my career at NTS in 1965 working for Edgerton Germeshausen and Grier (EG&G in 1965. In 1968 I transfer to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, known at that time as Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (LRL). I retired in 1993. The most of this book is about incidents that occur while I worked for the Lab at the NTS.
The chapters following the first, is about underground testing, a most difficult period. It presented difficult challenges for construction, engineering and scientific workers. I don't see people like the Test Site workers anywhere in government. If you are out there send us a FAX.
Chapter 1 The Cold War
“You tell that Texas SOB that he is the worst damn President we ever had.”
What in the world? Why would Test Site worker say that about our President? Stay tuned I’ll get to it. But first let’s go back a few years in history, right after World War II with what we call, “The Cold War.”
Cold war, a situation in which two nations aren't actually at war but are doing everything they can to damage each other short of war, is first recorded in 1947, when Walter Lippmann's “The Cold War,” a study of American-Soviet relations, was published.1
“Two cruel wars were behind us in which we had seen totalitarian aggressors beaten into unconditional surrender. We had sponsored and helped establish the United Nations Organization, hoping to prevent again the too often recurring plague of humanity—war. I had met with Churchill and Attlee and Stalin at Potsdam, trying to achieve closer co-operation between the three leading powers. But in spite of these efforts, relations with Russia had become strained. Victory had turned a difficult ally in war into an even more troublesome peacetime partner. Russia seemed bent upon taking advantage of war-shattered neighbors for imperialistic ends.” 2
Harry S. Truman, President of the United States
The difficult ally he is talking about is Joseph Stalin one of the most tyrannical leaders the world has ever known.
What President Truman fails to mention here is that the United States and Great Britain had developed the most destructive weapon known to man, the nuclear bomb. Russia had been left out of the equation. Truman made what appears to be a unilateral decision to use the weapon on Japan, forcing it to surrender.
Stalin added to his bad guy resume when he signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. He subsequently ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland, Finland, the Baltics, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. The Germans violated the pact by invading the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941; leading to the Russian “Great Patriotic War” that cost an estimated 26 million Soviet lives. Not willing to abide by agreements with his Western Allies, Stalin used Germany's defeat to install communist regimes in most of Eastern Europe, locking the world in a long period of antagonism known as the Cold War. 2a
June 19, 1946. The United States asks for the United Nations to control the atomic bomb. The US offers to give up all its secrets about the A-bomb if the UN will take control of worldwide nuclear development. Both the US and United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) agree that without some controls an arms race will develop. Yet they can’t agree how they should carry out the controls.3
July 1, 1946, in Paris France, the US, USSR, United Kingdom (UK) and France draw a borderline between Italy and Yugoslavia.
Meanwhile; out over the South Pacific, a B-29 bomber named, Dave’s Dream, banks onto its final approach. Ahead is an armada of ships anchored in Bikini Atoll. The target is a battleship painted a bright orange with white stripes.
From an altitude of 30,000 feet, Dave’s Dream drops an atomic bomb that misses the target and hits about a mile astern. Doesn’t matter much when the atomic-bomb has an explosive force of twenty-one thousand tons of TNT; a mile is as good as a hit, or so they thought. The target ship bobs and weaves on the waves created by the blast. The code name for the nuclear test is “Able”.
The old battleship survives a follow-up nuclear test on July 25, 1946 (July 24, 1946 US Pacific Coast time). The two bombs have little or no visible effect on the gallant ship, a veteran of Pearl Harbor and the invasion of Normandy. They do, however sink a few other ships in the armada and manage to scatter radioactive debris. Oh! They manage to kill a few innocent fish. The code for the second test is “Baker”.
August 1, 1946, President Truman signs into law the Atomic Energy Act, thus forming the Atomic Energy Commission, or AEC. The AEC is a federal, civilian agency headed by a five-member board. The Act mandates that the agency, “. . . control the development and production of nuclear weapons and (to) direct the research and development of peaceful uses of atomic energy.”5 December 31, 1946, the AEC takes control of the United States nuclear program.
The navy decides that the old target battleship is too radioactive for practical use so they tow her to Kwajalein Atoll creaking and groaning her paint blistered and peeling. The Japs and the Nazis couldn’t sink her. Two US atomic bombs couldn’t sink her, so now the US Navy gets its turn. Using secret explosives, guided missiles, torpedoes, and the big guns of newer battleships, they have a difficult time taking her down.
July 31, 1948, after six days of pounding by the navy,4 the thirty-two-year-old USS Nevada, gurgling and sighing, disappears beneath the waves. The navy moves on to building bigger and better ships, but none more gallant.
September 23, 1949; cold War tensions increase, when President Truman announces to his cabinet that within recent weeks Russia has exploded an atomic bomb. Three to five years ahead of the most conservative estimates.6
The Soviet weapons program actually began in 1943 during World War II, under the leadership of physicist Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov. It was initiated by reports collected by Soviet intelligence about the rapidly growing Manhattan Project in the U.S. The Soviet program remained largely an intelligence operation until the end of the war. It was a highly successful one, due to sympathies of many for the wartime Soviet Union fighting Nazi Germany, the socialist political sympathies of some and the weak security screening program. Klaus Fuchs, an important physicist at Los Alamos, was by far the most valuable contributor of atomic information to the Russians.
