Port Chicago? Was the First A-Bomb Tested in the San Francisco/Bay Area?

[Steven Gaal]

FTR #129 Interview with Peter Vogel

Posted by FTR ⋅ January 7, 1999 Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2 ( 2 LINKS HERE TO HEAR)

Much has been writ­ten and said about the devel­op­ment of nuclear weapons. Per­haps the most intrigu­ing chap­ter in the devel­op­ment of the bomb was revealed by researcher Peter Vogel, who devel­oped com­pelling infor­ma­tion that the 1944 explo­sion of an ammu­ni­tion ship was, in fact, the explo­sion and prob­a­ble delib­er­ate test of an early atomic weapon. When the E.A. Bryan exploded in Suisun Bay (in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area), the phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the explo­sion were typ­i­cal of an atomic blast, not a con­ven­tional one. In this broad­cast, Vogel high­lights these char­ac­ter­is­tics includ­ing: a bril­liant white flash (not the yel­low or orange flash that would be char­ac­ter­is­tic of TNT or tor­pex); an appar­ent Wil­son con­den­sa­tion cloud (char­ac­ter­is­tic of nuclear explo­sions over water) and blast dam­age much greater than would have been pro­duced by a con­ven­tional explo­sion. In addi­tion, Peter presents com­pelling his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that the Port Chicago explo­sion was the test of an early and rel­a­tively crude atomic weapon called the Mark II. Cit­ing cor­re­spon­dence about the Mark II between many of the prin­ci­pal par­tic­i­pants in the Man­hat­tan Project, Peter ana­lyzes the role of the Mark II in the devel­op­ment of the A-bomb and delin­eates numer­ous indi­ca­tions of a cover-up of Port Chicago. Among the sig­nif­i­cant indi­ca­tions of a cover-up are: the re-classification of the military’s Port Chicago report as “Top Secret” imme­di­ately after the pub­li­ca­tion of Peter’s research in 1982 (almost forty years after the explo­sion); obfus­ca­tion of the amount of fis­sion­able ura­nium avail­able for the Port Chicago test; destruc­tion of records of two rail cars loaded at Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory and unloaded at Port Chicago; mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of an appar­ent film of the Port Chicago explo­sion as hav­ing been made in Hol­ly­wood; extreme agi­ta­tion on the part of Edward Teller (“Father of the H-bomb”) upon being ques­tioned about Port Chicago and the dis­ap­pear­ance of records of the inci­dence of can­cer in the area around the blast for sev­eral key years after the explo­sion. Sig­nif­i­cantly, the Los Alamos Lab­o­ra­tory was very inter­ested in the Port Chicago blast. The report for the lab was writ­ten by Cap­tain William Par­sons, who later served as the bomb­ing offi­cer on the Enola Gay ( the plane that dropped the first A-bomb on Hiroshima) and who also super­vised the “Oper­a­tion Cross­roads” nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll. The black sailors who worked at Port Chicago mutinied after the blast. That mutiny was a sig­nif­i­cant event in recent African-American his­tory. (Recorded in Jan­u­ary of 1999.)

#################################

FTR #163 Interview with Peter Vogel: Update on Port Chicago

https://archive.org/details/For_The_Record_163_Interview_with_Peter_Vogel_Update_on_Port_Chicago

(LINK ABOVE TO HEAR)

Posted by FTR ⋅ August 1, 1999

Peter Vogel high­lights the issue of resid­ual radi­a­tion at the Port Chicago site.

Con­ducted in August of 1999, this broad­cast updates the inves­ti­ga­tion of the Port Chicago explo­sion. The bulk of the dis­cus­sion is very sim­i­lar to the top­i­cal con­tent of FTR-129. (Check the descrip­tion for that broad­cast for a detailed sum­mary of the pro­gram con­tent.) This broad­cast does con­tain sev­eral points of analy­sis not con­tained in FTR-129. In this pro­gram, Mr. Vogel high­lights the issue of resid­ual radi­a­tion at the Port Chicago site. (Port Chicago is now part of the Con­cord Naval Weapons sta­tion.) Crit­ics have main­tained that Port Chicago could not have been a nuclear explo­sion, because there would be detectable radi­a­tion at the explo­sion site. Peter points out that this is incor­rect. Within 10 years of a British test of a much larger weapon (also det­o­nated in a marine envi­ron­ment), the back­ground radi­a­tion lev­els had returned to nor­mal. The British test was of a 25 kilo­ton weapon and Port Chicago yielded the equiv­a­lent of 600 tons of TNT.

Peter also dis­cusses eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mony of injuries to sailors who sur­vived the Port Chicago blast. Med­ical per­son­nel who sub­se­quently became acquainted with radi­a­tion burns voiced the opin­ion that the burns to Port Chicago sur­vivors were, in fact, radi­a­tion burns. In this pro­gram, Peter includes two new ele­ments in his research. Declas­si­fied doc­u­ments indi­cate that the prin­ci­pals involved with the devel­op­ment of the Mark II (an early atomic bomb) fore­cast that it would be avail­able by the fall of 1944. (Peter’s research indi­cates that the Port Chicago explo­sion, in July of ’44, was the test of the Mark II.) Recently, Peter filed a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request for access to the seven lin­ear feet of doc­u­ments about the Port Chicago explo­sion at the Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory. His request was denied and those doc­u­ments are now clas­si­fied. Bear in mind that these doc­u­ments sup­pos­edly per­tain to the explo­sion of a World War II ammu­ni­tion ship. Why have they now been denied to the pub­lic? (Please note that, due to an inter­rup­tion of the record­ing process due to tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, Mr. Emory neglected to include dis­cus­sion of the Wil­son con­den­sa­tion cloud that was appar­ently present at Port Chicago. One of the evi­den­tiary points in Peter’s arti­cle, the pres­ence of the cloud is dis­cussed in FTR-129.) (See also FTR-129, as well as Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M-23.) (Recorded on 8/1/99.)

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M23 What Really Hap­pened at Port Chicago? Was the First A-Bomb Tested in the San Francisco/Bay Area?
Part 1 43:41 | Part 2 43:44 | Part 3 30:24 ( 3 LINKS HERE TO HEAR)
ONE STEP BEYOND
8/7/88
Presents star­tling evi­dence that the explo­sion of the U.S. muni­tions ship E. A. Bryan in July 1944 was a test of the “gun” weapon dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945. Hun­dreds of black Amer­i­can sailors appear to have been delib­er­ately sac­ri­ficed in the inci­dent. Includes inter­views with Port Chicago researcher, Peter Vogel.

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FTR #472 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Posted by FTR ⋅ September 9, Recorded August 15, 2004

REALAUDIO (LINK HERE TO HEAR)

Port Chicago explo­sion. (Vet­eran lis­ten­ers should note that Peter Vogel’s online book about Port Chicago is no longer avail­able for free on the Inter­net. Researchers must now pay for the book.) Dis­cus­sion begins with a let­ter home writ­ten in July of 1944 by an offi­cer sta­tioned at Port Chicago. “ . . . Did the late Richard Rendle­man, Sal­is­bury busi­ness­man, leg­endary golfer and good friend to all who knew him, see the first atomic bomb blast dur­ing World War II? Not on Hiroshima. On U.S. soil at the Navy’s Port Chicago on the Cal­i­for­nia coast where he was sta­tioned dur­ing World War II. ‘There’s not only a rea­son­ably cred­i­ble hypoth­e­sis that it’s pos­si­ble,’ says his son, Dr. Dick Rendle­man, finance pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina at Chapel Hill, ‘but there’s also doc­u­men­ta­tion that it could have hap­pened.’”
(“Did He See First Atomic Explo­sion?” by Rose Post; Sal­is­bury Post; 5/31/2004; p. 1.)

17. “ . . . Peter Vogel, author of ‘The Last Wave from Port Chicago,’ has worked on this, Rendle­man says, for 20 years, ‘and he believes it was actu­ally the first atom bomb explo­sion. The Hiroshima bomb did even­tu­ally go through Port Chicago. Peo­ple from the Los Alamos labs were on the scene the morn­ing after this explo­sion. And there were all sorts of other doc­u­ments that led Vogel to believe it was the first atom bomb. . . . Nobody has ever been able to say what really hap­pened that night. ‘There is spec­u­la­tion,’ Mar­garet Styles says. ‘No hard core proof. Some believe it was actu­ally an exper­i­ment’ with an atom bomb. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

18. High­light­ing a key point of debate with regard to the Port Chicago explo­sion (the presence/lack of resid­ual radi­a­tion), the pro­gram presents infor­ma­tion (from a skep­ti­cal observer) that rein­forces Peter Vogel’s work­ing hypoth­e­sis. “As of the week this is being writ­ten, it’s been 60 years since the acci­dent at Port Chicago on July 17, 1944, where a muni­tions ship exploded. The explo­sion was so large that some m

yths and urban leg­ends claim it was a nuclear acci­dent, 10 months ear­lier than the Trin­ity test. This web page is about my effort to col­lect real data on back­ground radi­a­tion lev­els in the area with a mobile Geiger counter data col­lec­tion sys­tem. Then the point is to see if the urban leg­ends still hold water. . . .”
(“Back­ground Radi­a­tion Mea­sure­ments near Port Chicago” by Ian Kluft; p. 1.)

19. In eval­u­at­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the infor­ma­tion that fol­lows, it is impor­tant to under­stand that the author of this doc­u­ment was openly dis­mis­sive of Peter Vogel’s hypoth­e­sis. “ . . . What­ever the story, I’m not into con­spir­acy the­o­ries. The ‘leaps of logic’ typ­i­cally found in them are annoy­ing at best, and seri­ous mis­in­for­ma­tion at worst. Most are writ­ten to sound con­vinc­ing and can take in a large audi­ence. The best-known exam­ple in this case is an online book released in 2002, The Last Wave from Port Chicago by Peter Vogel as an accu­mu­la­tion of his ear­lier research. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

20. After dis­cussing the equip­ment and method­ol­ogy he used to test for resid­ual radi­a­tion at Port Chicago, Kluft presents an account of his 7/15/2004 expe­di­tion to Griz­zly Island State Wildlife Area. “ . . . Once off the paved road and dri­ving on the levee on Griz­zly Island, I was able to turn the screen so I could glance at the data col­lec­tion. The high­est num­ber I saw here was 15uR/hr, which is def­i­nitely not nor­mal. What I didn’t notice until review­ing the data at home was that the high­est num­ber at Griz­zly Island was actu­ally 17 uR/hr. There’s at least a 2 mile stretch along Griz­zly Island Road with these abnormally-high lev­els. (Though these num­bers are not dan­ger­ous, I only took them from on the road, which is made from imported mate­ri­als. Lev­els could be dif­fer­ent off the road. So Griz­zly Island could use an inspec­tion by experts.) . . . Travis [Air Force Base] seems to be ruled out as the source of the radi­a­tion on Griz­zly Island, the Potrero Hills and the Mon­tezuma Hills because there is no evi­dence of a plume lead­ing there . . .” (Ibid.; p. 6.)

21. The author presents his con­clu­sions, all the more sig­nif­i­cant because of his overt skep­ti­cism of Vogel’s work­ing hypoth­e­sis. “ . . . CONCLUSIONS: The Griz­zly Island data is dis­turb­ing. With the new data col­lected on July 15, it looks like I’ve dis­cov­ered a pos­si­ble 2-mile wide radioac­tive plume, which faces Port Chicago. The nuclear acci­dent the­ory at Port Chicago isn’t look­ing so far-fetched any more. But it cer­tainly still isn’t proven by a long shot either. The 2-mile stretch has large patches of 13–17 uR/hr read­ings. 10–12 is about nor­mal back­ground, the high­est you’d expect in most cities. (That’s at sea level. Aver­age back­ground is higher with more ele­va­tion.) Back on the July 11 drive, one pos­si­bil­ity was that the ele­vated read­ings could be some­thing nat­ural in the Mon­tezuma Hills, pos­si­bly gran­ite rocks or some­thing else in the ground there. But now we see it’s also on the flats and marshes at the shore of the Bay. So we can rule out a geo­log­i­cal cause linked to the hills. It cer­tainly isn’t just in the hills. . . . So just like on July 11, the high­est back­ground radi­a­tion read­ings on the July 15 drive were at the point clos­est to the Port Chicago acci­dent loca­tion, now only 5 miles from it. And it’s in a direc­tion that would be nor­mally down­wind on a clear sum­mer night in this area. I found both sides of the higher-background area, and the shape con­tin­ues to match that of a northeast-bound plume from Port Chicago, or ship­ping on Suisun Bay in front of the base. . . .If we ask ‘what hap­pened there?’ the July 17, 1944 explo­sion has to be included on the list. I can’t ignore the coin­ci­dence that the mea­sured ele­vated radi­a­tion is in the place it would have to be if the nuclear acci­dent sce­nario was true. That doesn’t prove it’s true, but if con­firmed it would take away an objec­tion many of us had about it. Namely that no one knew of any radi­a­tion in the area. . . . The area that we found ele­vated back­ground [radi­a­tion] appears to me like it’s par­al­lel to the direc­tion of the run­ways (wind direc­tion), and lined up with Port Chicago. That was the thing that star­tled me most when I noticed it. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 6–8.)

22. Another Inter­net post­ing by an observer openly crit­i­cal (at first) of Vogel’s hypoth­e­sis calls atten­tion to the poten­tial dan­ger posed by the acqui­si­tion and use by a ter­ror­ist group of a Mark II-type weapon. (That was the device appar­ently used at Port Chicago.) It is to be hoped that US intel­li­gence agen­cies are fac­tor­ing the Mark II/Port Chicago even­tu­al­ity into their plan­ning for ter­ror­ism. “ . . . Assum­ing that it [Port Chicago explo­sion] hap­pened about as Vogel has doc­u­mented, the most alarm­ing thing about this inci­dent to me (aside from the shame­less coverup) is that the Mark II weapon con­tained only about five kilo­grams of mod­er­ately enriched fuel, and it used that fuel inef­fi­ciently. But that was enough to cause major dam­age! There are per­haps 300 uni­ver­sity or govm’t research reac­tors world­wide that con­tain this much fuel, many with even higher enrich­ment. Scary thought.”
(“Nuclear Ter­ror­ism on US Soil” by Jones Beene; p. 2 )

23. The author makes the cen­tral point of his pre­sen­ta­tion: “The sad news for the future of ter­ror­ism on US soil is that even when such a crude bomb is detonated—as ‘inef­fi­cient’ and poorly designed as it was—and even if only one per­cent of the fuel actu­ally fis­sions, the results can be dev­as­tat­ing. A sec­ond cho­rus of sad news derives from the fact that CF [Cold Fusion] and LENR do in fact relate closely to this kind of weapons tech­nol­ogy, which was patented, by the way. And it is prob­a­bly for this pre­cise rea­son that progress in the CF field has been squashed and offi­cially ignored (because if offi­cials had actu­ally inter­vened 15 years ago, then that would have been a ‘give-away’ as to the real under­ly­ing moti­va­tion).” (Idem.)

24. “If you read the whole doc­u­ment, you will prob­a­bly real­ize that they key patent, now expired, which describes how and why mod­er­ately enriched Ura­nium deu­teride is able to work at all as a bomb (and most experts will tell you straight-faced that it will not work) was held by no other than who else . . . MIT. The very folks who doc­tored their own early results to show that CF was just . . .patho­log­i­cal sci­ence. I think that I now under­stand why they chose those words: patho­log­i­cal sci­ence.” (Idem.)

25. “There are two well doc­u­mented ‘smok­ing guns’ here, which defy all attempts at expla­na­tion. 1) Two high rank­ing offi­cials from Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory appeared in Port Chicago in 1944, an out-of-the way back­wa­ter port that would have taken days to drive to, in a time when there were no com­mer­cial flights, the morn­ing after an explo­sion that occurred after 10 the evening before, and had not even made the national newspapers—despite the fact that there was absolutely no appar­ent rea­son for the involve­ment of a secret lab which sup­pos­edly had its hands-full with unre­lated impor­tant research. Obvi­ously they had been there for some time, for some rea­son.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

26. “2) About 500 pages of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments are admit­tedly held in the LANL archives, despite the act that there was offi­cially no nuclear mate­r­ial at Port Chicago, nor had there ever been. . . nor was the place remotely related to any­thing they were doing . . . except that it was the ideal test­ing ground for under­stand­ing a water based deliv­ery sys­tem of the type that could have been used, had the for­tunes of war turned against us.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

Edited March 1, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Steve Knight]

The explosion resulted in a crater 66 feet deep, 300 feet wide and 700 feet long in the river bottom. A five-kiloton nuclear bomb on the surface of wet soil creates a crater 53 feet deep and 132 feet in diameter.

Q: What yield were the Trinity Project, Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear explosions?

Note:
The National Parks Services does not believe the accident at Port Chicago to be nuclear and the U.S. Navy has denied it. The site today does not show signs of radiation and survivors had normal post health.

[Steve Knight]

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq80-3a.htm

"Port Chicago devastation nowhere near the scale of Hiroshima."

The atom bomb theorists try to excuse this by postulating that the device which detonated was an early prototype which lacked the destructiveness of its later siblings. So on the one hand, they're claiming the size of the explosion indicates it was nuclear, while on the other they're forced to make excuses why it wasn't as big as a nuclear bomb should have been.
lol.

[Steve Knight]

As a note of interest, there was another similar ship disaster from this general time period ( http://sdsd.essortment.com/texascityexplo_rkvi.htm ).
In 1947, a French ship carrying 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded in Texas City harbour, killing some 600 people and "virtually annihilating" the city. The explosion was heard 150 miles away, while in Houston "a rumbling reminiscent of a small earthquake was felt." The shock-wave also created a small tidal wave that washed inland. In spite of the massive damage, no one has come forward to claim it was the result of a nuclear bomb.

Yet.

[Steven Gaal]

GOLLY USA BOMBS ITSELF......KINDA ....COULDA BE (for the thinking person) 911 related.

Port

Chicago - 50 Years: was it an atomic blast?

