The
Trinity
test was originally
set for July 4, 1945. However, final preparations for the test,
which
included the assembly of the bomb's plutonium core, did not begin in
earnest
until Thursday, July 12. The abandoned George McDonald ranch house
located
two miles south of the test site served as the assembly point for the
device's
core. After assembly, the plutonium core was transported to Trinity
Site
to be inserted into the thing or gadget as the atomic device was
called.
But, on the first attempt to insert the core it stuck! After
letting the
temperatures of the
core and the gadget equalize, the core fit perfectly to the great
relief
of all present. The completed device was raised to the top of a
100-foot
steel tower on Saturday, July 14. During this process workers piled up
mattresses beneath the gadget to cushion a
possible fall.
When the bomb reached the top of the tower without mishap, installation
of the explosive detonators began. The 100-foot tower (a surplus Forest
Service fire-watch tower) was designated Point Zero. Ground Zero was at
the base of the tower.
As a result
of all the anxiety
surrounding the possibility of a failure of the test, a verse by an
unknown
author circulated around Los Alamos. It read:
From
this crude lab
that spawned a dud.
Their
necks to Truman's
ax uncurled
Lo, the
embattled
savants stood,
and
fired the flop
heard round the world.
A betting
pool was also started
by scientists at Los Alamos on the possible yield of the Trinity
test.
Yields from 45,000 tons of TNT to zero were selected by the various
bettors.
The Nobel Prize-winning (1938) physicist Enrico Fermi was willing to
bet
anyone that the test would wipe out all life on Earth, with special
odds
on the mere destruction of the entire State of New Mexico!
Meanwhile
back at the test
site, technicians installed seismographic and photographic equipment at
varying distances from the tower. Other instruments were set up for
recording
radioactivity, temperature, air pressure, and similar data needed by
the
project scientists.
According
to Lansing Lamont
in his 1965 book Day of Trinity, life at Trinity could at times be very
exciting. One afternoon while scientists were busily setting up test
instruments
in the desert, the tail gunner of a low flying B-29 bomber spotted some
grazing antelopes
and opened up
with his twin
.50-caliber machine guns. "A dozen scientists, ... under the
plane
and out of the gunner's line of vision, dropped their instruments and
hugged
the ground in terror as the bullets thudded about them."[5] Later
a number of these scientists threatened to quit the project.
Workers
built three observation
points 5.68 miles (10,000 yards), north, south, and west of Ground
Zero.
Code named Able, Baker, and Pittsburgh, these heavily-built wooden
bunkers
were reinforced with concrete, and covered with earth. The bunker
designated
Baker or South 10,000 served as the control center for the test. This
is
where head scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer would be for the test.
A fourth
observation point
was the test's Base Camp, (the abandoned Dave McDonald ranch) located
about
ten miles southwest of Ground Zero. The primary observation point was
on
Compania Hill, located about 20 miles to the northwest of Trinity near
today's Stallion Range Gate, off NM 380.
The test
was originally scheduled
for 4 a.m., Monday July 16, but was postponed to 5:30 due to a severe
thunderstorm
that would have increased the amount of radioactive fallout, and have
interfered
with the test results. The rain finally stopped and at 5:29:45 a.m.
Mountain War
Time, the device
exploded successfully and the Atomic Age was born. The nuclear
blast
created a flash of light brighter than a dozen suns. The light was seen
over the entire state of New Mexico and in parts of Arizona, Texas, and
Mexico. The resultant mushroom cloud rose to over 38,000 feet
within
minutes, and the heat of the explosion was 10,000 times hotter than the
surface of the sun! At ten miles away, this heat was described as
like standing directly in front of a roaring fireplace. Every living
thing
within a mile of the tower was obliterated. The power of the bomb was
estimated
to be equal to 20,000 tons of TNT, or equivalent to the bomb load of
2,000
B-29, Superfortresses!
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100 Suns - By Michael Light -
Between
July 1945 and November
1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and
underwater
nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the United
States
and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It
became
literally invisible—but more frequent: the United States conducted a
further
723 underground tests, the last in 1992. 100 Suns documents the era of
visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with 100 photographs
drawn
by Michael Light from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory
and
the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously
classified
material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based
in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen and still photographers
were
sworn to secrecy.
The title, 100 Suns, refers
to the response by J.Robert Oppenheimer to the world’s first nuclear
explosion
in New Mexico when he quoted a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, the
classic
Vedic text: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at
once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I
am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” This was Oppenheimer’s
attempt
to describe the otherwise indescribable. 100 Suns likewise confronts
the
indescribable by presenting without embellishment the stark evidence of
the tests at the moment of detonation. Since the tests were conducted
either
in Nevada or the Pacific the book is simply divided between the desert
and the ocean. Each photograph is presented with the name of the test,
its explosive yield in kilotons or megatons, the date and the location.
The enormity of the events recorded is contrasted with the understated
neutrality of bare data.
Interspersed within the sequence of
explosions
are pictures of the awestruck witnesses. The evidence of these
photographs
is terrifying in its implication while at same time profoundly
disconcerting
as a spectacle. The visual grandeur of such imagery is balanced by the
chilling facts provided at the end of the book in the detailed
captions,
a chronology of the development of nuclear weaponry and an extensive
bibliography.
A dramatic sequel to Michael Light’s Full Moon,
100 Suns forms an
unprecedented historical document.
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