January 31, 1950: Convinced the Russians are working on a hydrogen bomb, President Truman orders the development and production of our hydrogen bomb, a weapon with ten times the destructive power of the two bombs dropped on Japan. Truman explains that work on the new weapon is necessary in order to be sure that the United States can defend itself against any aggressor.
Hence the MADD theory fermenting?
The H-bomb is the dream of a small group of scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory. Dr. Edward Teller, a brilliant, Hungarian-born, nuclear scientist, is the leader of the group. The H-bomb or “Super” (as Dr. Teller likes to call it) is a consuming quest of his. Dr. Teller had hoped that an A-bomb placed close to fusion material would generate enough heat and radiation to ignite the material and cause a fusion reaction. That’s the first part of the problem. The second part is how well the reaction will continue through the material. Stanislaw M. Ulam, a highly regarded mathematician, pours over the calculations of Teller and his group. Ulam’s new calculations prove that Teller’s design will produce a fizzle. No one blames Teller for the errors in his earlier calculations. After all he doesn’t have the powerful computing machines that are available today.
Dr. Teller becomes moody and desperate. Between October 1950 and January 1951, he hatches different ideas, but none show promise. In December 1950, Ulam proposes a new type of A-bomb, designed to be more efficient. He suggests to Dr. Teller that they incorporate the new design into the development of an H-bomb.
Four months after signing a Sino-Soviet accord in Moscow, North Korean Communist troops stream across the 38th parallel and invade the Republic of South Korea. President Truman orders American Forces to provide support to the South Korean troops. World tension increases when, November 9, 1950, the Chinese Reds enter the war. The United States is on the verge of a full-fledged war with the Chinese Communists.8
The war speeds up the search for a continental nuclear test site. The US government studies five areas. They are White Sands, New Mexico; Dugway Proving Ground, Utah; Camp Lejuene, North Carolina; a 50-mile wide strip between Fallon and Eureka, Nevada, and a southern portion of the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range. 9
Across the Pacific, in an attempt to slow a two-week advance by Chinese and North Korean troops, United Nations forces prepare for a counterattack in the western sector. In Washington President Truman approves the establishment of a continental nuclear Test Site called the Nevada Proving Grounds, forerunner of the Nevada Test Site (NTS). The area of the NTS eventually grows to 1,350 square miles, larger than the state of Rhode Island. Located on the Nellis Gunnery Range in southeastern Nye County, its headquarters will be in Mercury, Nevada, sixty miles northwest of Las Vegas.
January 11, 1951, in a section of the Nevada Desert known as the Nellis Gunnery Range, nature slowly reclaims the Frenchman and Yucca Flat, areas marked by ghostly wagon tracks of the Forty-Niners who headed for the gold fields of California. Chunks of aluminum, from a WWII fighter plane, lie scattered on the western edge of Yucca. The desert returns to the pristine condition it was when Paiute Indians roamed the hills and mesas surrounding the Flats. An article on the front page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal announces:
“A-bombs at Indian Springs, AEC (is) to Conduct Test under Rigid Supervision. An atomic weapons testing grounds will be set up in the air force bombing range near Indian Springs, it was reported this morning [January 11] in a release from the atomic energy commission in Washington, DC . . . The use of the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range will make available to the Los Alamos scientific laboratory a readily accessible site for periodic test work, with a resultant speedup of the weapons development program. Test activities at the new site will include experimental nuclear detonations for the development of atomic bombs - so-called A-bombs - carried out under controlled conditions . . .”
January 27, 1951, a B-50 bomber drones toward Frenchman Flat. Snoozing in the bomb bay is an atomic bomb. The sun reflecting off its greenhouse nose, the sleek silver bomber rumbles over Frenchmen, the bomb bay doors squish open and the bomb is let loose. It plummets earthward, buzzing and clicking, preparing for incubation.
Thirty miles north on a hillside above Groom Lake, the Sheahan family works their patented mining claim. Staked out in late 1889 by Bud Cowan, Martha Sheahan’s father, the mine to this day remains in the Sheahan family.
One-thousand and seventy feet above Frenchman Flat, high energy capacitors dump an electrical charge into detonators that are embedded in high explosives surrounding a nuclear core. One-thousand and sixty feet above Frenchman, the casing cracks and in millionths of a second, a nuclear explosion, code named Able, blooms. Weighing in at one thousand tons of TNT, 10 its hot breath melts the earth directly below. Radioactive debris scatters beyond Frenchman, contaminating everything in its way.
“They never told us they were going to drop that thing, it scared the living daylight out of us” (Bob Sheahan owner of Groom mine Figure 1-1a).
Groom mine is located above Groom Dry Lake twenty five miles from Frenchman flat. Groom Dry Lake is later home to Area 51. The military tries to buy Groom mine from the family. Bob told me in an interview that after looking over the paperwork he refused to sell. The mine was patented by his grandfather; therefore, the military couldn’t run them out or buy them out. The Sheahan family makes frequent trips to their mine just above all the secret activity above Groom Dry Lake. “I can’t tell you about anything that goes on out there and I won’t, Bob told me.
The activity manages to scare the living daylights out of the Sheahan cat. “On one of those shots her hair and tail stands straight up and she disappears for days,” Bob says.10a
Able is but the first of over one thousand nuclear tests conducted in Nevada over the next 42 years. The next day they conduct a second test, code-named, Baker. Follow-on nuclear detonations leave deep festering scars in the fragile desert for millenniums to come.
The AEC will operate the Nevada Test Site for the Los Alamos Weapons Lab and is to provide support for the Lab needs in the preparation and execution of nuclear tests.