By David Caul and Susan Todd

Copyright FreeAmerica and Harry V. Martin, 1996

(EDITOR'S NOTE: In January 1990, the Napa Sentinel commenced a

series of articles concerning the explosion at Port Chicago in San

Francisco Bay on July 17, 1944. Several other articles were produced

to support the theory that the explosion was nuclear. Over the years,

the Sentinel has been challenged on one point of the articles: If it was

a nuclear explosion what about the radiation? For several years our

research team has devoted itself to searching for records of other

atomic explosions of the era to determine the levels of radiation

association with those tests. This four part article addresses the

question of radiation at Port Chicago.)

The Trinity Project in July 1945 has been declared the first test of an

atomic bomb.1 Since all other tests, according to official history,

must have occurred after Trinity, questions can be raised about a

document entitled, The History of the Ten Thousand Ton Gadget,

which reports the detonation of a 10 kiloton nuclear bomb. The

document states on the bottom line, 'Ball of fire mushrooms out at

18,000 feet in typical Port Chicago fashion". This Los Alamos

document links an atomic test explosion with Port Chicago's

explosion.

Today, we know Port Chicago as the Concord Naval Weapons

Station, a sprawling 5500 acre Navy complex extending over the hills

from the Suisun Bay into Clayton Valley, near Concord. However, in

July 1944, a full year before the Trinity test, there had occurred two

explosion which vaporized the Liberty Ship E. A. Bryan and blew to

bits all but a small section of the keel of another ship, the Quinault

Victory. It also killed nearly 400 men and destroyed the Port Chicago

base, a critical munitions facility supplying the Pacific War.

The official theory of the explosion is that 1.5 kilotons of war

munitions containing TNT and Torpex, placed on the pier and in the

holds of the Liberty ship E.A. Bryan, were accidentally detonated all

at once. There is disagreement between the government damage

reports on the size of the blast. The U.S. Army/Navy Safety Board

Report, Technical Paper #6 reports the yield of the Port Chicago

explosion as 2.13 kilotons, which is in excess of the conventional

explosives which were aboard the E.A. Bryan. The Naval Court of

Inquiry came to the conclusion that the accidental detonation was

caused by several factors, including:

* War-induced oversized work load and pressure on the men.

* Incompetency of the officers at the base.

* The Base Commandant's promotion of competition among loading

officers.

* Gross violation of safety precautions.

Various articles reported in the Sentinel and through the research of

the newspaper, documents from Freedom of Information, Caul, Todd

and Peter Vogel, have outlined the entire history of the explosion, of

the dawn of the nuclear age, of the prototype atomic bombs that

existed and of correspondence and official reports concerning atomic

testing, Los Alamos and Port Chicago. We would refer readers to

those various articles for background and will not repeat that material

in this series.

The first concept of an atomic bomb was that it would be necessary

to place it on a naval vessel and send it into the port of the enemy.

No strategic aircraft or airfield was available at the time the atomic

bomb was developed that could be used for its delivery. At the time

of the Port Chicago explosion the United States involvement in the

Pacific war was largely focused on maritime battles and the need for

a "port buster" was of the highest importance. Scientists at Los

Alamos had an exquisite interest in determining the lethal or sinking

ranges of all types of surface vessels and submerged submarines for

nuclear bombs detonated under water. This concern is very prominent

in the first edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1950. There

were two striking advantages in detonating atomic bombs in the

water as port-busters:

* A bomb which was detonated under water could be a ton lighter

because it would not require a heavy tamper. This lightness would

enable it to be carried by lighter, more maneuverable aircraft2

* A water detonation would not fry the crew of the plane that

dropped it because the water would act as a radiation shield for the

plane's crew.3

This meant that it would not have to be dropped from 30,000 feet, a

technology which was not available in the summer of 1944. The

Enola Gay, by Thomas and Witts documents the timetable of the

development of high altitude bombing techniques. As far back as

1943, the High Military Policy Committee, the board of directors of

the Manhattan Project, had chosen the Japanese fleet concentrations

in the harbor at Truk in Micronesia, as the first target for the atomic

bomb. Declassified documents from the Manhattan District History,

Project Y, from the U.S. Department of Commerce, have been

uncovered. The National Technical Information Service, LAMS-2532,

Vol. I, December 1961, page 8:13, refers to the "...results of certain

underwater tests (performed in 1944)...which had been directed

toward achieving the goal of using a nuclear weapon against the

Japanese fleet concentration at Truk, in Micronesia." Port Chicago

would have been a perfect "blast gauge" for a port-buster type

atomic bomb.

The height of the fireball, the Wilson condensation ring, and the

damage to 14 counties of California, all point to something more

insidious than incompetence causing 1.5 kilotons of ammunition to go

off all at once. Evidence for the theory includes:

* declassified letters and memoranda with incriminating wording,

* scientists from the Los Alamos Laboratory arriving at the site

miraculously early,

* the hidden facts about the test of a bomb called Mark II,

* the white flash and other circumstantial evidence.

Some of the counter evidence against the nuclear theory is:

* lack of radiation reports at Port Chicago, and

* the alleged impossibility of supply of enough fuel for even a small

bomb in July 1944.

The possibility that the explosion was nuclear but accidentally

detonated while being transshipped through Port Chicago on one of

the cargo vessels has also been put forward.

DESCRIPTION OF THE BLAST

On the night of July 17, 1944, a huge explosion occurred aboard one

of the two merchant ships docked at the Port Chicago Magazine

located on the Suisun Bay, 11 miles upstream from Vallejo. Clocks in

the town of Port Chicago, over a mile away, were stopped by the

shock waves at 10:19 p.m.4 The enormity of the blast was shown by

the 3.5 magnitude earthquake registered as far away as Bonner's

Ferry, Nevada.5 The explosion's fire ball, as observed by pilots flying

over the area, towered in the night sky to an altitude of 8000 feet

before being extinguished.6

Observers reported a blinding flash "...that literally filled the sky with

flame." It was followed "...by other flashes of less intensity, and then

a dull, very odd orangish glow that seemed to hang in the sky for as

long as ten or fifteen minutes, then it all went black". 7 Two ships,

thousands of feet apart from surface zero, navigating the narrow Roe

Island Channel, were reported by their crews as being lifted up from

the surface of the water by the underwater shockwaves bouncing off

the river bottom. Their first impressions were that they had run

aground. One of these ships, the 210-foot Redline tanker had the top

of its superstructure completely ripped off by the air blast. Part of the

deck was lifted. All doors were blown in. All tanks were ruptured. All

of the ships bulkheads were blown in, one being forced completely

out of the ship through the opposite side. All of this was the result of

air shockwaves.

The ship turned around and sank in shallow water, riddled with

shrapnel.8 Different eyewitness reports from the crews of the ships in

the channel later litanized the Quinault Victory's final ordeal:

* Her bow end, from the foremost mast forward, was lifted high up

into the air.

* Pieces of docking were seen in the air with pilings attached.

* A funnel-shaped area was observed 200 feet in the air, on top of

which was the bow of one of the ships with mast attached.

Parts of the bodies of the work battalion and their officers, as well as

those of the ships Merchant Marine crews and Marine guards were

found on Roe Island, across the channel, almost a mile away, many

blown there as human missiles by the force of the explotion. In

addition there were many heavy pieces of railroad cars and thick ship

plating found on the island.

The crater on the river bottom was, at its deepest, 27 feet. At least

10 feet of this was mud, which is more difficult to cavitate than soft

rock.9 The crater was approximately 700 feet long and three hundred

feet wide. The explosion, which took place below the water line of

the E.A. Bryan, occurred at an average depth of 15 feet below the

surface. With the flooding tide, the water was over 33 feet deep.

Thus, the force of the blast had to remove an enormous amount of

water before it could even get to the bottom, and once it did, it still

removed 27 feet of soft rock and mud.

In culling over the various newspaper accounts and eyewitness

reports of the Port Chicago explosion, no phenomena seems more

ubiquitous than the white flash. The Napa Journal description of July

21, 1944, is typical, though from the perspective of 23 miles away:

"Plainly visible here was the towering pillar of flame that flared into

the southern sky. The hills of the Napa Valley were momentarily

illuminated as by sunlight. Scores of persons, convinced that an

earthquake was imminent, ran from their homes in their night clothes.

On land, to the south of the disaster, the buildings of the Naval Base

suffered damage beyond repair. All buildings in the town of Port

Chicago, which 1was a mile to a mile and a half from the explosion,

were damaged seriously. Ten per cent were damaged beyond repair.

Fifty percent were uninhabitable due to being knocked off their

foundations. The bridge crossing the Carquinez Straights was rocked

violently as described by passengers crossing the bridge on a bus. All

the downtown store windows were shattered in Vallejo, 22 miles

away.10 Mare Island suffered considerable damage from the

explosion, with some streets being littered with as much as two

inches of glass.11

Port Chicago:

what classified memos said

By David Caul and Susan Todd

(Part Two of a Four Part Series)

Copyright, Napa Sentinel July 15, 1994

Through the Freedom of Information process, dozens of suspicious

letters surrounding the Port Chicago explosion have surfaced. A

memorandum from Captain William S. Parsons to Major General

Groves, director of the Army's activities related to the Manhattan

Project, is particularly interesting. Captain Parsons was the deputy

director of Los Alamos Laboratory in 1944 and conducted the lab's

study of the Port Chicago explosion. The Parsons-Groves

memorandum dated 25 September 1944 was his third preliminary

report on the Port Chicago explosion.

The memorandum read: "I believe that it is necessary at this time to

examine the scope of the responsibilities and duties which are

imposed by a directive to develop, manufacture and furnish, with the

prospect of successful delivery during this war, a weapon of entirely

new characteristics.

"I divide this mission into three separate parts, which have in

common the fact that failure or lateness of any one will surely bar the

weapon from the war.

"...The fact of the war, and the fact that victory may be in sight in

1944 in Germany, and probably in 1945 in Japan, combine to force

concurrent raid prosecution of (the) . . .work."

Later, in the letter, Parsons addressed the proposal on the part of

some of the more progressive scientists on the Manhattan Project to

test the bomb in the desert instead of using it against the enemy.

"This same exaggerated idea of the destruction possibilities of

thousand-ton explosions had led to proposals in high and responsible

quarters that if we are winning the war anyway, perhaps the best use

of the gadget is in a staged field test in an American desert; to which

could be invited such foreign observers as the United States desired

to impress with our victory over the atom and our potential power to

win victories over our future enemies.

"The kind of reasoning in the above paragraphs is also attractive in

that it disposes of the two really difficult and disagreeable problems;

(a) final assembly design and manufacture, and ( military delivery.

To have our project culminate in a spectacularly expensive field test

in the closing months of the war, or to have it held for such a

demonstration after the war, is, in my opinion, one way to invite a

political and military fizzle, regardless of the scientific achievement.

The principal difficultly with such a demonstration is that it would not

be held one thousand feet over Times Square, where the human and

material destruction would be obvious, but in an uninhabited desert,

where there would be no humans and only sample structures. From

my observation of Port Chicago, I can give assurance that the

reaction of observers to a desert shot would be one of intense

disappointment. Even the crater would be disappointing."

Why would Port Chicago be linked with a report on an atomic test?

Parsons was concerned that the war might end without the use of the

bomb. His first priority was to enter the bomb into the war, before it

was too late. In this letter he cancels any suggestion that the use of

the bomb must be governed and justified by moral considerations. It

becomes obvious that Parsons wants the bomb to demonstrate both

the material and the human casualty factors.

The human reaction to Port Chicago was carefully recorded by the

damage reports to Los Alamos and to the National Defense Research

Committee, which oversaw the Manhattan Project. Port Chicago

would have been an ideal area by which to gauge the bomb's effects.

A topographical map of the area in 1944 shows the ideal setup. Even

the prevailing winds were correct to blow the radioactive debris out

over the channel and Honker Bay and deserted marshlands. The

nearest downwind populated areas was the tiny town of Fairfield, 20

miles away, surrounded by farmland.

There is yet another letter in the paper trail leading back to a

suspected nuclear explosion at Port Chicago. This letter was first

made public in the Napa Sentinel magazine in February 1994. James

Conant, who was a member of the board of directors of the

Manhattan Project referred to a full-scale test of the weapon in a

letter to General Groves. In the letter he indicated that the secret test

occurred shortly before August 1944. The Port Chicago explosion

took place on July 17, 1944. The explosion Conant refers to was a

year before the Trinity test, which has officially been documented as

the first atomic test.

The interested part of Conant's report is that the results of the first

atomic test shortly before August 1944 exactly match the damage

report Captain Parsons wrote on Port Chicago. The letter states that

dwelling houses were damaged in the test. The letter is dated August

17, 1944, one month after Port Chicago. It is one of the most heavily

sanitized, declassified documents on the subject. It is entitled Report

on Visit to Los Alamos. In the name of national security, 50 years

later, the censor left only two sentences intact. "It is agreed that the

Mark II should be put on the shelf for the present. If all other

implosion methods fail, it could be taken off the shelf and developed

for combat use in three to four months time." The other sentence

reads, "It was agreed that for dwelling houses the area of Class B

damage was about as follows for 1000 tons of TNT:

* 90 percent Class B damage = 0.5 miles radius .75 square mile

area.

* 10 percent Class B damage 1.5 miles 7.5 square mile.

The emphasis is on the word was. He states the damage was not

would be.

This fits the description of Port Chicago. The Mark II was a working

bomb as of July 1944 and it could have been readied for combat

delivery in a few months.

Just where the atomic test Conant referred to was held is not stated

in the letter. The first page of the letter was censored out. Obviously

Conant and Groves had known all along that the test had been held.

But what was their motive for keeping it secret. The Mark II is rarely

talked about in the literature about nuclear weapons. Surprisingly, the

report issued by Captain Parson on the explosion of Port Chicago has

the exact same data:

* 90 percent Class B damage = 0.5 miles radius .75 square mile

area.

* 10 percent Class B damage 1.5 miles 7.5 square mile.

Research and Sentinel articles reveal that the same people who

worked on the development of the first nuclear weapon were also

intimately associated with Port Chicago. Even the early arrival of key

Los Alamos and Manhattan Project officials to Port Chicago create

some suspicion. Captain Parsons, who was at Los Alamos and who

was not allowed to fly, arrived at Port Chicago within nine hours of

the explosion, a distance of 1000 miles by surface transportation in

1944. Also some officials flew from Washington, D.C. and arrived at

9 a.m., which indicates that they would have had to get ready and

also fly a distance of 3000 miles in nine hours. Aircraft of those days

did not travel non-stop nor very fast. It would have been impossible

to reach Port Chicago at 9 a.m., suggesting that the crews might

have already been in the area.

The documentation has been extensive in previous Sentinel articles.

Now that the foundation has been laid, the next two parts will explain

the radiation aspects and comparison to other nuclear tests of the

era.

Port Chicago:

how it compares with other tests

By David Caul and Susan Todd

Copyright, Napa Sentinel, 1994

Third of a Four Part Series

Throughout the years, there have been several critics of the Port

Chicago nuclear explosion theory. Among the most noted were the

late Russ Coughlan, general manager of KGO TV and his producer

Bob Anderson. In their documentary entitled The Mystery of Port

Chicago, they discounted the nuclear theory based on what they

believe was the absence of flash burns among victims, temporary

blindness and radiation sickness, such as reported from Hiroshima

and Nagasaki.

Nuclear explosions produce temperatures on the order of millions of

degrees centigrade, whereas conventional explosions generate heat

on the order of thousands of degrees. In addition, at the time of a

nuclear detonation, intense penetrating radiation emanates from the

fireball.

This article will present an explanation of how a nuclear explosion at

Port Chicago could have features which would prevent flash blindness

and flash burns, and also explain how it was that the effects of the

radiation exposure on the personnel at the Port would not have been

as obvious as KGO indicated.

Given the many variables which surround nuclear explosions, such as

weather, placement, potential yield, type of device, and topography,

it is not always possible to judge in advance what will happen.

Therefore, nuclear explosions can be very unique events and do not

always duplicate each other.

The lack of flash burns and flash blindness or "eclipse blindness" at

Port Chicago is consistent with the explosion being nuclear. All of the

damage reports cite the center of gravity of the explosion as being 15

feet below the water line of the E.A. Bryan, and, therefore the

explosion would have thrown up a large plume of water. This

phenomenon, together with the fact that the bomb detonated within

one of the holds of the 7500 ton cargo ship, would have sharply

attenuated or eliminated the thermal radiation emanating from the

fireball within the first few seconds of the explosion. This would have

happened in two ways:

* the steel of the ship and the water would have both absorbed the

heat, thereby reducing it, acting as a heat sink; and

* the ship and the water would have shielded the thermal radiation

from reaching the populated areas.2 Even clouds, smoke or fog can

substantially decrease the thermal radiation from a nuclear flash.3

By the time the fire ball had vaporized the ship and risen above the

surface of the water, and out of the plume, the spray and debris, the

fireball would have cooled to the point that flash burns and blindness

would not have occurred.

It is interesting to note that even at Hiroshima, where there was

nothing to block the thermal radiation, the blink reflex and the

recessed position of the eyes helped to prevent flash blindness, and

the effect of thermal radiation on the eyes was surprisingly small.4

The so-called "eclipse blindness" associated with viewing a nuclear

explosion results when the intensity of the light uses up all of the

eye's supply of visual purple in the retina; blindness then persists for

a half an hour or longer, until enough of the substance is produced in

the eye to allow vision again. The lack of flash burns and flash

blindness at Port Chicago is fairly easily explained by the shielding

effect of the water and the ship. Even at Bikini, the underwater

explosion was observed without eye protection for the men.5

Anderson and Coughlan cite in their KGO documentary that the

wreckage was conspicuously uncharred and unburned. This, they

state, is yet another sign that the explosion was non-nuclear.

However, the damage report states that most missiles thrown out by

the blast were melted by heat.6 The Napa News Chronicle reported

"great hunks of hot metal" lying all around the vicinity after the

explosion, and similarly with the book No Share of Glory by Pearson.

Tom Shaw, a Napan who watched the complete progression of the

explosion from an apartment one mile away in the town of Port

Chicago, told the Sentinel that he observed large, red and white hot

pieces of the ship's plating tumbling end over end streaking toward

him. These reached him before the blast wave, and so were traveling

in excess of the speed of sound. He was able to take it all in before

he was knocked to the floor by the explosion.