Able is first in a series of five nuclear tests ranging in size from one to 22 kilotons. They drop all five devices from B-50 bombers flying out of Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. Baker-2, a fourth test in the series, breaks store windows in Las Vegas. The AEC calls the operation a success11 (Figure 1-1). When the series ends in 1951, the AEC expands the NTS facilities. Construction begins on utility and operational structures, including communications, a control point, CP-1, and additional accommodations.
A small town called Mercury rises out of a hillside some sixty miles north of Las Vegas. There is a bowling alley, a theater, a cafeteria, a steak house, private housing, and a chapel. For recreation, there is a swimming pool, a ballpark, and an archery range. Warehouses are built along with the necessary storage yards, and two gas stations are built, one for government vehicles and one for selling gas to private vehicles. A post-exchange sells hygiene items and a barber shop provides haircuts. Beer, wine and hard liquor are also sold in the post-exchange (Figure 1-2, Mercury in winter).
For safety reasons the AEC moves atmospheric testing from Frenchman Flat to Yucca Flat, now called the forward area. Twelve sections of the Test Site are designated for airdrop, tower, surface, tunnel and balloon tests. The AEC names them Area-1 through Area-12. (makes sense to me). When they want to detonate big bombs, they open Areas 19 and 20 on the Pahute and Rainier Mesas.
Scientists and technicians, conducting nuclear tests, travel from the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico. They arrive in the desert a month before each test and they return to the Los Alamos to fuss over the data and plan another series of tests.
Nuclear tests continue in Nevada and the South Pacific. In Nevada the US military decides to study the effects of nuclear blasts on military personnel. This fact is brought to light in a page two article of the Sunday, September 9, 1951 edition of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Combat Troops will bivouac near Indian Springs . . . 11,000 combat troops will stop in Las Vegas on their way to desert war maneuvers near Indian Springs. The Nevada Highway patrol and sheriffs deputies will help direct the military traffic through Las Vegas to the training ground near the atomic energy commissions test range . . .
Less than a month later, the Tuesday, September 18, 1951- headlines in the Las Vegas Review-Journal announces.
Stage Set Here For Giant Atom Bomb Maneuvers - War Games To Make History, Exercise Desert Rock, as the forthcoming Indian Springs area maneuvers have been designated by the defense department, will get under way within the next few weeks . . .”
Thursday, September 20, 1951 the Review-Journal headlines, give a reason for testing.
Force is needed to keep Russia in line;
Washington, Sept. 20 [1951](UP) - President Truman said today that the United States must rely on force rather than diplomacy, to preserve peace and make certain that Russia lives up to her international agreements . . . Truman said the Communists, by their aggressions in Korea and other actions, has compelled this country to rely on force . . .. (MADD again)
The stage is set for the next round of nuclear tests.
At the Nevada Test site, the military studies the psychological effects of A-bombs on personnel and the physical effects on equipment. The question is, how well will they survive a battlefield-based, nuclear attack?
February 26, 1952; Britain has Bomb and atomic plant . . . Britain has developed an atomic bomb and has a plant capable of producing more such weapons. . . . Churchill cited a statement by Senator McMahon of Connecticut that the development of the atomic bomb by Great Britain would contribute to the maintenance of world peace.12 Hooray!
Saturday, March 1, 1952, The US Post Office opens its doors in Mercury, Nevada. South of Mercury, the US Sixth Army, establishes Camp Desert Rock (near the present day Desert Rock landing strip). It’s a tent camp with a few permanent structures. During the 1955 Operation Teapot series of tests, conducted at Yucca Flat, the camp population approached 6,000 military personnel13 (Figure 1-3).
Meanwhile, back at Los Alamos, Edward Teller is having problems other than the development of the H-bomb. Shunned by his peers for his testimony against his friend, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, Teller looks for a location for another weapons lab in order to continue his nuclear science, and hopefully develop the H-bomb. He is invited, by his Friend E. O. Lawrence, to the West Coast to look at a Naval Air Station located in Livermore California. Despite opposition from leading nuclear scientists, Dr. Teller convinces Congress that two nuclear labs are better than one. The competition to Los Alamos will lead to better and more powerful nuclear weapons.
Herb York, a 29-year-old physicist, is the first director of the new lab. [However] Dr. Edward Teller has veto power over decisions made by the lab’s steering committee . . . Otherwise, he has no formal authority14.
November 1, 1952, out in the Pacific on the Island Elugelab, in the Eniwetok Atoll, Los Alamos successfully detonates the first H-bomb, using the Ulam-Teller principle. The explosion from the 10.4-megaton device wipes the one-mile-diameter island off the face of the earth. The code name for the Weapons Related test is Mike.15
March 31, 1953 at the NTS, the fledgling Livermore Radiation Lab, conducts its first nuclear test, code named Ruth. It’s a dismal failure. Two weeks later another Livermore test, code name Ray, fails. The scientists from Los Alamos gloat. One of them offers to stand under the next Livermore test and take pictures as they try to detonate it.
The first Livermore test of an H-bomb, in the Pacific on April 6, 1954, is a failure. They cancel a second test, Echo, and send the bomb parts back to Livermore.