Anderson's and Coughlan's strongest argument against a nuclear

thesis rests on a test they performed on pieces of shrapnel they found

near the blast site. "We subjected the pieces of shrapnel from the

blast to radiation tests." Coughlan and Anderson concluded that the

tests showed that the pieces could not have been in an atomic

explosion. However, just finding any pieces of metal near the

explosion 44 years later does not mean that they came from the ship

in which the bomb had detonated. The pieces could have come from

the ship which did not contain the bomb, or from one of the boxcars

or machinery on the pier. In that case, the test becomes less

meaningful. In order for metal to pick up radioactivity, it must have

close proximity to the bomb. The likelihood of radioactivity diminishes

with distance. Coughlan and Anderson have no way of determining

where the pieces came from. Second, they don't say what test they

performed on the pieces. If they simply tested for radioactivity, then it

is not surprising that the pieces showed none. The British

Government detonated a 24 kiloton plutonium bomb at Monte Bello,

Australia in October of 1952. The bomb was placed on a Frigate in

shallow water and detonated. None of the isolated steel fragments of

metal that had been thrown out from the Frigate on to the

surrounding islands showed any sign of radioactivity whatsoever after

ten years.7

At Port Chicago, Coughlan and Anderson found no signs of

radioactivity in the metal after 44 years, yet they concluded the

explosion could not have been nuclear. The shielding and absorption

effect by the ship and the plume would also have greatly diminished

the nuclear radiation (i.e., gamma, neutron and x-ray), as well as the

thermal radiation.8 This still leaves open the possibility of residual

radiation being left in the area, and we will cover that aspect shortly.

In August 1990, the Sentinel contacted R. Ernest Sternglass,

professor of Radiology at the University of Pittsburgh specializing in

Radiation Physics. Sternglass is well-known for his work on nuclear

fallout from bomb tests and nuclear power plants, and its effects on

the population, especially children. Dr. Sternglass original reaction in

1990 to the Port Chicago nuclear thesis was negative. He made a

comparison between Port Chicago and the Bikini under-water test in

1946. He said that what happened at Bikini would have happened at

Port Chicago, since in both cases the bomb would have detonated in

water. The radiation problem at the Bikini test was much worse than

the Trinity test, or at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, were the bomb was

detonated above the surface. At Bikini, immediately after the

explosion, the radiation levels were very high in the lagoon and on the

target vessels. There were reports of radiation sickness, and lingering

radiation which was difficult to clean from the target ships.

Eventually, elevated cancer rates were discovered among the Bikini

veterans. (Editor's Note: Dr. Sternglass now feels that it is quite

possible that Port Chicago could have been a nuclear explosion.)

Taking our cue from Dr. Sternglass, we can ask the following critical

question of the Port Chicago nuclear thesis: If a nuclear device had

exploded at Port Chicago, and Port Chicago would have been like

Bikini, how could the rescue crews, operating both in the water and

on land have been able to withstand the radiation that would have

permeated the area, especially so soon after the detonation?

Army units from Camp Stoneman, eight miles to the east, began

arriving at 2 a.m. (the blast was at 10:19 p.m.).9 Port Chicago was

never abandoned, although the Navy immediately began to use the

Army facilities at a Richmond dock as a temporary replacement.10

It would seem from these facts that the Port Chicago explosion was

non-nuclear. But a closer examination of the Bikini underwater

explosion will show that the harm to the men at Bikini were not

initially very obvious. The radiation effects were much more subtle

than that.

BIKINI EXPERIENCE AND COMPARISON

Nuclear explosions present radiation hazards to the public in two

fundamentally different ways:

* initial radiation's, which take the form of gamma, x-rays and

neutrons coming out of the fireball during the first three seconds of

the event; and

* delayed fallout, where radioactivity fission products and debris from

the mushroom cloud descend to the earth.

The first type is over in three seconds, the second type lingers on.

Both can be intense. Bombs which explode in the air such that the

fireball doesn't touch the earth produce high initial radiation from the

vicinity of the explosion, surface zero, but the delayed radiation for

that area is negligible. Hiroshima and Nagasaki received virtually no

fallout from the bombs.11 The delayed fallout descends to the earth

later or miles away downwind. Bombs which explode in the water

tend to produce no initial radiation hazard, but can leave high levels

of delayed fallout in the vicinity of the explosion. This is what

happened at Bikini. The radiation left in the Bikini lagoon from the

underwater test was much greater than that which was left on the

ground at the Trinity test site in New Mexico, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki,

or the Bikini-Able aerial test.12 But the water in which the Bikini

bomb was placed acted as a shield against the initial radiation.13

In an air burst, as the fire ball cools, the radioactive residues of the

weapon condense into extremely small particles which remain

suspended in the atmosphere for a long time. ". . . in a low burst, the

earth, dust and other debris from the earth's surface are taken up into

the fireball, and an increasing proposition of fission (and other

radioactivity) products of the nuclear explosion condense into

particles of appreciable size.14 These large particles tend to fall out

immediately, causing contamination in the area of detonation.

Additionally, proximity to water is especially conducive to the

deposition of large amounts of radiation near surface zero because

the coolness of the water prevents the fireball from rising to as great

a height as in the case of an aerial detonation.15 Radioactive material

then tends to fall back more quickly to the base of the explosion

rather than to be blown away from the area, falling out over a period

of time downwind. It is the delayed fallout that would have been a

problem at Port Chicago, just as it was at Bikini, not the initial

radiation from the fireball.

Some of the "victims" of the Bikini test, the target vessels which

were arrayed around the surface zero at various distances were

drenched in radioactive substances; there was intense radiation left in

the waters of the lagoon. After four days, the authorities at Bikini

conceded that the inspection parties were to spend only limited time

aboard the doomed vessels because of the radiation. However, the

authorities told the press and the men that this precaution was in

accordance with a safety factor of 1000. They told the press and the

men that they could take a thousand times that much radiation and

not be killed. They told them that this was a "peacetime" standard,

and that during wartime the standard would be much less.16

The planners of the Bikini test had been taken by surprise by the

lingering radiation. The longer term radiological results of the test had

been " . . . either utterly unforeseen, or had been placed in such

conjectural terms that its relevance, even to strategic considerations,

was not understood".17 The Navy admitted that ". . .the nature and

extent of contamination of the targets was completely unexpected,

and no plans had been organized for decontamination measures".18

Two or three days after the explosion the Navy began to realize this.

The Navy had known that there would have been high initial radiation

in the area, but they hadn't counted on the delayed fallout

contaminating the area in the vicinity of the lagoon.

Knowledge of the effects of radiation was scant. "No one yet

recognized the greatest danger of atomic warfare, lingering

radioactivity..."19 At first the Navy resorted to old-fashioned

methods, crews of men were set to scrubbing down the

contaminated ships without any special protection, using "lye,

foamite, salt water and soap spread with liberal amounts of Navy

profanity.20 Men were ordered to spend the night on some of the

"hot" target ships. Radioactive material was all over the decks, and

the men tracked it around and got it on their clothing, hands and

faces. Many of the officers thought that the risks could be ignored.21

It is true that there were no reports of radiation sickness at Port

Chicago. However, the reports of radiation sickness at Bikini came

much later, and this was an announced nuclear test. The Bikini tests

had showcase-extravaganza status, and monopolized the attention of

the world's media for weeks. Port Chicago was unannounced.

Only some of the later written accounts of the Bikini test describe

military personnel as suffering from radiation sickness.22 These

reports took years to reach the public. The first book about Bikini, one

which focuses on the radiation problem, asserts clearly that there was

no radiation sickness or injury there either.23

The Veterans Administration was able for years to deny any

connection between illness among Navy personnel and Bikini

exposure. As of 1981, the VA had turned down "98 percent of all

radiation-based claims for atomic veterans", including the Bikini

vets24 arguing that it was impossible to determine whether the

maladies in question would have occurred regardless of radiation

exposure. And this was so even though everyone knew that the men

had participated in an atomic bomb test.

From the beginning, the cat was out of the bag at Bikini. But, how

easy would it have been to correctly diagnose the radiation sickness

and other more subtle nuclear symptoms with this knowledge? If the

men had been told, for example, that the explosion at Bikini was from

conventional munitions on a ship, they would have looked for other

causes for their maladies. And even though they knew they were

exposed to the effects of an atomic bomb, it took years for the first

claims to be put in.

Port Chicago: Epilog -

it was a nuclear blast

By David Caul and Susan Todd

EPILOG

Copyright, Napa Sentinel, 1994

In the second article of this series we quoted declassified letters from

one of the top people in the Manhattan Project which referred to a

secret detonation of the low-yield atomic bomb in July 1944,

designated the Mark II. This occurred at about the same time as the

Port Chicago explosion. Neither the government nor any publication,

except the Napa Sentinel, has officially acknowledged either the

detonation, or the letters which describe it, and there is strong

evidence that the detonation referred to in the letters was actually

Port Chicago.

The design of the mark II is an anomaly in the history of U.S. nuclear

weapons development. It was a crude, first attempt at making an

atomic bomb which operated on the principle of implosion.

Understanding how that crude Mark II bomb worked will help us to

see an important difference between the Port Chicago radiation

situation and that of Bikini.

The bomb consisted of a sub-critical hollow tube of uranium

contained in another cylinder of molded explosive material. When the

cylindrical explosives were detonated, the hollow tube of uranium

was crushed into a critical mass, and fission took place.

The uranium in the hollow cylinder was enriched to less than 30

percent U-235, the rest being U-238. The Hiroshima bomb, which

detonated over Japan, was enriched up to 80 percent. The Mark II's

low fuel enrichment made it quite different from the uranium bomb

which was dropped on Japan. However, there was another striking

difference: It used a moderator, like a nuclear reactor, and this is the

secret of how it was able to operate on such poorly enriched

uranium.

What fissions in an atom bomb or a nuclear reactor is uranium U-235.

Natural uranium contains only .7 percent of this isotope, the rest

being U-238, which cannot fission except under very special

circumstances. A process of "enrichment" is used to increase the

percentage of U-235, and it is very slow and costly; this was

especially true in 1944.

Nuclear reactors are enriched up to 3 percent, but uranium bombs

generally contain up to 80 percent. Reactors can run on such lean

enrichment diets because their uranium fuel is placed in a moderator,

such as hydrogen, paraffin or graphite.

There are two advantages in slowing down the neutrons. First, slow

neutrons have the highest probability of producing fission of the U-

235 fuel. Second, uranium which is not highly enriched, containing

larger amounts of U-238, absorbs or "captures" too many of the

neutrons needed for fission. This capturing process hinders the fission

process. It takes neutrons out of circulation. When a neutron enters a

U-238 nucleus, the U-238 is changed into plutonium through a series

of transmutations.

However, U-238 can only capture neutrons traveling at the

intermediate speeds. By slowing down the flow of neutrons through

the use of a moderator, the neutrons can still produce fission because

they are free from capture by the U-238.

U-238 is a contaminate which poisons the atomic reaction by

preventing fission. One way to deal with the problem is called

"enrichment", removing the U-238 from the fuel leaving U-235. The

fuel of the Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, under this slow and costly

process. Another way is to remove as much U-238 as is practical,

and use slow neutrons so that the U-238 which remains is no longer

a poison to the reaction. This is what the Mark II design did.

The moderator was created in the Mark II by compacting the uranium

fuel and forming it into a plastic hydride. The hydrogen in the plastic

slowed down the flow of neutrons. Layers of hydrogen containing

paraffin were also used. This unique design was a response to a

problem of the times: scarcity of higher enriched uranium. Much

enriched uranium was needed to run the reactors which were

breeding the plutonium at Hanford, plutonium that would fuel later

bombs.

Because the Mark II design included a moderator and used fuel which

was enriched to less than 30 percent, it was somewhere in between

a nuclear reactor and a nuclear bomb. By making as much of the fuel

as possible go critical in a very short period of time, it was like a

bomb. By using a moderator at the same time, it was like a reactor.

Subsequent developments in enrichment made the Mark II obsolete.

However, at the time, the Mark II provided a detour around the

enrichment problem.

This ingenious device, however, was not at all efficient. The simple

geometry of explosives in the shape of a pipe was imperfect in

squeezing the fuel into a critical mass. Sections of the precious fuel

squirted out the ends, escaped fission and were wasted. The

squeezing wasn't fast enough. Also, though slowing the neutrons

reduced parasitic capture by the U-238, the fuel took too long to

fission. Slowing down the fission process is desirable in a nuclear

reactor, speeding up the process is desirable in a bomb. Inspite of

this, for the mark II the fuel tended to blow part before most of it

could undergo fission. The neutrons took "...so long to act that only a

feeble explosion would result." In a non-moderated bomb, all of the

neutrons are liberated within less than a millionth of a second.

Anything less than a kiloton was regarded as "feeble" by the bomb

designers whose expectations ranged in the tens of kilotons.

In later bombs, such as Fat Man, a spherical configuration replaced

the "pipe bomb" design and the "perfect squeeze" of the fuel was

finally accomplished. Before that, however, the inefficient Mark II was

the United States' only nuclear option. It was reliable, but its yield

was less than a kiloton. The testing and putting on the shelf of the

Mark II enabled Los Alamos to hedge their bets on the untested Little

Boy, and the drawing board stage Fat Man.

After the Port Chicago explosion, James B. Conant, a critical figure in

the development of a nuclear bomb, wrote a memorandum suggesting

putting the Mark II on the shelf after a July 1944 test, a test never

recorded in any public annals, but paralleling the date of the Port

Chicago explosion. Conant wanted to commence work on the Mark

III.

The Mark II contained about five kilograms of fuel, and it used that

fuel very inefficiently. Much of the uranium did not undergo fission,

and was squeezed or blown out of the critical mass and melted,

avoiding fission. Even when a bomb is "efficient", only one percent of

the fuel actually fissions.

The workers, rescue personnel and survey teams at Port Chicago

during the days immediately following the explosion would have been

exposed to a devil's wish-list of other chemical poisons from

vaporizing ships which would have been as serious as unfissioned

uranium. Since the Mark II's neutrons were moderated to below

capture speeds, there would have been very little transmutation of its

U-238 into plutonium, a very serious radiological hazard, especially if

inhaled. Its design goes out of its way specifically to prevent the

production of plutonium. With only 30 percent enrichment of its fuel,

it could not work any other way.

Large amounts of the dangerous plutonium were left at the Bikini site,

and accounted for a good share of the risk there. The danger from

plutonium lies in the tendency of the element to concentrate in the

bone where the continuous emission of alpha particles may cause

significant injury. The Bikini bomb fuel consisted entirely of

plutonium. Fear of plutonium contamination of the Bikini lagoon was

strenuously advanced by Los Alamos as a reason to cancel the Baker

test. Because of the way the Mark II worked, this did not happen at

Port Chicago.

Bikini was not the only underwater bomb test site where plutonium

was found to contribute to the radiation risk. On October 3, 1952,

the British Government tested a 25 kiloton plutonium bomb on the

Monte Bello Islands, off the western coast of Australia. The bomb

was placed in a forward hold of the frigate HMS Plym and detonated

"Port Chicago style". Plutonium was found scattered over the area,

and it was cited as a serious inhalation hazard in a report of the Royal

Commission.

Approximately 70 percent of Mark II's fuel was U-238 which could

not undergo fission. If this unfissioned uranium had contaminated the

area in the vicinity of the explosion, it would not have been a serious

radiological hazard, but a chemical poison which attacks the kidneys.

And more importantly, its radioactivity would not have been apparent

in the summer of 1944. In 1943, the Nazis ordered the use of its

entire uranium stocks, 1200 metric tons, to substitute in its

ammunition because of a shortage of wolframite. The battlefields of

Europe became littered with hundreds of tons of uranium shell

fragments and bullets, a much larger quantity of uranium than the 10

pounds which would have filtered down over the marshes and

waterways adjacent to Port Chicago as a result of the explosion of

the Mark II. Yet, Europe has never reported any problems associated

with the expenditure of uranium by the Germans.

The Port Chicago explosion was very different from the Bikini test in

several important respects. First, it occurred in shallow water. Both

editions The Effects of Nuclear Weapons states that a shallow water

nuclear detonation may not, under certain conditions, severely

contaminate the area immediately in the vicinity of surface zero. The

Effects of Nuclear Weapons states that a certain minimum depth is

necessary to produce significant radiation in the vicinity of the point

of detonation. A similar opinion was held by Vannevar Bush, chairman

of the Board of the Manhattan Project. The Bikini bomb was placed at

90 feet, the Port Chicago explosion occurred at 15 feet. In addition to

this, military people did not regard it as a foregone conclusion that a

shallow underwater detonation would contaminate a harbor area to

the extent that troop maneuvers would have to be suspended.

In an article in the American Meteorological Society, as well as in The

Effects of Nuclear Weapons, the extreme humidity of the Bikini area is

cited as a contributing factor to the contamination of the site of the

explosion. Accordingly, high humidity is a necessary condition for

severe contamination at the vicinity of surface zero in the case of an

under water detonation. It is possible that all phenomena, exactly as

observed at the Bikini test, would not occur if an atomic bomb were

exploded under water when a dry air mass is present.

The main mechanism by which radiation from a nuclear explosion in

water is returned to the place of detonation is something called the

"base surge". The base surge is a highly radioactive mist which forms

at the base of the water column, and which travels outwardly in a

ring at a very high speeds. This mist contains lethal radiation and

tends to deposit a relatively long-lived radioactive sludge on the

surfaces of objects in its path.

The manner of formation of the base surge is very important to the

issue. When the fireball leaves the water, water is driven upward,

following the fireball, as the water comes in to fill the void created by

the million degree bubble. The speed of this vertically driven water is

over a mile a second at first. It slows rapidly, but will attain a height

of 10,000 feet in less than a minute. At 10,000 feet the water and all

the bomb residues, including the fission products, the mass of the

ship, and whatever has been scavenged from the bottom, are

vaporized.

In a short time the mixture cools and condenses back into liquid form.

Within 10 to 12 seconds the column begins to fall back into the

water, much of it in the form of an aerosol. This aerosol or fog is

highly radioactive as a result of the particles, which form the nuclei of

the droplets, are themselves radioactive. The intimate mixing which

takes place between the water and the radioactive solids is

accomplished by the convection currents of the mushroom cloud at

an altitude between 6000 to 10,000 feet. The radioactive aerosol

slides down the sides of the column under the influence of gravity at

a very rapid rate as a result of a phenomenon called "bulk

subsidence". In bulk subsidence, the aerosol behaves like a

homogeneous fluid. When it reaches the water, it billows and forms

waves and is laterally transported away from the column, in all

directions, spreading its poison along the surface of the water.

The phenomenon of bulk subsidence was not completely understood

at the time of the Bikini test, and at first scientists thought that the

column consisted only of water. Photographic evidence later showed

that the column was largely an aerosol. Due to the research of P.A.

Leighton of Stanford, it became known that these aerosol drops, in

suspension, fall under the influence of gravity at rates up to 10,000

times greater than such aerosol particles normally fall. This is the

aerological mechanism which delivers the material almost immediately

back to the base of the column and which created the radiological

havoc at Bikini. The rate of fall of the aerosol is what is important.

The possibility has been raised that if the air were dryer at the

altitudes at which the fission products and the water condense back

into liquid and solid form again, about 6000 feet, the base surge

would not be formed. The water droplets would simply evaporate into

the air, and there would exist no aerosol to be accelerated downward

in accordance with Leighton's bulk subsidence. What would exist

then would be the slower fallout scenario typical of an air burst

distributing radioactivity over a large, downwind area.

Over Port Chicago the night of the explosion at 6000 to 8000 feet,

the relative humidity was less than 15 percent. This record was from

Oakland, the nearest reporting station. The reading was taken about

2-1/2 hours before the explosion. This was a very low relative

humidity. The Bikini test aerological data from several Navy and

hydrographic observation ships were requested months ago by the

Sentinel from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric

Administration. The Sentinel has been informed that these documents

have been removed from their files and are unavailable. However, the

Administration did send sample pilot balloon humidity data for other

years from Kwajalein Island which they claim are typical for July, and

these show high humidity at 6000 feet, approximately 75 percent.

If the base surge did not occur at Port Chicago as a result of the

shallowness of the water and the dryness of the atmosphere, then

this would have prevented much of the delivery of the radiological

"witches brew" back to the vicinity of the detonation, including the

long-lived and dangerous fission products of the bomb.

Documented evidence from the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos,

four years of Sentinel investigation, the development and test of the

Mark II in July 1944, the low yield of the Mark II, and the bomb

placement in respect to the water level and weather conditions,

would conclude the explosion at Port Chicago was nuclear which

could have been triggered with a munitions explosion.

1 The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone and Philip J.

Dolan, ed., U.S. Department of Defense, 1977.

2 Memorandum to Dr. Vannevar Bush from George Kistiakowsky On

the Destructive Action of Uranium Bombs, December 26, 1941.

Declassified.

3 The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone and Philip J.

Dolan, ed., U.S. Department of Defense, 1977.

4 Ships Sink Instantly from Sight, Edwin Emery Contra Costa

Gazatee, July 18, 1944.

5 Second Preliminary Report, Port Chicago by Captain William S.

Parsons, USN.

6 Final Report Port Chicago , Los Alamos Archives by Captain William

S. Parsons, USN.

7 Death Tool In Port Chicago Blast Reaches 388, Jack McDowell,

Vallejo Times Herald, July 19, 1944.

8 Chicago Explosion, to Admiral Purnell, 4 August, 1944 by Capt.

William S. Parsons, USN, Third Preliminary Report Admiral Purnell.

9 The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone and Philip J.

Dolan, ed., U.S. Department of Defense, 1977.

10 Port Chicago: Analysis of Damage Due to Air Blast and Earth

Shock, The Story of the U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II,

Toronto and New York, Rinehart & Company, 1963, by Ensign

George T. Reynolds. Memorandum to Captain W.S. Parsons.

11 Martinez Turned Into Shambles by Ralph Turner, July 18, 1944

Vallejo Times Herald.

1

The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone, U.S.

Department of Defense, 1964.

Ibid.

The Effects of Atomic Weapons by J.O. Hirschfelder, The Combat

Press, 1950.

5Memorandums, Damage to Government Property, Port Chicago, by

F.C. Bedell, Navy Yard Mare Island, August 1, 1944.

Ibid

Royal Commission report into the British Nuclear Tests in Australia,

Volumes One and Two, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing

Service, Canberra, 1985.

8The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone, U.S.

Department of Defense, 1964.

No Share of Glory, by Robert E. Pearson, Challenge, Inc., 1964.

10Contra Costa Gazette, July 22, 1944.

1The Secret Fallout, by Ernest J. Sternglass, McGraw-Hill, 1972.

12The Effects of Atomic Weapons by J.O. Hirschfelder, The Combat

Press, 1950.

3The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone, U.S.

Department of Defense, 1964.

4Ibid.

5Ibid.

6No Place To Hide, by David Bradley, Little Brown and Company,

1948.

7Proving Ground, by Neal O. Hines, University of Washington Press,

1962.

18Bikini, Witches Brew, by Jonathan M. Wesigall, Naval Institute

Proceedings..

9No Place To Hide, by David Bradley, Little Brown and Company,

1948.

20Ibid.

1Bikini, Witches Brew, by Jonathan M. Wesigall, Naval Institute

Proceedings..

2Killing Our Own, by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon,

Delta, 1982.

3No Place To Hide, by David Bradley, Little Brown and Company,

1948.

4Killing Our Own, by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon,

Delta, 1982.

[Steven Gaal]

(APOLOGIES BUT INSTEAD OF REMOVING POST # 5 ,FOR I COULDNT REFORMAT FONT OR COLOR VIA ITS CODING repeat below)

Port Chicago - 50 Years: was it an atomic blast?

By David Caul and Susan Todd

(EDITOR'S NOTE: In January 1990, the Napa Sentinel commenced a series of articles concerning the explosion at Port Chicago in San Francisco Bay on July 17, 1944. Several other articles were produced to support the theory that the explosion was nuclear. Over the years, the Sentinel has been challenged on one point of the articles: If it was a nuclear explosion what about the radiation? For several years our research team has devoted itself to searching for records of other atomic explosions of the era to determine the levels of radiation association with those tests. This four part article addresses the question of radiation at Port Chicago.)

DESCRIPTION OF THE BLAST On the night of July 17, 1944, a huge explosion occurred aboard one of the two merchant ships docked at the Port Chicago Magazine located on the Suisun Bay, 11 miles upstream from Vallejo. Clocks in the town of Port Chicago, over a mile away, were stopped by the shock waves at 10:19 p.m. The enormity of the blast was shown by the 3.5 magnitude earthquake registered as far away as Bonner's Ferry, Nevada. The explosion's fire ball, as observed by pilots flying over the area, towered in the night sky to an altitude of 8000 or 9,000 feet before being extinguished. Observers reported a blinding flash "...that literally filled the sky with flame." It was followed "...by other flashes of less intensity, and then a dull, very odd orangish glow that seemed to hang in the sky for as long as ten or fifteen minutes, then it all went black". Two ships, thousands of feet from surface zero, navigating the narrow Roe Island Channel, were reported by their crews as being lifted up from the surface of the water by the underwater shockwaves bouncing off the river bottom. Their first impressions were that they had run aground. One of these ships, the 210-foot Redline tanker had the top of its superstructure completely ripped off by the air blast. Part of the deck was lifted. All doors were blown in. All tanks were ruptured. All of the ships bulkheads were blown in, one being forced completely out of the ship through the opposite side. All of this was the result of air shockwaves. The ship turned around and sank in shallow water, riddled with shrapnel. Two 450 cargo ships were berthed facing opposite directions on the finger pier at Port Chicago: The Quinault Victory, newly arrived and as yet not loaded, and the E. A. Bryan, squatting low in the water with her cargo of munitions. The main explosion had occurred aboard the E. A. Bryan, which was completely vaporized. No identifiable part of it was ever found,. Different eyewitness reports from the crews of the ships in the channel later litanized the 450 foot, 7,000 ton Quinault Victory's final ordeal:

• Her bow end, from the foremost mast forward, was lifted high up into the air.
• Pieces of docking were seen in the air with pilings attached.
• A funnel-shaped area was observed 200 feet in the air, on top of which was the bow of one of the ships with mast attached.

All that remained of the Quinault was sixty feet of keel with propeller attached, pushed 1,000 feet out into the channel. Parts of the bodies of the Navy work battalion and their officers, as well as those of the ships’ Merchant Marine crews and Navy Armed Guards were found on Roe Island, across the channel, almost a mile away, many blown there as human missiles by the force of the explosion. In addition there were many heavy pieces of railroad cars and thick ship plating found on the island. The crater on the river bottom was, at its deepest, 27 feet. At least 10 feet of this was mud, which is more difficult to cavitate than soft rock. The crater was approximately 700 feet long and three hundred feet wide. The explosion, which took place below the water line of the E.A. Bryan, occurred at an average depth of 15 feet below the surface. With the flooding tide, the water was over 33 feet deep. Thus, the force of the blast had to remove an enormous amount of water before it could even get to the bottom, and once it did, it still removed 27 feet of soft rock and mud. In culling over the various newspaper accounts and eyewitness reports of the Port Chicago explosion, no phenomena seems more ubiquitous than the white flash. The Napa Journal description of July 21, 1944, is typical, though from the perspective of 23 miles away: "Plainly visible here was the towering pillar of flame that flared into the southern sky. The hills of the Napa Valley were momentarily illuminated as by sunlight." Scores of persons, convinced that an earthquake was imminent, ran from their homes in their night clothes. On land, to the south of the disaster, the buildings of the Naval Base suffered damage beyond repair. All buildings in the town of Port Chicago, which 1was a mile to a mile and a half from the explosion, were damaged seriously. Ten per cent were damaged beyond repair. Fifty percent were uninhabitable due to being knocked off their foundations. The bridge crossing the Carquinez Straights was rocked violently as described by passengers crossing the bridge on a bus. All the downtown store windows were shattered in Vallejo, 22 miles away.1 Mare Island suffered considerable damage from the explosion, with some streets being littered with as much as two inches of glass. The explosion which vaporized the Liberty Ship E. A. Bryan and blew to bits all but a small section of the keel of the other ship, the Quinault Victory. It also killed 320 men and destroyed the Port Chicago base, a critical munitions facility supplying the Pacific War. Today, we know Port Chicago as the Concord Naval Weapons Station, a sprawling 5500 acre Navy complex extending over the hills from the Suisun Bay into Clayton Valley, near Concord. The official theory of the explosion maintains that 1.5 kilotons of war munitions containing TNT and Torpex, placed on the pier and in the holds of the Liberty ship E.A. Bryan, were accidentally detonated all at once -"highorder". There is disagreement between the government damage reports on the size of the blast. The U.S. Army/Navy Safety Board Report, Technical Paper #6 reports the yield of the Port Chicago explosion as 2.13 kilotons, which is in excess of the conventional explosives inventoried aboard the E.A. Bryan. The Naval Court of Inquiry came to the conclusion that the accidental detonation was caused by several factors, including:

• War-induced oversized work load and pressure on the men.
• Incompetency of the officers at the base.
• The Base Commandant's promotion of competition among loading officers.
• Gross violation of safety precautions.

Various articles reported in the Sentinel by researcher Peter Vogel and David Caul, have outlined the entire history of the explosion, of the dawn of the nuclear age, of the prototype atomic bombs that existed and of correspondence and official reports concerning atomic testing, Los Alamos and Port Chicago. We would refer readers to those various articles for background as well as Mr. Vogel’s 1982 Black Scholar article, "The Las Wave From Port Chicago," and will not repeat that material in this series. The first concept of an atomic bomb was that it would be necessary to place it on a naval vessel and send it into the port of the enemy. In 1944, no strategic aircraft or airfield was available that could be used for delivery of an atomic bomb. At the time of the Port Chicago explosion the United States involvement in the Pacific war was largely focused on maritime battles and the need for a "port buster" was of the highest importance. Scientists at Los Alamos had an exquisite interest in determining the lethal or sinking ranges of all types of surface vessels and submerged submarines for nuclear bombs detonated under water. This concern is very prominent in the first edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1950. There were two striking advantages in detonating atomic bombs in the water as port-busters:

• A bomb which was detonated under water could be a ton lighter because it would not require a heavy tamper. This lightness would enable it to be carried by lighter, more maneuverable aircraft
• A water detonation would not subject the crew of the drop plane to radiation and heat because the water would act as a shield.

Accordingly, the bomb would not have to be dropped from 30,000 feet, a technology which was not available in the summer of 1944. The Enola Gay, by Thomas and Witts documents the timetable of the development of high altitude bombing techniques. As far back as 1943, the High Military Policy Committee, the board of directors of the Manhattan Project, had chosen the Japanese fleet concentrations in the harbor at Truk in Micronesia, as the first target for the atomic bomb. Declassified documents from the Manhattan District History, Project Y, from the U.S. Department of Commerce, have been uncovered. The National Technical Information Service, LAMS-2532, Vol. I, December 1961, page 8:13, refers to the "...results of certain underwater tests (performed in 1944)...which had been directed toward achieving the goal of using a nuclear weapon against the Japanese fleet concentration at Truk, in Micronesia." Port Chicago would have been a perfect "blast gauge" for a port-buster type atomic bomb. The height of the fireball, the Wilson condensation ring, and the damage to 14 counties of California, all point to something more insidious than incompetence causing 1.5 kilotons of ammunition to go off all at once. Evidence for the theory includes:

• declassified letters and memoranda with incriminating wording,
• scientists from the Los Alamos Laboratory arriving at the site miraculously early,
• the hidden facts about the test of a bomb called Mark II,
• the white flash and other circumstantial evidence. Some of the counter evidence against the nuclear theory is:
• lack of radiation reports at Port Chicago, and
• the alleged impossibility of supply of enough fuel for even a small bomb in July 1944.

The possibility that the explosion was nuclear but accidentally detonated while being transshipped through Port Chicago on one of the cargo vessels has also been put forward.

Port Chicago: what classified memos said By David Caul and Susan Todd (Part Two of a Four Part Series) Copyright, Napa Sentinel July 15, 1994 Through the Freedom of Information process, dozens of suspicious letters surrounding the Port Chicago explosion have surfaced. A memorandum from Captain William S. Parsons to Major General Groves, director of the Army's activities related to the Manhattan Project, is particularly interesting. Captain Parsons was the deputy director of Los Alamos Laboratory in 1944 and conducted the lab's study of the Port Chicago explosion. The Parsons-Groves memorandum dated 25 September 1944 was his third preliminary report on the Port Chicago explosion. The memorandum read: "I believe that it is necessary at this time to examine the scope of the responsibilities and duties which are imposed by a directive to develop, manufacture and furnish, with the prospect of successful delivery during this war, a weapon of entirely new characteristics. "I divide this mission into three separate parts, which have in common the fact that failure or lateness of any one will surely bar the weapon from the war. "...The fact of the war, and the fact that victory may be in sight in 1944 in Germany, and probably in 1945 in Japan, combine to force concurrent rapid prosecution of (the) . . .work." Later, in the letter, Parsons addressed the proposal on the part of some of the more progressive scientists on the Manhattan Project to test the bomb in the desert instead of using it against the enemy. "This same exaggerated idea of the destruction possibilities of thousand-ton explosions had led to proposals in high and responsible quarters that if we are winning the war anyway, perhaps the best use of the gadget is in a staged field test in an American desert; to which could be invited such foreign observers as the United States desired to impress with our victory over the atom and our potential power to win victories over our future enemies. "The kind of reasoning in the above paragraphs is also attractive in that it disposes of the two really difficult and disagreeable problems; (a) final assembly design and manufacture, and ( military delivery. To have our project culminate in a spectacularly expensive field test in the closing months of the war, or to have it held for such a demonstration after the war, is, in my opinion, one way to invite a political and military fizzle, regardless of the scientific achievement. The principal difficulty with such a demonstration is that it would not be held one thousand feet over Times Square, where the human and material destruction would be obvious, but in an uninhabited desert, where there would be no humans and only sample structures. From my observation of Port Chicago, I can give assurance that the reaction of observers to a desert shot would be one of intense disappointment. Even the crater would be disappointing." Why would Port Chicago be linked with a report on an atomic test? Parsons was concerned that the war might end without the use of the bomb. His first priority was to enter the bomb into the war, before it was too late. In this letter he cancels any suggestion that the use of the bomb must be governed and justified by moral considerations. It becomes obvious that Parsons wants the bomb to demonstrate both the material and the human casualty factors. The human factor Port Chicago was carefully recorded by the damage reports to Los Alamos and to the National Defense Research Committee, which oversaw the Manhattan Project. Port Chicago would have been an ideal area by which to gauge the bomb's effects. A topographical map of the area in 1944 shows the ideal setup. Even the prevailing winds were correct to blow the radioactive debris out over the channel and Honker Bay and deserted marshlands. The nearest downwind populated areas was the tiny town of Fairfield, 20 miles away, surrounded by farmland. There is yet another letter in the paper trail leading back to a suspected nuclear explosion at Port Chicago. This letter was first made public in the Napa Sentinel magazine in February 1994. James Conant, who was a member of the board of directors of the Manhattan Project referred to a full-scale test of the weapon in a letter to General Groves. In the letter he indicated that the secret test occurred shortly before August 1944. The Port Chicago explosion took place on July 17, 1944. The explosion Conant refers to was a year before the Trinity test, which has officially been documented as the first atomic test. The interesting part of Conant's report is that the results of the first atomic test shortly before August 1944 exactly match the damage report Captain Parsons wrote on Port Chicago. The letter states that dwelling houses were damaged in the test. The letter is dated August 17, 1944, one month after the Port Chicago explosion. It is one of the most heavily sanitized, declassified documents on the subject. It is entitled "Report on Visit to Los Alamos." In the name of national security, 50 years later, the censor left only a few sentences intact: "It is agreed that the Mark II should be put on the shelf for the present. If all other implosion methods fail, it could be taken off the shelf and developed for combat use in three to four months time." Conant’s letter continues: "It was agreed that for dwelling houses the area of Class B damage was about as follows for 1000 tons of TNT:

• 90 percent Class B damage = 0.5 miles radius .75 square mile area.
• 10 percent Class B damage 1.5 miles 7.5 square mile.