“A really challenging time of my directorship involved the first trip to the Pacific,” says Herb York, in an interview for the Livermore Labs 30 Year anniversary booklet. “When one bomb fizzled, we had to cancel the other because we were pretty sure it was going to fizzle and that second shot was of far greater significance than the first.”16
From these painful experiences is born an idea that proves instrumental in halting Livermore’s string of bad luck. From that point on, experts who do not have a hand in the design or implementation of a particular test review the bomb design and all aspects of the test. This procedure is called a pre-mortem. During the pre-mortem arguments are given as to why the test will fail; every aspect of failure is discussed and resolved before the test gets the go-ahead. The idea must work because in 1956, they successfully test several Livermore Labs nuclear designs in Nevada and in the Pacific.
In Nevada, the military continues to experiment with humans and equipment. Charlie Neeld, a twenty-one-year-old Marine from Denver, Colorado is one of the military guinea pigs.
“In 1955, I was in the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton and I saw a notice on the bulletin board. They were asking for volunteers to go to Nevada,” Charlie says. “So I thought, what the hell, why not? I always wanted to go to Nevada.
“I was there, at Camp Desert Rock, for three months. It was colder than hell. We slept in tents, huddled in heavy-duty sleeping bags. Our group was there to set up a mess tent, and distribute C-rations to troops as they came through. The troops are there about a week; long enough for one- shot. A bunch from my group went out to News Nob, about twenty miles from Camp Desert Rock, to watch a couple of atmospheric shots.
“One day, they come and tell me that I am going to be in the trenches, close to ground-zero, GZ, on one shot. Hell, I volunteered for Nevada, not to participate on a shot! But, they don’t give me any choice. They march us out to Yucca Flat and put us in a trench, about thirty-five hundred yards from ground zero. The bomb is on a tower and the wind is in the other direction, away from the trenches. They tell us to lie on the bottom of the trench, face down, with our eyes closed. When the bomb goes off, things get pretty bright. I can see my rifle through my eyelids. After it goes off, we stand up to look at it. They don’t tell us about a shock wave bouncing off the ionosphere. The damn thing goes up, comes down, and knocks us back down on the ground.
“Later, they pick us up in helicopters and drop us off about a half mile from GZ. That afternoon, they march us within five hundred feet of GZ. Part of the tower is still left. Ground zero is paved with black top so the bomb test doesn’t pick up any dirt. They have a bunch of Marine Corps equipment above ground and some buried in the ground at different distances from ground zero. You can see damage to the stuff above ground. They have a lot of equipment out there. I stay and guard C-rations while the rest of the group goes off on maneuvers.
“There are about five thousand army guys there. I never dream that later, in 1959, I will be back out there to work. I never call the hot line that the Department of Energy had for victims of atmospheric testing and tell them I am one of the ones who participated in atmospheric tests.”17
Charlie died from pancreatic cancer August 2, 2002 at the age of 65.
August 4, 1958, Cold War temperatures rise when Chinese Communist forces shell the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu. The President of Nationalist China, Chiang Kai-shek, had reinforced the Islands. President Eisenhower forbids the use of nuclear weapons to protect Nationalist Chinese interests.18 The US and Great Britain, agree that they will jointly conduct nuclear tests in the continental US at the Nevada Test Site, NTS.
October 31, 1958, the world learns that Boris Pasternak has refused the Nobel for his novel “Doctor Zhivago”. Author Boris Pasternak has been coerced into refusing the Nobel Prize for literature. While his letter to the Swedish Academy calls it voluntary refusal, Westerners believe that the Soviet government pressured him to decline. His novel, set at the time of the Russian Revolution, criticizes Soviet ideals. In Geneva, the US and USSR negotiate for a nuclear test ban treaty.19
October 31, 1958: President Eisenhower decides to go the extra mile and declares a unilateral break in nuclear testing. The Soviets follow suit in November20. Nature has a chance to reclaim the surface of the Nevada Desert.
February 11, 1960, New Delhi: Khrushchev, on an Asian tour, hails Indian neutrality, (and) urges disarmament.21 President Eisenhower holds a news conference to report on the progress of nuclear test ban negotiations in Geneva:
“I have a statement, but you [the press] won’t have to take notes, because I believe there will be copies outside. This affects the negotiations for nuclear weapons tests at Geneva.
“The United States is today presenting in Geneva a proposal, involving the ending of nuclear weapons tests, to end the apparent deadlock in the negotiations. This Government has stood, throughout, for complete abolition of weapons testing subject only to the attainment of agreed and adequate methods of inspection and control. The present proposal is designed to end nuclear weapons tests in all the environments that can now be effectively controlled. It would end forthwith, under assured controls:
(1) All nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere;
(2) All nuclear weapon tests in the oceans;
(3) All nuclear weapon tests in those regions in space where effective controls can now be agreed to; and
(4) All nuclear weapons tests beneath the surface of the Earth which can be monitored.
This proposal will permit through a coordinated program of research and development, a systematic extension of the ban to remaining areas, especially those involving underground tests . . . 22”
Eisenhower tried to end the deadlock, but to no avail.
May 1, 1960, Captain Gary Powers, piloting a CIA U-2 spy plane, is shot down over Sverdlovsk, Russia. Eisenhower vacillates from pleading innocence to admitting guilt and even to claim that the U-2 was vital to America’s security.
Nikita Khrushchev, the Russian Premier, has a different view. He claims that the Americans are saying; . . . “it is not the burglar who is guilty, but the owner of the house he broke into, because he [the owner] locked it, thereby compelling the burglar to break in . . . this is the philosophy of thieves and bandits.”