The emphasis is on the word ‘was’. He states the damage "was" not "would be". This fits the description of the damage at Port Chicago. According to Conant’s letter, the Mark II was a working bomb as of July 1944 and it could have been readied for combat delivery in a few months. Just where the atomic test Conant referred to was held is not stated in the letter. The first page of the letter was censored out. Obviously Conant and Groves had known all along that the test had been held. But what was their motive for keeping it secret. The Mark II is rarely talked about in the literature about nuclear weapons. Surprisingly, the damage to Port Chicago cited by Captain Parson corresponds exactly to that attributed to the Mark II by Conant: 90 percent Class B damage = 0.5 miles radius .75 square mile area. 10 percent Class B damage 1.5 miles 7.5 square mile. Research and Sentinel articles reveal that Los Alamos scientists and engineers were on the scene at Port Chicago the morning after the explosion. These early arrivals of key Los Alamos and Manhattan Project officials to Port Chicago create some suspicion. Captain Parsons visited the site of the Port Chicago explosion twice. One of the explicit purposes of his second visit was to interview air crews flying in the vicinity of the base at the time of the explosion. He was specifically concerned to determine the height of the fireball. The documentation has been extensive in previous Sentinel articles. Now that the foundation has been laid, the next two parts will explain the radiation aspects and comparison to other nuclear tests of the era. Port Chicago: how it compares with other tests By David Caul and Susan Todd Copyright, Napa Sentinel, 1994 Third of a Four Part Series Throughout the years, there have been several critics of the Port Chicago nuclear explosion theory. Among the most noted were the late Russ Coughlan, general manager of KGO TV and his producer Bob Anderson. In their documentary entitled "The Mystery of Port Chicago", they discounted the nuclear theory based on what they believe was the absence of flash burns among victims, temporary blindness and radiation sickness, such as reported from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear explosions produce temperatures on the order of millions of degrees centigrade, whereas conventional explosions generate heat on the order of thousands of degrees. In addition, at the time of a nuclear detonation, intense penetrating radiation emanates from the fireball. This article will present an explanation of how a nuclear explosion at Port Chicago could have features which would prevent flash blindness and flash burns, and also explain how it was that the effects of the radiation exposure on the personnel at the facility would not have been as obvious as KGO indicated. Given the many variables which surround nuclear explosions, such as weather, placement, potential yield, type of device, and topography, it is not always possible to judge in advance what will happen. Therefore, nuclear explosions can be very unique events and do not always duplicate each other. The lack of flash burns and flash blindness or "eclipse blindness" at Port Chicago is consistent with the explosion being nuclear. All of the damage reports cite the center of gravity of the explosion as being 15 feet below the water line of the E.A. Bryan, and, therefore the explosion would have thrown up a large plume of water. This phenomenon, together with the fact that the bomb detonated within one of the holds of the 7500 ton cargo ship, would have sharply attenuated or eliminated the thermal radiation emanating from the fireball within the first few seconds of the explosion. This would have happened in two ways:

• the steel of the ship and the water would have both absorbed the heat, thereby reducing it, acting as a heat sink; and
• the ship and the water would have shielded the thermal radiation from reaching the populated areas. Even clouds, smoke or fog can substantially decrease the thermal radiation from a nuclear flash.

By the time the fire ball had vaporized the ship and risen above the surface of the water, and out of the plume, the spray and debris, the fireball would have cooled to the point that flash burns and blindness would not have occurred. It is interesting to note that even at Hiroshima, where there was nothing to block the thermal radiation, the blink reflex and the recessed position of the eyes helped to prevent flash blindness, and the effect of thermal radiation on the eyes was surprisingly small. The so-called "eclipse blindness" associated with viewing a nuclear explosion results when the intensity of the light uses up all of the eye's supply of visual purple in the retina; blindness then persists for a half an hour or longer, until enough of the substance is produced in the eye to allow vision again. The lack of flash burns and flash blindness at Port Chicago is fairly easily explained by the shielding effect of the water and the ship. Even at Bikini, the underwater explosion was observed without eye protection for the men. Anderson and Coughlan cite in their KGO documentary that the wreckage was conspicuously uncharred and unburned. This, they state, is yet another sign that the explosion was non-nuclear. However, the Los Alamos damage report states that most missiles thrown out by the blast were melted by heat. The Napa News Chronicle reported "great hunks of hot metal" lying all around the vicinity after the explosion. Similar reports are to be found inthe book No Share of Glory by Robert Pearson. Tom Shaw, a Napan who watched the complete progression of the explosion from an apartment one mile away in the town of Port Chicago, told the Sentinel that he observed large, red and white hot pieces of the ship's plating tumbling end over end streaking toward him. These reached him before the blast wave, and so were traveling in excess of the speed of sound. He was able to take it all in before he was knocked to the floor by the explosion. Anderson's and Coughlan's strongest argument against a nuclear thesis rests on a test they performed on pieces of shrapnel they found near the blast site. "We subjected the pieces of shrapnel from the blast to radiation tests." Coughlan and Anderson concluded that the tests showed that the pieces could not have been in an atomic explosion. However, just finding any pieces of metal near the explosion 44 years later does not mean that they came from the ship in which the bomb had detonated. The pieces could have come from the ship which did not contain the bomb, or from one of the boxcars or machinery on the pier. In that case, the test becomes less meaningful. In order for metal to pick up radioactivity, it must have close proximity to the bomb. The likelihood of radioactivity diminishes with distance. Coughlan and Anderson have no way of determining where the pieces came from. Second, they don't say what test they performed on the pieces. If they simply tested for radioactivity, then it is not surprising that the pieces showed none. The British Government detonated a 24 kiloton plutonium bomb at Monte Bello, Australia in October of 1952. The bomb was placed on a Frigate in shallow water and detonated. None of the isolated steel fragments of metal that had been thrown out from the Frigate on to the surrounding islands showed any sign of radioactivity whatsoever after ten years. At Port Chicago, Coughlan and Anderson found no signs of radioactivity in the metal after 44 years, yet they concluded the explosion could not have been nuclear. The shielding and absorption effect by the ship and the plume would also have greatly diminished the nuclear radiation (i.e., gamma, neutron and x-ray), as well as the thermal radiation. This still leaves open the possibility of residual radiation being left in the area, and we will cover that aspect shortly. In August 1990, the Sentinel contacted Ernest Sternglass, professor of Radiology at the University of Pittsburgh specializing in Radiation Physics. Sternglass is well-known for his work on nuclear fallout from bomb tests and nuclear power plants, and its effects on the population, especially children. Dr. Sternglass original reaction in 1990 to the Port Chicago nuclear thesis was negative. He made a comparison between Port Chicago and the Bikini under-water test in 1946. He said that what happened at Bikini would have happened at Port Chicago, since in both cases the bomb would have detonated in water. The radiation problem at the Bikini test was much worse than the Trinity test, or at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, were the bomb was detonated above the surface. At Bikini, immediately after the explosion, the radiation levels were very high in the lagoon and on the target vessels. There were reports of lingering radiation which was difficult to clean from the target ships. Eventually, elevated cancer rates were discovered among the Bikini veterans. (Editor's Note: Dr. Sternglass now feels that it is quite possible that Port Chicago could have been a nuclear explosion.) Taking our cue from Dr. Sternglass, we can ask the following critical question of the Port Chicago nuclear thesis: If a nuclear device had exploded at Port Chicago, and Port Chicago would have been like Bikini, how could the rescue crews, operating both in the water and on land have been able to withstand the radiation that would have permeated the area, especially so soon after the detonation? Army units from Camp Stoneman, eight miles to the east, began arriving at 2 a.m. (the blast was at 10:19 p.m.). Port Chicago was never abandoned, although the Navy immediately began to use the Army facilities at a Richmond dock as a temporary replacement. It would seem from these facts that the Port Chicago explosion was non-nuclear. But a closer examination of the Bikini underwater explosion will show that the harm to the men at Bikini were not initially very obvious. The radiation effects were much more subtle than that. BIKINI EXPERIENCE AND COMPARISON Nuclear explosions present radiation hazards to the public in two fundamentally different ways:

• initial radiation's, which take the form of gamma, x-rays and neutrons coming out of the fireball during the first three seconds of the event; and
• delayed fallout, where radioactivity fission products and debris from the mushroom cloud descend to the earth.

The first type is over in three seconds, the second type lingers on. Both can be intense. Bombs which explode in the air such that the fireball doesn't touch the earth produce high initial radiation from the vicinity of the explosion, surface zero, but the delayed radiation for that area is negligible. Hiroshima and Nagasaki received virtually no fallout from the bombs.11 The delayed fallout descends to the earth later or miles away downwind. Bombs which explode in the water tend to produce no initial radiation hazard, but can leave high levels of delayed fallout in the vicinity of the explosion. This is what happened at Bikini. The radiation left in the Bikini lagoon from the underwater test was much greater than that which was left on the ground at the Trinity test site in New Mexico, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki, or the Bikini-Able aerial test.12 But the water in which the Bikini bomb was placed acted as a shield against the initial radiation.13 In an air burst, as the fire ball cools, the radioactive residues of the weapon condense into extremely small particles which remain suspended in the atmosphere for a long time. ". . . in a low burst, the earth, dust and other debris from the earth's surface are taken up into the fireball, and an increasing proposition of fission (and other radioactivity) products of the nuclear explosion condense into particles of appreciable size.14 These large particles tend to fall out immediately, causing contamination in the area of detonation. Additionally, proximity to water is especially conducive to the deposition of large amounts of radiation near surface zero because the coolness of the water prevents the fireball from rising to as great a height as in the case of an aerial detonation. Radioactive material then tends to fall back more quickly to the base of the explosion rather than to be blown away from the area, falling out over a period of time downwind. It is the delayed fallout that would have been a problem at Port Chicago, just as it was at Bikini, not the initial radiation from the fireball. Some of the "victims" of the Bikini test, the target vessels which were arrayed around the surface zero at various distances were drenched in radioactive substances; there was intense radiation left in the waters of the lagoon. After four days, the authorities at Bikini conceded that the inspection parties were to spend only limited time aboard the doomed vessels because of the radiation. However, the authorities told the press and the men that this precaution was in accordance with a safety factor of 1000. They told the press and the men that they could take a thousand times that much radiation and not be killed. They told them that this was a "peacetime" standard, and that during wartime the standard would be much less. The planners of the Bikini test had been taken by surprise by the lingering radiation. The long-term radiological results of the test had been " . . . either utterly unforeseen, or had been placed in such conjectural terms that its relevance, even to strategic considerations, was not understood". The Navy admitted that ". . .the nature and extent of contamination of the targets was completely unexpected, and no plans had been organized for decontamination measures". Two or three days after the explosion the Navy began to realize this. The Navy had known that there would have been high initial radiation in the area, but they hadn't counted on the delayed fallout contaminating the area in the vicinity of the lagoon. Knowledge of the effects of radiation was scant. "No one yet recognized the greatest danger of atomic warfare, lingering radioactivity..." At first the Navy resorted to old-fashioned methods, crews of men were set to scrubbing down the contaminated ships without any special protection, using "lye, foamite, salt water and soap spread with liberal amounts of Navy profanity. Men were ordered to spend the night on some of the "hot" target ships. Radioactive material was all over the decks, and the men tracked it around and got it on their clothing, hands and faces. Many of the officers thought that the risks could be ignored. It is true that there were no reports of radiation sickness at Port Chicago, however, there were no official reports of radiation sickness at Bikini either, and this was an announced nuclear test. The Bikini tests had showcase-extravaganza status, and monopolized the attention of the world's media for weeks. Port Chicago was unannounced. Only some of the later written accounts of the Bikini test describe military personnel as suffering illness from radiation. These reports took years to reach the public. The first book about Bikini, one which focuses on the radiation problem, asserts clearly that there was no radiation sickness or injury there either. The Veterans Administration was able for years to deny any connection between illness among Navy personnel and Bikini exposure. As of 1981, the VA had turned down "98 percent of all radiation-based claims for atomic veterans", including the Bikini vets arguing that it was impossible to determine whether the maladies in question would have occurred regardless of radiation exposure. And this was so even though everyone knew that the men had participated in an atomic bomb test. From the beginning, the cat was out of the bag at Bikini. But, how easy would it have been to correctly diagnose the radiation sickness and other more subtle nuclear symptoms with this knowledge? If the men had been told, for example, that the explosion at Bikini was from conventional munitions on a ship, they would have looked for other causes for their maladies. And even though they knew they were exposed to the effects of an atomic bomb, it took years for the first claims to be put in. Port Chicago: Epilog - By David Caul and Susan Todd EPILOG Copyright, Napa Sentinel, 1994 In the second article of this series we quoted declassified letters discovered by Peter Vogel. The letters were written by one of the top people in the Manhattan Project and referred to a secret detonation of a low-yield atomic bomb in July 1944, designated the Mark II. The letters were dated shortly after the Port Chicago explosion. Neither the government nor any publication, except the Napa Sentinel, has officially acknowledged either the detonation, or the letters which describe it, and there is strong evidence that the detonation referred to in the letters was actually Port Chicago. The design of the Mark II is an anomaly in the history of U.S. nuclear weapons development. It was a crude, first attempt at making an atomic bomb which operated on the principle of implosion. Understanding how that crude Mark II bomb worked will help us to see an important difference between the Port Chicago radiation situation and that of Bikini. The bomb consisted of a sub-critical hollow tube of uranium contained in another cylinder of molded explosive material. When the cylindrical explosives were detonated, the hollow tube of uranium was crushed into a critical mass, and fission took place. According to Peter Vogel, the uranium in the hollow cylinder was enriched to less than 30 percent U-235, the rest being U-238. The Hiroshima bomb, which detonated over Japan, was enriched up to 80 percent. The Mark II's low fuel enrichment made it quite different from the uranium bomb which was dropped on Japan. However, there was another striking difference: It used a moderator, like a nuclear reactor, and this is the secret of how it was able to operate on such poorly enriched uranium. What fissions in an atom bomb or a nuclear reactor is uranium U-235. Natural uranium contains only .7 percent of this isotope, the rest being U-238, which cannot fission except under very special circumstances. A process of "enrichment" is used to increase the percentage of U-235, and it is very slow and costly; this was especially true in 1944. Nuclear reactors are enriched up to 3 percent, but uranium bombs generally contain up to 80 percent. Reactors can run on such lean enrichment diets because their uranium fuel is placed in a moderator, such as hydrogen, paraffin or graphite. There are two advantages in slowing down the neutrons. First, slow neutrons have the highest probability of producing fission of the U-235 fuel. Second, uranium which is not highly enriched, containing larger amounts of U-238, absorbs or "captures" too many of the neutrons needed for fission. This capturing process hinders the fission process. It takes neutrons out of circulation. When a neutron enters a U-238 nucleus, the U-238 is changed into plutonium through a series of transmutations. However, U-238 can only capture neutrons traveling at the intermediate speeds. By slowing down the flow of neutrons through the use of a moderator, the neutrons can still produce fission because they are free from capture by the U-238. U-238 is a contaminate which poisons the atomic reaction by preventing fission. One way to deal with the problem is called "enrichment", removing the U-238 from the fuel leaving U-235. The fuel of the Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, under this slow and costly process. Another way is to remove as much U-238 as is practical, and use slow neutrons so that the U-238 which remains is no longer a poison to the reaction. This is what the Mark II design did. The moderator was created in the Mark II by compacting the uranium fuel and forming it into a plastic hydride. The hydrogen in the plastic slowed down the flow of neutrons. Layers of hydrogen containing paraffin were also used. This unique design was a response to a problem of the times: scarcity of higher enriched uranium. Much enriched uranium was needed to run the reactors which were breeding the plutonium at Hanford, plutonium that would fuel later bombs. Because the Mark II design included a moderator and used fuel which was enriched to less than 30 percent, it was somewhere in between a nuclear reactor and a nuclear bomb. By making as much of the fuel as possible go critical in a very short period of time, it was like a bomb. By using a moderator at the same time, it was like a reactor. Subsequent developments in enrichment made the Mark II obsolete. However, at the time, the Mark II provided a detour around the enrichment problem. This ingenious device, however, was not at all efficient. The simple geometry of explosives in the shape of a pipe was imperfect in squeezing the fuel into a critical mass. Sections of the precious fuel squirted out the ends, escaped fission and were wasted. The squeezing wasn't fast enough. Also, though slowing the neutrons reduced parasitic capture by the U-238, the fuel took too long to fission. Slowing down the fission process is desirable in a nuclear reactor, speeding up the process is desirable in a bomb. Inspite of this, for the mark II the fuel tended to blow part before most of it could undergo fission. The neutrons took "...so long to act that only a feeble explosion would result." In a non-moderated bomb, all of the neutrons are liberated within less than a millionth of a second. Anything less than a kiloton was regarded as "feeble" by the bomb designers whose expectations ranged in the tens of kilotons. In later bombs, such as Fat Man, a spherical configuration replaced the "pipe bomb" design and the "perfect squeeze" of the fuel was finally accomplished. Before that, however, the inefficient Mark II was the United States' only nuclear option. It was reliable, but its yield was less than a kiloton. The testing and putting on the shelf of the Mark II enabled Los Alamos to hedge their bets on the untested Little Boy, and the drawing board stage Fat Man. After the Port Chicago explosion, James B. Conant, a critical figure in the development of a nuclear bomb, wrote a memorandum suggesting putting the Mark II on the shelf after a July 1944 test, a test never recorded in any public annals, but paralleling the date of the Port Chicago explosion. Conant wanted to commence work on the Mark III. The Mark II contained about five kilograms of fuel, and it used that fuel very inefficiently. Much of the uranium did not undergo fission, and was squeezed or blown out of the critical mass and melted, avoiding fission. Even when a bomb is "efficient", only one percent of the fuel actually fissions. The workers, rescue personnel and survey teams at Port Chicago during the days immediately following the explosion would have been exposed to a devil's wish-list of other chemical poisons from vaporizing ships which would have been as serious as unfissioned uranium. Since the Mark II's neutrons were moderated to below capture speeds, there would have been very little transmutation of its U-238 into plutonium, a very serious radiological hazard, especially if inhaled. Its design goes out of its way specifically to prevent the production of plutonium. With only 30 percent enrichment of its fuel, it could not work any other way. Large amounts of the dangerous plutonium were left at the Bikini site, and accounted for a good share of the risk there. The danger from plutonium lies in the tendency of the element to concentrate in the bone where the continuous emission of alpha particles may cause significant injury. The Bikini bomb fuel consisted entirely of plutonium. Fear of plutonium contamination of the Bikini lagoon was strenuously advanced by Los Alamos as a reason to cancel the Baker test. Because of the way the Mark II worked, this did not happen at Port Chicago. Bikini was not the only underwater bomb test site where plutonium was found to contribute to the radiation risk. On October 3, 1952, the British Government tested a 25 kiloton plutonium bomb on the Monte Bello Islands, off the western coast of Australia. The bomb was placed in a forward hold of the frigate HMS Plym and detonated "Port Chicago style". Plutonium was found scattered over the area, and it was cited as a serious inhalation hazard in a report of the Royal Commission. Approximately 70 percent of Mark II's fuel was U-238 which could not undergo fission. If this unfissioned uranium had contaminated the area in the vicinity of the explosion, it would not have been a serious radiological hazard, but a chemical poison which attacks the kidneys. And more importantly, its radioactivity would not have been apparent in the summer of 1944. In 1943, the Nazis ordered the use of its entire uranium stocks, 1200 metric tons, to substitute in its ammunition because of a shortage of wolframite. The battlefields of Europe became littered with hundreds of tons of uranium shell fragments and bullets, a much larger quantity of uranium than the 10 pounds which would have filtered down over the marshes and waterways adjacent to Port Chicago as a result of the explosion of the Mark II. Yet, Europe has never reported any problems associated with the expenditure of uranium by the Germans. The Port Chicago explosion was very different from the Bikini test in several important respects. First, it occurred in shallow water. Both editions The Effects of Nuclear Weapons states that a shallow water nuclear detonation may not, under certain conditions, severely contaminate the area immediately in the vicinity of surface zero. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons states that a certain minimum depth is necessary to produce significant radiation in the vicinity of the point of detonation. A similar opinion was held by Vannevar Bush, chairman of the Board of the Manhattan Project. The Bikini bomb was placed at 90 feet, the Port Chicago explosion occurred at 15 feet. In addition to this, military people did not regard it as a foregone conclusion that a shallow underwater detonation would contaminate a harbor area to the extent that troop maneuvers would have to be suspended. In an article in the American Meteorological Society, as well as in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, the extreme humidity of the Bikini area is cited as a contributing factor to the contamination of the site of the explosion. Accordingly, high humidity is a necessary condition for severe contamination at the vicinity of surface zero in the case of an under water detonation. It is possible that all phenomena, exactly as observed at the Bikini test, would not occur if an atomic bomb were exploded under water when a dry air mass is present. The main mechanism by which radiation from a nuclear explosion in water is returned to the place of detonation is something called the "base surge". The base surge is a highly radioactive mist which forms at the base of the water column, and which travels outwardly in a ring at a very high speeds. This mist contains lethal radiation and tends to deposit a relatively long-lived radioactive sludge on the surfaces of objects in its path. The manner of formation of the base surge is very important to the issue. When the fireball leaves the water, water is driven upward, following the fireball, as the water comes in to fill the void created by the million degree bubble. The speed of this vertically driven water is over a mile a second at first. It slows rapidly, but will attain a height of 10,000 feet in less than a minute. At 10,000 feet the water and all the bomb residues, including the fission products, the mass of the ship, and whatever has been scavenged from the bottom, are vaporized. In a short time the mixture cools and condenses back into liquid form. Within 10 to 12 seconds the column begins to fall back into the water, much of it in the form of an aerosol. This aerosol or fog is highly radioactive as a result of the particles, which form the nuclei of the droplets, are themselves radioactive. The intimate mixing which takes place between the water and the radioactive solids is accomplished by the convection currents of the mushroom cloud at an altitude between 6000 to 10,000 feet. The radioactive aerosol slides down the sides of the column under the influence of gravity at a very rapid rate as a result of a phenomenon called "bulk subsidence". In bulk subsidence, the aerosol behaves like a homogeneous fluid. When it reaches the water, it billows and forms waves and is laterally transported away from the column, in all directions, spreading its poison along the surface of the water. The phenomenon of bulk subsidence was not completely understood at the time of the Bikini test, and at first scientists thought that the column consisted only of water. Photographic evidence later showed that the column was largely an aerosol. Due to the research of P.A. Leighton of Stanford, it became known that these aerosol drops, in suspension, fall under the influence of gravity at rates up to 10,000 times greater than such aerosol particles normally fall. This is the aerological mechanism which delivers the material almost immediately back to the base of the column and which created the radiological havoc at Bikini. The rate of fall of the aerosol is what is important. The possibility has been raised that if the air were dryer at the altitudes at which the fission products and the water condense back into liquid and solid form again, about 6000 feet, the base surge would not be formed. The water droplets would simply evaporate into the air, and there would exist no aerosol to be accelerated downward in accordance with Leighton's bulk subsidence. What would exist then would be the slower fallout scenario typical of an air burst distributing radioactivity over a large, downwind area. Over Port Chicago the night of the explosion at 6000 to 8000 feet, the relative humidity was less than 15 percent. This record was from Oakland, the nearest reporting station. The reading was taken about 2-1/2 hours before the explosion. This was a very low relative humidity. The Bikini test aerological data from several Navy and hydrographic observation ships were requested months ago by the Sentinel from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. The Sentinel has been informed that these documents have been removed from their files and are unavailable. However, the Administration did send sample pilot balloon humidity data for other years from Kwajalein Island which they claim are typical for July, and these show high humidity at 6000 feet, approximately 75 percent. If the base surge did not occur at Port Chicago as a result of the shallowness of the water and the dryness of the atmosphere, then this would have prevented much of the delivery of the radiological "witches brew" back to the vicinity of the detonation, including the long-lived and dangerous fission products of the bomb. Documented evidence from the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos, four years of investigation, the development and test of the Mark II in July 1944, the low yield of the Mark II, and the bomb placement in respect to the water level and weather conditions, would conclude the explosion at Port Chicago was nuclear and could have been triggered with a munitions explosion.

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[Steven Gaal]

(http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/08/322699.shtml)

A-bomb as a racist bomb: 1944, U.S. mil. explodes 1st a-bomb test on blacks, Port Chicago

While the world is revisiting the Nagasaki atom bomb explosion, let's REMEMBER another important point about how the racist white U.S. elites tested out a-bombs on "blacks" in the USA before they months later dropped it on "yellow people" in Japan.

Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 3, #4 (June-July '96). From the Nexus web page. Originally found in articles written by Robert L. Allen & Peter Vogel
as published in THE BLACK SCHOLAR, Journal of Black Studies & Research, Volume 13, Numbers 2 and 3 - Spring
1982

And following the article, another one that desperately spins a "conspiracy theory" that the U.S. gov't was just accidentally doing this (without much evidence at all to support that conjecture, mostly based on questions like "well, they wouldn't do that would they? sort of arguing. OF COURSE THEY WOULD! The question should be "why wouldn't they?"). The U.S. irradiated the air, released diseases via mosquotes in the USA and tracked how many Americans it kills, force fed people nuclear isotopes secretly in hopitals in the 1940s and earlier and tracked them their entire lives. In short, Port Chicago should be taken with a grain of radioactive salt, i.e., with the huge history of illegal human experimentation by the U.S. on its people in the 20th century. Port Chicago was just another day on the job.
Even in WWII, the people in charge of the U.S. government's military were evil parasites and this story fails to surprise me in the least bit. The Port Chicago Disaster

In 1944, the Port Chicago disaster killed hundreds of Americans in a single blast. Was it an accident, or was it America's first atomic weapons test?

On the night of 17th July 1944, two transport vessels loading ammunition at the Port Chicago (California) naval base on the Sacramento River were suddenly engulfed in a gigantic explosion. The incredible blast wrecked the naval base and heavily damaged the small town of Port Chicago, located 1.5 miles away.

Some 320 American naval personnel were killed instantly. The two ships and the large loading pier were totally annihilated. Several hundred people were injured, and millions of dollars in property damage was caused by the huge blast. Windows were shattered in towns 20 miles away, and the glare of the explosion could be seen in San Francisco, some 35 miles away.

It was the worst home-front disaster of World War II.

Officially, the world's first atomic test explosion occurred on 16th July 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico; but the Port Chicago blast may well have been the world's first atomic detonation, whether accidental or not.

The Ship

The E. A. Bryan, the ship which exploded at Port Chicago, was a 7,212-ton EC-2 Liberty ship commanded by Captain John L. M. Hendricks of San Pedro, California, and operated by Oliver J. Olson & Co., San Francisco. It was built and launched at the Kaiser Steel shipyard in Richmond, California, in March 1944. She made a maiden voyage to the South Pacific and then was ordered into the US Navy's Alameda Shipyards where the five-ton (10,000-pound maximum load) booms and gear on the no. 1 and no. 5 holds were removed and replaced with 10-ton booms and gear.

It then docked at Port Chicago on 13th July 1944.

At 8:00 a.m. on 14th July, naval personnel began loading ammunition.

The E. A. Bryan had been moored at Port Chicago for four days, taking on ammunition and explosives night and day. Some 98 men of Division Three were hard at work loading the Bryan, and by 10:00 p.m. on 17th July the ship was loaded with some 4,600 tons of munitions including 1,780 tons of high explosives.

The second ship, the Quinalt Victory, was brand new; it was preparing for its maiden voyage. The Quinalt Victory had moored at Port Chicago at about 6:00 p.m. on the evening of 17th July. Some 102 men of the Sixth Division, many of whom had only recently arrived at Port Chicago, were busy rigging the ship in preparation for loading of ammunition which was due to begin by midnight.

In addition to the enlisted men present, there were nine Navy officers, 67 members of the crews of the two ships along with an Armed Guard detail of 29 men, five crew members of a Coast Guard fire barge, a Marine sentry and a number of civilian employees. The pier was congested with men, equipment, a locomotive, 16 railroad boxcars, and about 430 tons of bombs and projectiles waiting to be loaded.

Most of the enlisted men, upon first arriving at Port Chicago, were quite fearful of the explosives they were expected to handle. But, over time, many of the men simply accommodated themselves to the work situation by discounting the risk of an explosion. Most men readily accepted the officers' assurances that the bombs could not explode because they had no detonators.

The Explosion

Just before 10:20 p.m., a massive explosion occurred at the pier. To some observers it appeared that two explosions, only a few seconds apart, occurred: a first and smaller blast was felt; this was followed quickly by a cataclysmic explosion as the E. A. Bryan went off like one gigantic bomb, sending a column of fire and smoke more than 12,000 feet into the night sky.

Everyone on the pier and aboard the two ships was killed instantly: some 320 men, 200 of whom were black enlisted men. Very few intact bodies were recovered. Another 390 military and civilian personnel were injured, including 226 black enlisted men.

This single, stunning disaster accounted for almost one-fifth of all black naval casualties during the whole of World War II. Property damage, military and civilian, was estimated at more than US$12 million.

The E. A. Bryan was literally blown to bits. Very little of its wreckage was ever found. The Quinalt Victory was lifted clear out of the water by the blast, turned around and broken into pieces. The largest piece of the Quinalt Victory which remained after the explosion was a 65-foot section of the keel, its propeller attached, which protruded from the bay at low tide, 1,000 feet from its original position.

There was at least one 12-ton diesel locomotive operating on the pier at the time of the explosion. Not a single piece of the locomotive car was ever identified: the locomotive simply vanished.

In the river stream, several small boats half a mile distant from the pier reported being hit by a 30-foot wall of water.

In an interview, one of the men described his experience of the disaster:

I was reading a letter from home. Suddenly there were two explosions. The first one knocked me clean off... I found myself flying toward the wall. I just threw up my hands like this, then I hit the wall. Then the next one came right behind that. Phoom! Knocked me back on the other side. Men were screaming, the lights went out and glass was flying all over the place. I got out to the door. Everybody was... that thing had... the whole building was turned around, caving in. We were a mile and a half away from the ships. And so the first thing that came to my mind, I said, 'Jesus Christ, the Japs have hit!' I could have sworn they were out there pounding us with warships or bombing us or something. But one of the officers was shouting, 'It's the ships! It's the ships!' So we jumped in one of the trucks and we said, 'Let's go down there, see if we can help.' We got halfway down there on the truck and stopped. Guys were shouting at the driver from the back of the truck, 'Go on down. What the hell are you staying up here for?' The driver says, 'Can't go no further.' See, there wasn't no more dock. Wasn't no railroad. Wasn't no ships. And the water just came right up to... all the way back. The driver couldn't go no further. Just as calm and peaceful. I didn't even see any smoke.

Rescue assistance was rushed from nearby towns and other military bases. The town of Port Chicago was heavily damaged by the explosion but fortunately none of its citizens was killed, although many suffered injuries.

During the night and early morning, the injured were removed to hospitals, and many of the black enlisted men were evacuated to nearby stations, mainly to Camp Shoemaker in Oakland. Others remained at Port Chicago to clear away debris and search for what could be found of bodies.

The search for bodies was grim work. One survivor recalled the experience:

I was there the next morning. We went back to the dock. Man, it was awful; that was a sight. You'd see a shoe with a foot in it, and then you'd remember how you'd joked about who was gonna be the first one out of the hold. You'd see a head floating across the water --just the head --or an arm. Bodies... just awful.

Some 200 black enlisted men volunteered to remain at the base and help with the clean-up operation.

Three days after the disaster, Captain Merrill T. Kinne, officer-in-charge of Port Chicago, issued a statement praising the black enlisted men for their behavior during the disaster. Stating that the men acquitted themselves with "great credit," he added, "Under those emergency conditions, regular members of our complement and volunteers from Mare Island displayed creditable coolness and bravery."

The Aftermath

Four days after the Port Chicago disaster, on 21st July 1944 a Naval Court of Inquiry was convened to "inquire into the circumstances attending the explosion." The inquiry was to establish the facts of the situation, and the Court was to arrive at an opinion concerning the cause or causes of the disaster. The inquiry lasted 39 days, and some 125 witnesses were called to testify.

However, only five black witnesses were called to testify -- none from the group that would later resist returning to work because of unsafe practices. The Court heard testimony from survivors and eyewitnesses to the explosion, other Port Chicago personnel, ordnance experts, inspectors who checked the ships before loading, and others.

The question of Captain Kinne's tonnage figures blackboard, and the competition it encouraged, came up during the proceedings. Kinne attempted to justify this as simply an extension of the Navy's procedure of competition in target practice. He contended that it did not negatively impact on safety and implied that junior officers who said it did, did not know what they were talking about.

The Court also heard testimony concerning the fueling of the vessels, possible sabotage, defects in the bombs, problems with the winches and other equipment, rough handling by the enlisted men, and organizational problems at Port Chicago.

But the specific cause of the explosion was never officially established by the Court of Inquiry. Anyone in a position to have actually seen what caused the explosion did not live to tell about it.

Although there was testimony before the Court about competition in loading, this was not listed by the Court (or the Judge Advocate) as in any way a cause of the explosion (although the court saw fit to recommend that, in future, "the loading of explosives should never be a matter of competition" -- a small slap on the hands of the officers).

Thus, the Court of Inquiry in effect cleared the officers-in- charge of any responsibility for the disaster, and in so far as any human cause was invoked, the burden of blame was laid on the shoulders of the black enlisted men who died in the explosion.

The Mutiny

After the explosion, many of the surviving black sailors were transferred to nearby Camp Shoemaker where they remained until 31st July; then the Fourth and Eighth Divisions were transferred to naval barracks in Vallejo near Mare Island. During this period, the men were assigned barracks duties but no ship-loading was assigned. Another group, the Second Division, which was also at Camp Shoemaker until 31st July, returned to Port Chicago to help with the cleaning up and rebuilding of the base.

Many of the men were in a state of shock, troubled by the vivid memory of the horrible explosion in which so many of their friends had died. All were extremely nervous and jumpy. "Everybody was scared," one survivor recalled. "If somebody dropped a box or slammed a door, people be jumping around like crazy. Everybody was still nervous."

There was no psychiatric counseling or medical screening of the men except for those who were obviously physically injured. The men's anxiety was probably made worse by the fact that they did not know what caused the explosion. Rumor and speculation were rife. Some thought it was caused by an accident, some suspected sabotage, others did not know what to think. Apparently the men were not informed that the Navy was conducting an investigation. Certainly, none of those who would later be involved in the work stoppage was called to testify at the Court of Inquiry.

The men talked among themselves. They had not yet been ordered back to their regular duty and no one knew what would happen next, but many of them hoped they would be transferred to other stations or to ships.

Many of the survivors expected to be granted survivors' leaves to visit their families before being reassigned to regular duties. But such leaves were not granted, creating a major grievance. Even men who had been hospitalized with injuries were not granted leaves.

The survivors and new personnel expressed their opposition to returning to loading ammunition, citing the possibility of another explosion. The first confrontation occurred on 9th August. A ship had come into Mare Island to be loaded with ammunition, and the Second, Fourth and Eighth Divisions, 328 men, were ordered out to the loading pier. The great majority of the men balked, and eventually 258 men were arrested and confined for three days on a barge tied to the pier. Officers told the men they faced serious charges, including mutiny for which they could be executed. They were also being threatened by guards with being summarily shot.

In early September, 50 men were selected as the ring-leaders and charged with mutiny. On 24th October 1944, after only 80 minutes of deliberation by a specially convened military court, all 50 men were found guilty of mutiny. Ten were sentenced to 15 years in prison, 24 sentenced to 12 years, 11 sentenced to 10 years, and five sentenced to eight years. All were to be dishonorably discharged from the Navy.