May 14, 1960, Eisenhower flies to Paris for a conference with Great Britain, France and Russia. Khrushchev threatens to end the May 16, Big Four Summit Conference unless the US repudiates U-2 flights, apologizes and punishes those responsible.23
At the start of the conference, Khrushchev launches an angry verbal attack on Eisenhower. He ends by saying that the summit should be postponed for six to eight months. By this time Ike would no longer be a lame duck but a political dead duck; he would no longer be welcomed in the Soviet Union. Bitterly disappointed, Ike flies home.24
Disarmament talks are in jeopardy. The world misses an opportunity for arms control and another round of nuclear testing begins. The next step in arms control will have to wait until a new president is elected.
August 8, 1961, President Kennedy receives bad news from U. S. intelligence,
. . . The Soviet government is about to announce a new series of nuclear tests . . . Kennedy is furious. His advisors warned him that the Soviets were secretly preparing for a new series of tests. Nevertheless, he chose to believe Khrushchev, who, during a June 1961 Vienna Summit, assured him that the Soviet Union would never be the first to break the moratorium.25
August 31, 1961: A wall cuts Berlin in two. It is a monument to the Cold war, evidence of problems between East and West. Constructed with astounding speed, the wall is the Communists’ answer to Germans who have snubbed their system and fled to the West. . . 26
September 1, 1961, the Soviets start a series of A-bomb tests. The first is an atmospheric detonation of a nuclear device having a yield of approximately 150 kilotons. . . They follow that event during the fall of 1961 with an intense, 50 shot series. Concerned that the Russians will get ahead in the arms race, Kennedy reluctantly permits resumption of US nuclear testing.2
September 15, 1961, in a Nevada Test Site tunnel, the US detonates a Weapons Related test, code named Antler, with a yield of 2.6 kilotons of TNT.28
October 23, 1961: The Russians shoot a 58-megaton bomb. It’s a scaled down version of a 100-megaton bomb.29 US intelligence reports that the Russians are testing a new Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) weapon, a weapon capable of knocking US retaliatory missiles out of the sky.
October 24, 1961; the headlines in “The Las Vegas Review-Journal” read;
No Big US Tests - - Seaborg . . . Glenn T. Seaborg, head of the AEC is in Las Vegas to address the International Symposium on Aerospace Nuclear Propulsion. He goes on to say, (that) he does not think the Russians are ahead as a result of their recent series of tests. But he warns that if we continue to test only underground we will definitely fall behind the Reds in determining the effects of such nuclear detonations . . .
March 2, 1962, Kennedy reports to the nation and explains why he renews nuclear testing. He leaves the door open for a test ban treaty when he states that;
“Our negotiators will be ready to talk about this treaty even before the [Geneva] conference begins on March 14 - and they will be ready to sign well before the date on which our tests are ready to begin. That date is still nearly two months away. If the Soviet Union should now be willing to accept such a treaty, sign it before the latter part of April, and apply it immediately - if all testing can thus be actually halted - then the nuclear arms race would be slowed down at last . . .”30 The Russians ignore Kennedy’s offer and continue testing.
From September 15, 1961 to September 17, 1963, the US detonates a hundred and forty-five nuclear bombs in Nevada and the South Pacific. The tests consist of a hundred and seventeen weapons related tests, thirteen weapons effects tests, four plowshare tests, four safety tests, four storage transport tests, two joint US-UK tests and one simultaneous, weapons related tests. Thirty-six tests are in the atmosphere and six of these are rocket tests. The combined tonnage for these 36 atmospheric tests is 34.5 plus megatons. Of the six rocket tests, one is detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers [more than 248 miles] in the atmosphere over the Johnson Island area in the South Pacific. It is listed as having a yield of 1.4 megatons. The results of the US tests are inconclusive as far as determining effects of nuclear blasts on military equipment. However, Kennedy refuses to allow more testing in the atmosphere. Instead, he will rely on American ingenuity to catch the Russians in the arms race.
March 6, 1962: The increased year-round testing schedule makes it necessary for the AEC to establish a Nevada Operations Office. It officially opens in Las Vegas.31
July 15, 1963, in Moscow the US, USSR and UK open talks on a nuclear test ban treaty32. The treaty is signed on August 5, 1963. It prohibits testing in outer space, underwater or in the atmosphere. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations begins hearings on the Limited Test Ban Treaty on August 12, 1963.33 On September 4, 1963, the Senate consents to ratify the treaty.
October 7, 1963, President Kennedy achieves a major goal by signing the treaty for an atomic test ban. The Limited Test Ban Treaty, (LTBT) enters into force October 10, 1963.34 Seven weeks later in Dallas, Texas on November 22, President Kennedy is struck down by a weapon from an earlier arms race.
The US, USSR and the UK agree to conduct all future nuclear tests underground. The United States spends the next nine years playing catch-up with the Russians.
Although they participate in the negotiations during Treaty talks, scientists at both weapons laboratories express concerns that the Limited Test Ban Treaty will hamper weapons testing programs. One scientist is overheard to say:
“How the hell can we analyze data when we can’t see the bomb go off? If we have to go underground, we might as well take our bombs and go home.”
The scientist’s concern is that by going underground, they will have difficulty collecting data on bomb performance. However, during a meeting of scientists and engineers in the early seventies, Dr. Jim Carothers, a Livermore Deputy Associate Director for nuclear testing states:
When underground testing first started, people were concerned that the quality and the quantity of data would drastically decline. But, thanks to the dedication of the scientists, engineers and the people who place experiments underground, this is not true. In fact if anything, the data gets better35.