After a massive outcry over the next year, in January 1946, 47 of the Port Chicago men were released from prison and exiled for one year overseas before returning to their families.

Of the Navy personnel who died in the blast, most -- some 200 ammunition-loaders -- were black. Indeed, every man handling ammunition at Port Chicago was black, and every commissioned officer was white. This was the standard operating procedure in the segregated Navy at that time.

Development of the Uranium Bomb

About 400 to 600 pages of reports and memoranda on Port Chicago are held at the Los Alamos (Manhattan Project) Laboratories. [And why would Los Alamos be interested in a Port Chicago blast, hmnm?] They were declassified in 1981. The most substantial record of the accident was prepared by US Navy Captain William J. Parsons and transmitted to US Rear Admiral W. R. Purnell, member of the Atomic Bomb Military Policy Committee and Parsons' superior officer. [And who is this Parsons, who prepared the Los Alamos report about Port Chicago explosition damage?]

Parsons is credited with designing the ordnance for the first atomic bomb and bringing it to battle-ready status. He was assigned to Los Alamos and named Deputy Director under J. Robert Oppenheimer and Division Leader for the Ordnance Engineering Division established in June 1943. They developed, designed and constructed the uranium-235 gun-bomb used on Hiroshima.

Immediately after the Port Chicago disaster, Captain Parsons was elevated to the rank of Commodore, USN.

He was subsequently the bombing officer aboard the B-29, the Enola Gay, which dropped the U-235 bomb on Hiroshima. After Hiroshima, Parsons was elevated to the rank of Rear Admiral, US Navy.

Parsons was a member of the LeMay Subcommittee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff which became the Joint Crossroads Committee in 1946. He was Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Special Weapons prior to his appointment as Chairperson of the Joint Crossroads Committee which planned the Bikini Atoll tests. He was also Deputy Task Force Commander for Technical Direction of the Bikini tests. Parsons died in 1952.

Specifications for the U-235 gun-bomb used at Hiroshima were complete by February 1944, according to Volume I of the Manhattan District History.

Hardware for at least three uranium-235 guns was ordered at the end of March 1944. According to the US Department of Energy Oak Ridge records, 74 kilograms of U-235 was available by December 1943, 93 kg by December 1944 and 289 kg by December 1945. The uranium-235 gun-bomb weighed about 9,000 pounds when assembled.

[Port Chicago a-bomb test was 17th July, 1944. Within two weeks of the Port Chicago test, and Los Alamos's Parsons' report on Port Chicago blast,...]..[e]ffective 1st August 1944, Los Alamos Laboratories were reorganized, all work on the U-235 gun-bomb was curtailed, and efforts were concentrated on the plutonium-239 Nagasaki bomb.

The Government's Story

The US Government claimed that 1,780 tons of high-explosive TNT-equivalent exploded spontaneously at Port Chicago. (This is in contrast to the two previous ship explosions, Mont Blanc in Halifax in 1917, and SS Fort Stikine in Bombay in 1944, which followed shipboard fires.) The government claimed there was not enough uranium-235 available for a bomb. This is now known to have been a lie, as noted above. According to the declassified Oak Ridge documents, 15.5 kilograms of U-235 is needed for a [1944] gun-bomb. The December 1943 inventory was 74 kg of U-235, and in December 1994, six months after Port Chicago, it was 93 kg.

If a nuclear weapon was detonated at Port Chicago, it is likely to have been one of the U-235 gun-bombs built after March 1944.

The Evidence for an Atomic Explosion

The force of the blast was greater than the 1,780 tons of high explosives could have caused, when one considers the total disintegration of the ship, the size of the blast crater, the tidal wave, the destruction of the Quinalt Victory, the 12-ton locomotive, etc.

Eyewitnesses reported "an enormous blinding incandescent."

The Navy reported "the first flash was brilliant white," such as is now known to be characteristic of nuclear explosions which achieve several tens of millions of degrees Centigrade in milliseconds.

Conventional explosives reach a maximum of 5,000 degrees Centigrade and do not give off a white flash except when mixed with magnesium. There was no magnesium on the list of explosives loaded onto the Bryan.

The white flash occurs with atomic bombs of five kilotons and greater.

The Port Chicago disaster gave rise to a Wilson condensation cloud like those at Bikini -- now known to be characteristic of atomic bombs detonated in vapor-laden atmospheres.

The seismic records show a very rapid detonation not characteristic of conventional explosions but the signature of atomic explosions. There was a typical nuclear fire ball.

The Film

The Navy has a film record of the disaster at its Concord Naval Weapons Station.

After being challenged, the Navy claimed this was a Hollywood simulation of a miniature explosion. The film shows a typical nuclear explosion, which would have been hard to simulate. According the Navy, the film was created to support their argument to the US Congress sometime in the 1960s that the remains of the town of Port Chicago be purchased by the Navy and incorporated into the Concord Naval Weapons Station as a buffer zone in the event of another large explosion.

Significantly, the Navy did not claim the film was a re-creation until after it was suggested that the film could be the record of a nuclear detonation.

However, Dan Tikalsky, public affairs chief at Concord, told Peter Vogel, writing for The Black Scholar magazine, that the film was a nitrate-base film, which would require the film to have been produced prior to 1950 when nitrate-base film was replaced with non-explosive cellulose-base film.

Peter Vogel wrote in the Spring 1982 edition of The Black Scholar:

Based on viewing an edited video copy of that film which was made available to me, I have concluded that the film records, in every detail, the progression of the actual explosion of July 17, 1944 at Port Chicago. For example, early frames of the film suggest a record of the expansion of the Wilson condensation cloud during which the formation of the ball of fire is obscured. Furthermore, the movements exhibited by several large, independent fragments of the explosion over time compared to the speed of the explosion itself are evidence of the very large distances those fragments travelled during the course of the film sequence.

It is obvious, of course, that only an intentional film record of the blast could have been made since the probability of having, by chance, a motion picture camera rolling and pointed in the right direction at the right time at night is exceedingly remote.

If the explosion was filmed at the Port Chicago site, it would follow that the explosion was planned and anticipated.

The July 1944 blast caused a crater 66 feet deep, 300 feet wide and 700 feet long in the river bottom. A five-kiloton nuclear bomb on the surface of wet soil creates a crater 53 feet deep and 132 feet in diameter. Some of the blast was absorbed by the ship's hull, so it may have exceeded five kilotons.

Residual radiation exposures in this area are unknown, as Port Chicago was used also as a decontamination port for ships exposed to nuclear blasts in the Marshall Islands.

Los Alamos Laboratories have an inventory of all munitions loaded onto the Bryan before the disaster. For 18th July 1944, there are two empty boxcars, DLW44755 and GN46324, listed with an asterisk. The asterisk refers to a note at the bottom of the page: "Papers showing that these cars were loaded we destroyed, so cars do not show on attach[ed] list." These may have been the cars which carried two parts of the uranium-235 gun.

Conclusion

After examination of the historical evidence, the testimonials of survivors and eyewitnesses, the subsequent investigations as well as the film record, it is hard not to reach the conclusion that the blast at Port Chicago was in fact an atomic explosion -- which, if so, would make it the world's first atomic detonation.

What really needs to be investigated further is whether or not this device was deliberately detonated by the military, using low-ranking (black) personnel as guinea pigs to test its effects.

Primary Sources of History

There are two primary sources, The Los Alamos Project, Volumes I and II (distribution, 1961), which contains the official history of the Manhattan Project, code-name for the atomic bomb program in World War II, and a Los Alamos declassified document entitled "History of the 10,000-ton Gadget," which dates from about September 1944.

Manhattan District History-Project Y: The Los Alamos Project, Volumes I and II, LAMS-2532, Los Alamos, Paragraph 11:20, refers to work accomplished at Los Alamos following 1st August 1944 in describing the process of an atomic explosion. It is almost identical with the Los Alamos document, "History of the 10,000-ton Gadget," procured by Peter Vogel, a Santa Fe historian.

Both appear to describe an actual nuclear explosion [which "officially" had yet to occur until 1945].

Joseph O. Hirschfelder (later of University of Wisconsin at Madison) was director of the project at Los Alamos. Paragraph 11:20 of the Manhattan District History (supposedly prepared in November 1944) reads:

Much more extensive investigation of the behavior and effects of a nuclear explosion were made during this period than had been possible before, tracing the history of the process from the initial expansion of the active material and tamper [Tuballoy, an inert neutron-reflective material] through the final stages. These investigations included the formation of the shock wave in the air, the radiation history of the early stages of the explosion, the formation of the ball of fire, the attenuation of the blast wave in air at greater distances, and the effects of blasts and radiations of [sic] human beings and structures. General responsibility for this work was given to Group T-7, with the advice and assistance of [the British Mission consultant] W. G. Penney.

Los Alamos Laboratories Theoretical Division Group T-7 (Damage) was formed in November 1944 and had been the former Group O-5 (Calculations) of the Ordnance Division. As was noted, William Parsons was the Division Leader for Ordnance. He reported to J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Both O-5 and T-7 were headed by Hirschfelder. The responsibility of G-7 was to complete the earlier investigations of damage and of the general phenomenology of a nuclear explosion.

Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 3, #4 (June-July '96).
From the Nexus web page.

Originally found in articles written by Robert L. Allen & Peter Vogel
as published in THE BLACK SCHOLAR, Journal of Black Studies & Research,
Volume 13, Numbers 2 and 3 - Spring 1982

http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/sinope.htm


3.


A MUSHROOM CLOUD

What really happened at Port Chicago in 1944, a nuclear explosion?

By Harry V. Martin

Copyright FreeAmerica and Harry V. Martin, 1995

Everyone within a 50-mile radius of Port Chicago - located in Contra Costa County, felt a tremendous blast. At first most residents in the Bay Area, including Napa County, thought it was an earthquake. The night was Monday, July 17, 1944. Port Chicago has now been named the Concord Naval Weapons Station.

The Hiroshima blast was a year later, in August 1945. Not until the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki blasts was the general population of the world aware of terms such as "bright white light" and "mushroom cloud" in reference to a military explosion.

The coincidences and the oddities surrounding the Port Chicago explosion are only surfacing today. Some of those are:

* The U.S. claimed it could not test the Hiroshima bomb because it only had a small supply of U-235, allowing for the making of only two bombs. Records obtained from the U.S. Government indicate that enough U-235 existed in 1944 to make several bombs, and more in 1945.

* The head of Port Chicago was promoted to commodore immediately after the explosion and also headed up tests in the Pacific, and was also aboard the Enola Gay when it dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. After Hiroshima he was made a rear admiral. He was Captain Parsons - who had been stationed at Los Alamos Laboratories before the explosion at Port Chicago.

* Liberty ships were loaded while crews remained aboard the vessel. The Liberty ship that exploded at Port Chicago had no crew aboard.

* Documents from Los Alamos show that at the time of the Port Chicago explosion it was believed that the only way to deliver an atomic bomb to the enemy was by ship, detonating in the harbor. It was called the Hydrodynamic Theory of Surface Explosions.

* Records of contents of two box cars unloaded at Port Chicago are missing. A complete list of all box cars were kept - except those two. Did it contain the 9000 pound bomb?

* Port Chicago was rebuilt in one week after its destruction. Two hundred black sailors died in the explosion.

* There was a Navy mutiny at Port Chicago after the blast.

* The Navy was photographing the entire blast from across the Bay.

* In a top secret report on a nuclear detonation after Port Chicago, the notes state that it was a "Port Chicago-type" explosion in similarity and form.

* One of the highest rates of cancer in the United States is in Contra Costa County.

The story seems too incredible to believe - that the U.S. would test a weapon on itself. In order to ascertain the truth of this matter, one must study old reports. In the beginning of this series, the simplest reports to study are the uncensored news reports of local newspapers, such as the St. Helena Star and the Napa Journal - The Napa Journal was bought out in the 1950's and became the Napa Register. These eye witness reports were made in the pre-atomic age, when no one knew about atomic weapons - what they were, how they worked, what devastation they created, what they looked like, or for that matter, that they even existed. It was one of the most closely guarded top secrets of World War Two.

"One of the few to see the flash from here was Tom Street, who happened to be standing in the patio if his Spring Mountain home when the blast came," reported the July 21, 1944 edition of the St. Helena Star. "First there was a sudden mushroom of white light, followed an instant later by another, then a few moments later the intense roar and the concussion of the blast. At the rate of about a mile for every 5 seconds, it required a little over 4 minutes for the blast to reach St. Helena." In another account in the same newspaper, it states. "The force of the explosion was felt at the Mt. St. Helena observation tower, but apparently the range of the mountains at the end of the valley stopped the concussion, for Lake County residents didn't feel it."

"The hills of the Napa Valley were momentarily illuminated by sunlight." reported the Napa Journal.

Differences in nuclear explosions - Port Chicago blast re-examined

By Harry V. Martin

Second in a Series

Copyright, The Napa Sentinel, 1990

A major disaster, such as that of Port Chicago, can always remain a mystery - and often time sparks the interest of "conspiracy theorists." In most cases, time erodes the evidence, But in the case of Port Chicago time has not wiped out the evidence - the U.S. military and scientific community are good record keepers. Because of the existing records on Port Chicago, the court martial of 50 black sailors, various records from Los Alamos, and reports from nuclear agencies and the media provide a succinct road map to the Port Chicago disaster.

The local news accounts of the blast on July 17, 1944, all focus on a flashing bright light and a mushroom cloud - all written before the general public or the news media were even aware of the dawn of the nuclear age. One of the critical points of contention in the theory that Port Chicago's explosion may have been nuclear, is the radiation factor. The purported bomb would have been a low-yield weapon detonated in shallow water. One of the key authorities on the effect of nuclear weapons is a publication prepared by the United States Department of Defense and published by the United States Atomic Energy Commission in April 1962. Entitled, "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons", the publication states on page 60, "There may well be some fallout or rainout onto the surface of the water (or a ship or shore station) from the radioactive base surge, but in many cases it is expected to pass over without depositing any debris. Thus, according to circumstances, there may or may not be radioactive contamination on the surfaces of objects in the vicinity of a shallow underwater nuclear burst." The theory advanced by Peter Vogel - who is a journalist and who also studied physics with nuclear physicist Edward Teller - is that a nuclear weapon was in the hold of a Liberty Ship.

But before entering Vogel's scenario, which has some contradiction with official records, it is important to note how Vogel was drawn to such a theory. It started innocently enough in Santa Fe, New Mexico - a town across the Rio Grande from Los Alamos. Vogel was at a rummage sale conducted by the Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church. At the bottom of a box of equipment, which had been donated to the church, he found a photocopied document taken from Los Alamos Laboratories in the Autumn of 1944 - a few months after the Port Chicago explosion. The document is entitled, "History of 10,000 ton gadget."

Vogel traced the document to Paul Masters, who was employed at the Laboratories as a photographic darkroom technician and photographer. Part of Masters' duties was to operate a large blueprint-type machine upon which were made copies of bomb drawings and other originals too large for conventional copying machines. The document is the earliest known description of the progression of the explosion of an atomic bomb. It is very concise and contains previously top secret information about the actual design of an atomic bomb. On the bottom line in Step 11, the document reads, "Ball of fire mushroom out at 18,000 ft, in typical Port Chicago fashion." The Port Chicago explosion was characterized by a brilliant white flash, and a ball of fire which mushroomed out above Suisun Bay to an observed altitude of 10,000 feet before its ascent was obscured by the dark of night.

What is so important about this particular document? It compared a hypothetical nuclear explosion to the actual explosion at Port Chicago, possibly implying that the Port Chicago disaster, itself may have been due to a nuclear detonation. Vogel found that document in 1980 - he has followed the trail of Port Chicago ever since.

The U.S. government had never made an official "finding" on Port Chicago. It speculated that the black sailors had handled the ammunition carelessly. One factor the U.S. government has been emphatic about, is that there was not sufficient U-235 in 1945, and that the Hiroshima bomb was dropped untested. If there was not sufficient U-235 available to make a bomb, how could Vogel theorize that the Port Chicago blast was nuclear?

Apparently few, if anyone, had bothered to check the records of the United States Department of Energy on U-235 production. The results are very surprising - and reflect on the possibility that the U.S. government was not forthright in its statements. The minimum critical mass for U-235 is approximately 15.5 kilograms. The Hiroshima bomb might have contained up to 60 kilograms of U-235. In checking the official data from the Enriching Operations Division of the Department of Energy at Oak Ridge, the records reveal that in 1943 the U.S. had 74 kg. of U-235 available for a bomb - six times that of the minimum requirement. By 1944 it had 93 kg. or seven times the minimum, and by 1945, 289 kg. were available. According to official government records, sufficient U-235 was processed in 1944 - the date of the Port Chicago blast - to make six minimum nuclear bombs.

The American public has grown to visualize nuclear weapons being dropped from B-29s or from missiles. But in 1944, at the time of the Port Chicago blast, the belief was that the United States did not have any type of aircraft capable of carrying a bomb, nor airfields close enough to Japan to carry such a weapon. The B-29 was not operational, nor was the island of Tinian, in the Mariana Islands, under U.S. control. Documents from Los Alamos show that at the time of the Port Chicago explosion, it was believed that the only way to deliver an atomic bomb to the enemy was by ship, detonating it in the harbor. It was called the Hydrodynamic Theory of Surface Explosions.

Vogel's theory, based on the documents he had found - compared with official government documents and eye witness reports - is plausible. But a lot more evidence is needed. Has that evidence been found? If Vogel's theories are totally false, why then is a Bay Area television station preparing a documentary. Several major news organizations are after the story and why has the U.S. Government suddenly retroactively reclassified Technical Paper #6 entitled Port Chicago Explosion so that it is now top secret after nearly half a century?

Edited March 1, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

(http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/08/322699.shtml)

Evidence points to a Port Chicago nuclear device

By Harry V. Martin

Fourth in a Series

Copyright, The Napa Sentinel, 1990

The question of Port Chicago really comes down to two basic questions:

1. Was the Port Chicago blast caused by a nuclear explosion?

2. If it was, did the United States government purposely set off the bomb as a test?

These are the two allegations which were made on KVON radio by Peter Vogel, a journalist and a man who also studied with the father of the American H-Bomb, Dr. Edward Teller.