November 6, 1971, the US catches up with the Soviets in the development of a multi megaton bomb when they detonate Cannikin beneath the tundra on the Aleutian Island of Amchitka. Cannikin, with a yield of less than five megatons, is the final test of a nuclear warhead for the Spartan missile36.
The Energy Reorganization Act disbands the AEC in 1974 and its functions are divided between two new agencies, the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ERDA, and NRC. ERDA becomes the Department of Energy, and then, DOE, in 1977. The name may change but the work remains the same. Old-timers at the Nevada Test Site still call the agency the AEC.
June 27, 1974: President Nixon goes to a Soviet Summit in Moscow/. Despite being embroiled in Watergate, Nixon triumphs in what some say might be his last world tour. Soviet chief Leonid Brezhnev warmly greets Nixon for a third summit meeting between the two superpower leaders. They will start talks on arms negotiations.37
July 3, 1974, Nixon signs the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, TTBT, in Moscow. The TTBT limits all nuclear tests to yields of less than 150 kilotons38. Congress is not convinced that the terms of the treaty can be verified and refuses to ratify it. Nevertheless, both the US and the USSR abide by the terms of the treaty.
September 24, 1984; Las Vegas Review-Journal: Reagan proposes talks with Soviets. In the United Nations today Reagan declares that he is ready to negotiate with the Soviets. In his speech he proposes that . . . ways should be found by next spring [1985] to have Soviet and US observers at each other’s nuclear Test Sites . . .
Monday, January 11, 1988: US scientists visit Soviet nuclear Test Site at Semipalatinsk in central Asia. The purpose of the visit is to familiarize US scientists with the Test Site for possible future verification experiments.
January 25, 1988; Las Vegas Review-Journal
Soviet scientists In Vegas - A team of 20 Soviet Scientists will spend this week at the United States Top-secret nuclear testing grounds, a prelude to possible negotiations on a nuclear test ban . . . [and] a possible exchange of test verification data later this year . . .
August 13, 1988; Las Vegas Review-Journal
Test site worker linked to Soviet flap . . . A Nevada Test Site worker was one of three US team members who tried to remove from the Soviet Union unauthorized souvenirs collected during preparations for a joint nuclear testing experiment . . . Three members of the team sponsored by the US Department of Energy tried last month to remove a hammer, a piece of barbed wire and rock samples from the Soviet Test Site near Semipalatinsk in central Asia, said Chris West, a department spokesman in Las Vegas . . .
August 17, 1988: At the Nevada Test Site, the US detonates a nuclear event, code named Kearsarge, a Joint Verification Experiment (JVE) between US and USSR scientists.39
September 14, 1988: Nevada Test Site scientists and technicians join the Soviets for the Shagun test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in the Soviet Union. Shagun is the second Joint Verification Experiment conducted between the two countries.40 The purpose of the JVE is to show that through cooperative effort the US and the USSR can verify each other’s tests without fear of one country learning the other’s secrets.
June 1, 1990: US President, George Bush and USSR President, Mikhail Gorbachev approve a protocol to the Limited Test Ban Treaty.41 Tuesday, September 25, 1990, The US ratifies the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Sixteen years after Brezhnev and Nixon sign it in Moscow.
Tuesday, July 9, 1991: A delegation of scientists, military types and politicians leave Washington Dulles Airport en route to Moscow to meet with the Soviets to set a schedule for US participation on two Soviet nuclear tests, code named, Batyr and Guriya. The tests are scheduled for December 1991, at the Soviet Test Site of Semipalatinsk. The Soviets cancel the tests soon after the abortive attempt to overthrow Gorbachev in 1991.
September 23, 1992: At the Nevada Test Site, the Los Alamos Laboratory detonates Divider, a nuclear test to insure the safety of US deterrent forces. Divider is the last nuclear test detonated in Nevada.
October 2, 1992, President Bush declares a nine-month moratorium, stopping all nuclear testing until July 1993. From 1993 through September 1996, the US can conduct no more than five tests each year, for a total of 15. Bush loses the election of 1993 and the Clinton administration does not allow testing to resume, thus expanding on Bush’s moratorium.
Driven by fear of Russia, the United States conducted 1030 nuclear tests. The UK and the US jointly conducted 24 underground tests of British bombs for a total to 1054 tests. Researching carefully, one discovers that the United States exploded a nuclear bomb in Central Nevada, and one in Fallon, Nevada, and they couldn’t sink her either.
It took a while to get here but now you have an outline of events leading up to and beyond that remark made by a Nevada Mining Engineer stay tuned and I’ll elaborate more. Not just on that remark but on other interesting events.
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destructio
Figure 1-1 Sheahan Family watching Nuclear Blast over the hill from their home at Groom Lake Photo Courtesy Bob Sheahan
Figure 1-1a Aerial View of Yucca Flat Yucca Dry Lake Bottom Center Sedan Crater Top Center Photo courtesy of the National Nuclear Security Administration
Figure
1-2 Mercury Nevada Photo Courtesy Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory
Figure
1-3 Camp Desert Rock Photo Courtesy of the National Nuclear
Administration
Chapter 2 Battle Born
Bill Flangas speaks Greek when he starts school in White Pine County Nevada. He was sent home until he could learn to speak English; he becomes quite eloquent in critiquing politicians.
Hint: You met Bill at the beginning of Chapter 1.
The State of Nevada has a habit of providing men with the right stuff at the right time. Not only does she lend her good name to one of the most gallant battleships of World War II, she also generates at least two men dedicated to working in the nation’s vital, nuclear weapons testing program, Bill Flangas and Frank Solaegui. Hang in there; you will soon meet Frank Solaegui.
Clint Eastwood and John Wayne are motor-mouths compared to Frank. The fictional war hero “Rambo” is a pansy when you stand him up against Frank’s war record; more to follow.
Friday; September 18, 1964, 7:00 pm, the nagging phone shatters the evening solitude of the Flangas household. It’s a call from a Nevada Test Site superintendent.
“Bill, there’s been an accident at U9cb.”
“Do you want me to start on out?” Bill asks.
“No! Stay put. If we need you we’ll call.”
“He offers me nothing more about the seriousness of the accident,” Bill says. “But I realize that the paranoia of the time is to say as little as possible about the Test Site. Therefore, I don’t question him further. If they need me they will call.”
U9cb is an underground location being prepared for an upcoming underground nuclear test.
They do need him, but they don’t call.
Bill, a superintendent of tunnel operations at the Nevada Test Site, was born in Ely, Nevada, in 1927. Educated in the White Pine County Schools, he received a B. S. Degree in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Nevada-Reno in 1951. In 1958, he received an Engineer of Mines Degree from the Mackay School of Mines located at the University of Nevada-Reno.
September 19, 1964, Frank Solaegui, the area superintendent for REECo tunnel operations, is at his home in Eureka, Nevada when the sheriff of White Pine County pulls into his driveway.
“There’s been a serious emergency at the Test Site,” he says to Frank. “They want you back down there immediately.”
Frank was born January 26, 1921, in Fallon, Nevada; he started working in the mines of Northern Nevada in 1937 when he was fifteen.
“Miners were getting paid $4.50 per day,” Frank says.
“I worked in mines throughout Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. Later I work for a contractor at the Hawthorne, Naval Ammo depot in Hawthorne, Nevada. I receive an unheard of sum of $1.25 per hour. That much money just blew everybody’s mind.”
When World War Two broke out, Frank could have gotten a deferment from the draft, because of his work in mining, a vital industry.
“He could have gotten out of the draft.” Bill Flangas says. “But he didn’t. He joined the army and goes into the 101st airborne as a paratrooper.”
“I go into the army just like I am supposed to,” Frank mumbles, “just like every other mother’s son.”
Frank doesn’t talk about himself much. On his resume, under personal data, he writes, “Military Status--US Paratroopers, 1946.” In fact, Frank entered the army a private and was discharged with the rank of captain. He was wounded in France and sent to England to recuperate. He received a battle field commission from General Maxwell Taylor.
On D-day Frank jumped into and participated in the invasion of Holland. He holds two Purple Hearts, the Dutch Orange Lanyard, a Presidential Unit citation, with clusters, the Belgian Fourragere, and three battle stars. When asked for more details, he cut me off with a wave of his hand.
“What’s the big deal?” He asks. “I just did what everybody else did at the time.”
Frank packs his car and heads for the Test Site.
The accident reported in the September 23, 1964 issue of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is called an “86-Hour Ordeal In Shaft.” One man is killed; three electricians and a miner are trapped underground.
Vic Hunter, a construction engineer for the Lawrence Livermore Lab, recalls the ordeal at U9cb.
“I’m at U9cb, Cup, right after the cables fall in.” Vic recalls. “George Fostick, the REECo superintendent, calls me at home. He says, ‘get your ass out here; I’m going to need Lab help on this. I’m not going to face it by myself.’ I made it from Las Vegas to U9cb, one hundred miles away, in forty-seven minutes.
“I must have answered the phone six times after I got there. Most of the calls are from Washington D.C... I finally hand it to somebody else. It’s a hell of a chore, but REECo gets it done. They do a hell of a job. One of the guys they later brought up wants to know why we’re in such a hurry to get them out. ‘I barely made enough overtime to buy a new Buick,’ he says. Flangas and Solaegui are the ones who came up with the plan for getting those guys out.”
September 21, 1964. Bill Flangas is on the Mercury highway on his way to work in the tunnels at the base of Rainier Mesa. As he passes through Area-9, he looks over and sees a crowd at U9cb. He decides to make a detour and pulls in at the location.
“I see a haggard superintendent,” Bill says. “Now that we both are on the Test Site and behind Gate-100, we can talk more openly.”
“We have three electricians and a miner trapped below,” the superintendent says.
“Well, good luck, I say to him and turn to walk away.”
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“I’m going to work in the tunnels,” I tell him.
“No, you’re not,” he says, “you are going to stay here and take charge of this operation.” “That’s how I got involved. Frank Solaegui arrives on location a short while earlier.”
Three electricians, George Cooper, 44, of Tucson, Arizona; Art Luhnow, 27, of North Las Vegas Nevada; Floyd Shaw, 51, of Santa Barbara California, and a miner, Leland Roeder, 45, of Pioche, Nevada, are trapped 1800-feet beneath the desert floor. On the swing shift Friday, the men were lowered down a 48-inch diameter shaft into a 25 by 30 by 15-feet high workroom (Figure 2-1)
Using a hoist with a half-inch steel cable, called a messenger cable, a group of electricians lower electrical cables, wound on giant reels, down the shaft to the men below. About 6:00 pm the operator notices the hoist clutch slipping and the electrical cables falling faster into the hole. He reaches for the brake and tries to slow the winch, but the strain is too much. As the hoist screams to a stop, the messenger cable snaps, whips around and slithers into the mouth of the shaft. The giant reels break loose from their moorings. One cable smashes into electrician James C. Gray, 45, of Indian Springs, Nevada and killing him instantly. Other runaway reels knock three workers to the ground. Down below, the noise of the falling cables sounds like a freight train coming down. Instinctively, the four men run as four and one-half tons of steel and electrical cables smashes into the tunnel floor and plugs the shaft.
A path for communicating with the men below is quickly established by way of electrical wire through a ten-inch ventilator shaft a few feet away. It runs from the surface down to the room below. Food, water, cigars, cigarettes and newspapers are sent down the vent to the trapped men.
Peering into the mouth of the main shaft, Bill Flangas sums up the situation.
“One of the first elements of a rescue is to do what you can to rescue the people trapped, and not endanger the lives of the people doing the rescuing,” Bill says. “Human economics prevents you from doing that. The men are not in any danger. They are dry; they are safe; and they are getting food. The problem becomes one of unplugging the main shaft so we can bring them to the surface.”
Bill Flangas and Frank Solaegui met in Ruth, Nevada in 1951, soon after Bill returned from a job in South America. They spend more than thirty years working together at the Nevada Test Site. The mining accident at U9cb is the first they are involved in as a team but not the last.
During my interview, Frank talks about an earlier incident he is involved in; one that happened before his coming to the Test Site. He is working the night shift in a northern Nevada mine. He and the shift foreman are in an elevator cage one riding to a level above to check on another miner who is cutting a beam with a welding torch.
“The foreman thought that he is taking an awfully long time to cut that beam,” Frank says. “So he asks me to go with him to see what’s going on. When we get in the cage and start up the shaft, we hear a thumping and bumping. All of a sudden, a steel beam comes crashing through the cage. It fractures my skull and breaks my back. I am laid up for four months. The guy with me has both arms dislocated out of his sockets. He never did fully recover from that”
September 21, 1964, Bill and Frank team up to go down U9cb in a two-man cage, one that has a trap door in the floor. But not before safety people have their say. Bill tells us what takes place.
“They want us to wear air packs. If we have to wear air packs, we won’t be able to maneuver in the cage, or in the hole for that matter. I agree to everything those safety guys suggest. Frank calls me over to the side and asks, ‘what the hell is the matter with you? We can’t wear that gear. We won’t be able to move.’ Look, Frank, if we stay here to argue every detail with those idiots, we will be here until Christmas. Once we are ten feet in the hole, who the hell is going to know what we do?”
‘Yeah I guess you’re right,’ Frank says.
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” I say to him.
“Frank and I aren’t suicidal. We are skilled enough and knowledgeable enough to know that we are not going to have any real problems down there. We agree to ignorant things just so we can get started. In fact, if we follow some of the procedures they set up, we will be in trouble. Our plan is to find the messenger cable. It seems simple enough. We feel that if we hook to it we will be able to pull the whole mess out. We have to be very careful so we secure ourselves to the cage with a rope and harness. When we step out on top of that mess, we have to watch where we put our feet. If the whole thing collapses further, we don’t want our feet getting tangled in cable and pulling us in two pieces.
“Would you believe that the AEC brought out the family members of the guys trapped below? The system hasn’t learned yet that you have to control an accident scene. You don’t need a lot of bureaucrats and rubbernecks wandering around grandstanding and wringing their hands. The guys underground aren’t in any danger. In fact they are better off than Frank and I. They are fed steak, and we are eating baloney sandwiches. One time when I set my moldy sandwich down and turn around to do something, someone stole my baloney sandwich. Man, I go berserk, that is the limit. I start cussing and threatening that if I find the son-of-a-bitch I will throw him in the hole. This all happens in the fall of sixty-four and LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson) is running for reelection. Frank and I make every trip into that hole. We are dirty, tired and worn out.
“Every time we come out, this pansy would ask for a report. ‘How are things going?’ He asks. We are working very diligently trying to get the men out,” I tell him. After about the tenth time out he says, ‘Your answer isn’t good enough.’ Who the hell wants to know anyway? I ask him.
“‘Listen,’ he says pointing to a phone mounted on a post, ‘I have the White House on the other end of that phone line and THEY want to know.’
“I take him aside and say to him as gently as I can. You pick up that goddamn phone and you tell that Texas son-of-a-bitch he is the worst goddamn president we ever had. We will have those guys out by Election Day and if we don’t then we will send them down absentee ballots. Can you believe that ... a hot line to the White house? If that was a bunch of coal miners trapped, do you think the White House would give a damn? No, but just because this was a nuclear event it got unbounded sensationalism attached to it.
“The boss runs up to me and asks. ‘What the hell did you say to him anyway?’
“I told him that we were working very diligently trying to get the men out. ‘No you didn’t, you told him something else,’ he says.
“Of course, the Union is there also to look after the welfare of the men. The Business Agent for the electrical union approaches me and asks, ‘Are these guys getting paid?’ These guys are on overtime, I tell him. ‘What about subsistence?’ He asks. If they come to work, they get subsistence, I tell him. If they leave and come back, they get subsistence again. These guys haven’t left.