In previous articles we have discussed Vogel's theory, the impact of the blast, the history of the port and the ships involved, the findings of a Board of Review, eye witness accounts, and the fact - established by official records of the U.S. Department of Energy - that the U.S. government did have the capability of producing several nuclear weapons at the time of the Port Chicago blast - despite denials to the contrary. Now we're down to the nuts and bolts of answering the two basic questions involved. Technical Report No. 6. Army-Navy Explosives Safety Board, on the Port Chicago blast has been reclassified by Los Alamos Lab - it could answer at least one the questions asked. The Napa Sentinel is seeking the documents under the Federal Freedom of Information Act, and may file suit in federal court to have the documents declassified after 45 years.

A research paper was submitted on December 7, 1988 entitled Computational Evaluation for the Energy Released in the Port Chicago Explosion. This report evaluates the energy released by the 1944 explosion at Port Chicago on July 17, 1944. The explosion occurred while the Liberty ship E.A Bryan was loading 1780 tons of high explosives and 4600 tons of ammunition - the shipment was destined for Tinian - the island from which the Enola Gay took off enroute to dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan, the Hiroshima bomb was dropped 13 months after the Port Chicago explosion.

The research document creates the theoretical energy released at Port Chicago, based upon the calculation and probable energy source, using the 1780 tons of high explosive. The paper analyzes detonation of fuel, high explosives and a nuclear bomb. These sources are then compared to the probable energy expended into production of the Bay floor crater, heat energy and seismic energy caused by the 1944 explosion.

The report states simply, "If the probable energy expended markedly exceeded that which a chemical explosion could supply, then an additional source of energy (possible nuclear) must have been present." The report states, "It is not now possible to determine with certainty the precise nature of the 1944 explosion at Port Chicago. The reclassification of a pertinent document, Technical Report No. 6, Army-Navy Explosives Safety Board, prohibits any such definitive conclusions. However, given the size of the crater formed by the explosion and the distance the debris was scattered, a calculation of the theoretical explosive energy released can be compared to the probable source of the energy." The report uses a "worst case" scenario to the amount of energy generated. This means that the report provides the benefit of the doubt toward aspects subscribing to a non-nuclear explosion. For instance, it assumes that all 1780 tons of explosives were aboard the ship and went off high order (spontaneously) and all at full power). And that the ship's fuel was at capacity and detonated.

"At this point, the only conclusion to be drawn is a follows: While there may have been an additional explosive energy source present (such as a low yield nuclear device), the explosive energy derived from the conventional munitions is in agreement with the lower limit for the calculated total energy given-off by the explosion, and thus, the explosion might have been purely conventional (non-nuclear) in origin."

The specific facts the report could rely on were that the amount of explosives present was 1780 tons, and the size of the crater created by the explosion, was 66 feet deep, 300 feet wide and 700 feet long.

The report did discover that a measurement of the blast crater in 1944 had more than doubled in size by 1946 - indicating that the government may well have made every attempt to retrieve any remains or evidence still at the bottom of Suisun Bay. The report could not confirm the type of fuel used by the Bryan, but selected the probability of diesel fuel. The Sentinel has ascertained that the ship was indeed loaded with 5292 barrels of bunker C-type diesel fuel oil.

The report further states that Vogel's comment as to the fireball being white does not prove it was nuclear in origin. The report also states that it is unlikely that the fuel aboard the vessel caused the explosion.

The report estimates the magnitude of the blast was between (10)18 to (10)72 ergs. Is this the magnitude of a non-nuclear or a nuclear explosion? The report addresses that issue. If the Port Chicago disaster had been caused by a chemical explosion, the maximum energy expenditure would be expected to approach (10)18 ergs - the low end of the estimated magnitude of the Poet Chicago blast. the report qualifies that statement. "However, the likely expenditure for such a chemical explosion would be a fraction of this value, since the maximum value would require all the explosives and fuel to go off in high order fashion. If the Port Chicago disaster had been caused by a nuclear bomb, the energy expenditure would be expected to approach the order of (10)72 ergs."

"While the energy expenditure from a nuclear explosion fits this calculation of energy expenditure better than does the chemical explosion, a purely chemical explosion would have produced sufficient energy to be in agreement with the low end of the calculated range. Therefore, no conclusion can be drawn at this time as to the exact nature of the explosion: further information would be required to refine the calculated energy figure and reduce its uncertainty. Unfortunately, since this information has now been reclassified, calculation refinements are no longer possible," the report concludes.

So what we have in this report is the estimate of a magnitude. The only way a conventional explosion could have caused the blast was if everything had gone off at one time - something that is not too common in munitions explosions. Add this report to other information to:

* the report of a nuclear explosion entitled, History of 10,000 ton gadget, which states on the bottom line of Step 11, "Ball of fire mushroom out a 18,000 ft, in typical Port Chicago fashion."

* the reclassification four decades later of a report on the Port Chicago blast - which has no military value today:

* and the top government scientists dispatched to Port Chicago after the blast, and their respective role in the building of nuclear weapons:

* the specific destination of the Bryan - Tinian in the Mariana Islands, the same site the Enola Gay used to take off from to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan:

* and the Hydrodynamic Theory of Surface Explosions, which indicated that the bomb would have to be delivered by surface ship because there was no aircraft that could carry the weight, and the U.S. did not have a close enough base to Japan for aircraft delivery.

There is very strong evidence to suggest that a nuclear weapon was indeed at Port Chicago - a bomb enroute to Tinian or some other South Pacific Island. But was Port Chicago a test for the bomb? Would the government purposely destroy a port that was only 80 percent completed? Would it destroy two brand new ships? Would it kill 320 U.S. Naval personnel?

Just because a nuclear weapon probably existed at Port Chicago does not mean the port was a test sight of the bomb. This question is explored in the final article on Tuesday.

CONCLUSION, PORT CHICAGO

By Harry V. Martin

Last of a Five Part Series

Copyright, The Napa Sentinel, 1990

More than two years before the United States entered World War II, Albert Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, informing him that a nuclear bomb was possible. That letter was written on August 2, 1939. "A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory," Einstein wrote. "However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air."

U.S. government sources have verified that the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 were transported to Tinian Airstrip in August 1945 enroute to bomb Hiroshima, the B29 barely made it off the ground. The bomb had to be armed in mid-flight. There have been persistent - yet unverified reports - that a heavily guarded compound at Mare Island during World War II contained components of a nuclear weapon.

Contrary to public belief, the final specifications of the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima had been completed by mid-February 1944. This is verified by a 600 page report on the Manhattan District History. The hardware for at least three of the Hiroshima-type weapons were ordered by the end of March, 1944.

STRONG EVIDENCE

There is very strong circumstantial evidence to indicate that a nuclear weapon was aboard one of two ships that blew up at Port Chicago on the evening of Monday, July 17. What makes the evidence so strong, is not only written documentation concerning the blast, but also the itinerary of key people in the nuclear community after the blast. A Los Alamos document that describes the testing of an atomic device - and all its parameters - clearly states in Step 11. "Ball of fire mushroom out at 18,000 ft. in typical Port Chicago fashion." The Los Alamos document, prepared a short time after the Port Chicago explosion, History of 10,000 Ton Gadget, provides 11 steps of a nuclear explosion: (Though you do not have to understand nuclear physics, follow the steps to the end.)

1. Detonation.

2. Detonation wave reaches temper 18,5 x 2,54 over 7 x 10.

3. Temp and active fully compressed.

4. Neutrons multiply and shock wave hits temper 18/2 x 10.

5. Shock wave passes through H.E. and case to reach air 74/2 x 10.

6. Radiation squirts out, temperature drops and isothermal sphere formed.

7. Strong blast wave expands.

8. Ball of fire fully expands.

9. Blast wave reaches damage area.

10. In a test, blast wave would reach installation and observers at 10,000 yards. Also ball of fire reached height of 2000 ft. and completely disintegrated into turbulent convection currents.

11. Ball of fire mushroom out at 18,000 ft in typical Port Chicago fashion.

The fact that this classified document on the testing of an atomic bomb came from Los Alamos and specifically refers to Port Chicago, is clear evidence of a nuclear device. But that is not all the evidence available.

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

In a classified document dated July 21, 1944 - four days after the Port Chicago explosion - there is more fragile evidence of something out of the ordinary. The District Intelligence Officer wrote confidential memorandum 11-3-16137 to the Commandant Twelfth Naval District. The report states, there were reports "of a shiny black car reported to have been seen at approximately 2130 (hours) at the foot of the pier, but no information was developed to indicate that any unauthorized vehicle of such description was seen to enter or leave the (Port Chicago) Naval Magazine at any time which might reasonably be connected with the explosion." The vehicle was not a Navy vehicle nor was its business explained, but it did have authorization to be near the pier, suggesting a top secret meeting. Were the occupants of the vehicle from the scientific community? There are possible links we will explore later in this article.

At the same time, the Navy was photographing Port Chicago from across the Bay - a safe distance from the explosion. The Navy captured the Port Chicago explosion on a nitrate-base film. That film was held in the safe of the Concord Naval Weapons Station. The Navy claims that the film was a simulation of the Port Chicago explosion filmed for Hollywood in the 1960s But nitrate-base film has not been produced since prior to 1950.

Though Peter Vogel, who theorized that a nuclear weapon existed at Port Chicago, was granted permission to review the film and obtain still shots - once his theory of an atomic weapon was known by the Navy, the film was destroyed. About the same time, a key document, Technical Report No. 6 on the Port Chicago Explosion was suddenly reclassified to top secret after years of being declassified. Some Los Alamos scientists have privately stated that the explosion at Port Chicago was caused by an atomic weapon.

TOP NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS INVESTIGATE PORT CHICAGO

Perhaps the most convincing aspect of the atomic bomb theory, is not what happened before the blast - but after. The test document, History of 10,000 Ton Gadget, was prepared by a group at the Los Alamos laboratories under the direction of Joseph O. Hirschfelder. His group's work is found in the Manhattan District History, Project Y. The Los Alamos Project. Vol. 1. 1944 I.A.M.S. 2532, Los Alamos 1961. The Manhattan Project has become known to the public as the building of the first atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project documents refer to work accomplished after August 1, 1944, and in particular the History of 10,000 Ton Gadget. Hirschfelder was given the responsibility for completing the earlier investigation of damage of the general phenomenology of a nuclear explosion. These investigations included the formation of the shock wave in the air, the radiation history of the early stages of the explosion, the formation of the ball of fire, the attenuation of the blast wave in air at great distances, and the effects of blast and radiation on human beings and structures.

Immediately following the Port Chicago explosion, a team of Los Alamos Laboratories scientists made an assessment of the Port Chicago explosion. There exists some 400 - 600 pages of reports and memoranda at Los Alamos which report the various parameters and artifacts of the Port Chicago explosion. U.S. Naval Captain William J. Parsons prepared the data and had them transmitted to Rear Admiral W. R. Purnell, who was a member of the Atomic Bomb Military Policy Committee, Admiral Purnell was Parsons' superior officer. Parsons was the bombing officer on board the Enola Gay, which dropped the U235 weapon over Hiroshima. In 1946 he was chairman of the Joint Crossroads Committee, which planned the Bikini test, and he was Deputy Task Force Commander for Technical Direction of the Bikini nuclear tests. Parsons was instrumental in designing, constructing and testing the world's first atomic bomb. He worked directly under J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Parsons authored a report on Port Chicago - Effects of the Tidal Wave in the Port Chicago Explosion. Throughout the investigation of the Port Chicago blast, the nuclear research laboratories at Los Alamos, the key figures in the building of the atomic bomb, all link to Port Chicago. Los Alamos also maintains copies of the records of 16 box cars that contained munitions for Port Chicago. The records of two of those box cars, however, are not available. Were they used to carry nuclear components?

It is reasonably safe to indicate, with reference to various articles already published in this series, that an atomic weapon did exist at Port Chicago at the time of the July 17, 1944 explosion. The next question, testing Vogel's theory, is: was Port Chicago used by the U.S. government to test the first atomic bomb?

A TEST OR AN ACCIDENT?

Vogel maintains that Port Chicago was used as a test site for the first atomic bomb. "If the explosion was filmed at the Port Chicago site, it would follow that the explosion was planned and anticipated." Vogel states. "There is very little doubt in my mind that the explosion and disaster which occurred at Port Chicago was the result of an intentional detonation of a U235 gun assembly weapon, which was conducted to demonstrate the effects of a surface delivery of that device to a harbor facility." But was it?

To explore Vogel's theory, it is necessary to take some of the elements used by Vogel. A large part of his theory rests on the insistence that there was only one explosion. In almost every report, newspaper articles of that time, or eyewitness statements, two explosions were reported. Those reports, articles and statements may be correct - while at the same time, Vogel's theory may also be correct. A nuclear explosion has two phases - the pressure phase and the suction phase. These two phases may actually sound like and appear to be two different explosions, when in fact it is the same explosion occurring seconds apart. Most witnesses have stated the explosions were about 45 seconds apart. They report that the dock blew up first and then the ship. Vogel's theory of one explosion cannot be discounted - nor can the two explosion theory.

If there were two explosions, there is a strong possibility of an accident in the loading of conventional ammunition aboard the E.A. Bryan, which in turn ignited the low-yield nuclear device which weighed approximately 9000 pounds.

RE-CREATING EVENTS

A re-creation of the events of July 17, 1944, are necessary to test Vogel's theory. The scenario presented is one that coincides with official classified Navy documents of the investigation, eye witness reports, newspaper reports, and other publications.

The ammunition depot at Port Chicago was only 80 percent completed, but was one of the main sources of supply for the Pacific fleet. The dock facilities could handle the largest ammunition carriers in the Navy. It was under the jurisdiction of the Naval Commander at Mare Island.

The E.A. Bryan docked at Port Chicago on July 13 and the loading of munitions began at 8:30 a.m. that morning and continued until the explosion 109 hours and 49 minutes later. Here is a list of the contents being loaded:

* 50.04 tons of 20-mm HEI Tetryl Cartridges.
* 50.09 tons of 5-inch 38-calibre Common Projectiles.
* 36 tons of 16-inch Tar. Mk2-4A Projectiles.
* 87.55 tons of 1000 lb. GP AN-M65 TNT Bombs.
* 106 tons of 1000 lb. AP AN-M33 Bombs.
* 26 tons of Fin assemblies for AN M-65 Bombs.
* 60.35 tons of incendiary Cluster M7.
* 97 tons of 350 lb. DB AN-Mk 47 Torpex Bombs.
* 93.52 tons of 100 lb. Fragmentation Cluster An-M4.
* 42 tons of 40-mm AP Tracer Cartridges.

The placement of the ammunition in the E.A. Bryan were as follows:

No. 1 hold - smoke bombs.

No. 2 hold - Torpex.

No. 3 hold - Tail fins for air bombs.

No. 4 hold - Fragmentation bombs.

No. 5 hold - 40-mm ammunition.

The Bryan's holds were as deep as a four-story building. The ship had only completed its maiden voyage earlier that year and had been refitted with 10-ton booms before arriving at Port Chicago.

Navy records indicate different problems plagued the loading of the E.A. Bryan. There had been trouble with the steam winches - which had no brakes, and meant that any cargo being hoisted could slam to the ground if steam power was lost at any time. There were also bearing and valve problems with the winches. More problems occurred when the crank bearing on the No. 2 winch began making a hammering noise - its bearing had to be replaced. On the day of the explosion a bleeder valve on the No. 4 winch had gone out and had to be repaired. A plumber repairing a nipple on the bleeder valve said upon completion of his repairs, "I don't like the look of things around here." The man had just observed one of the deck hands lose his grip on a shell - it dropped two feet and hit the deck with a thud.

The incendiary bombs had their activating mechanisms, or fuses, installed. They were considered "hot cargo" and were being loaded gingerly, one bomb at a time. "The men were having some difficulty getting the bombs out of the boxcar because they were wedged on so tightly," one officer testified.

AT THE HEARING

A Naval inquiry after the explosion called upon 125 witnesses to testify. At the hearing there was a major dispute centered on whether unsafe loading practices where employed at Port Chicago, and why no Coast Guard loading detail was present the night of the explosion. The Coast Guard and the Port Director's Office had inexperienced personnel who were unable to properly supervise the loading operation and created problems for the work.

Records also show that as early as October 1943, the Coast Guard warned the Port Director, "Conditions are bad up there (at Port Chicago), you've got to do something about itÉif you aren't careful, something's going to happen, and you'll be held responsible for it." An effort to bring in contract stevedores and experienced officers failed. The captain of the port decided to withdraw the Coast Guard detail because conditions were so bad that he was unwilling to take responsibility for it. Contract stevedores were used at other Bay Area Navy facilities, but not at Port Chicago or Mare Island. The Coast Guard loading detail was absent on the night of the explosion.

The inquiry was also very concerned over encouraged competition between loading crews. "The loading of explosives should never be a matter if competition," the inquiry stated. The witnesses also stated that "the colored enlisted personnel are neither temperamentally or intellectually capable of handling high explosives. These men could not understand the orders which were given to them and the only way they could be made to understand what they should do was by actual demonstration." The court did find that there was rough and careless handling of the explosives being loaded aboard ships at Port Chicago.

"Inherent defects in the bombs might have been a contributory cause, but there must have been some overt act to cause the bomb to actually explode," the court stated. Though it never found an exact cause for the explosion, the court did consider the "Presence of a supersensitive element which was detonated in the course of rough handling."

Another classified document reveals concern for the loading of ammunition at Port Chicago. Confidential memoranda ND12-16-Bd (SC) S78 Serial 40312, from the Commandant Twelfth Naval District to the Officer-in-Charge, Naval Ammunition Deport, Port Chicago, was written on September 23, 1944 - two months after the explosion. The memoranda called attention to the Torpex bombs - there were 97 tons of these bombs being loaded. "Torpex generates a hydrogen gas which causes expansion within the projectile, rending it necessary on occasion to release this gas in order to reduce the projectile's sensitivity to accidental detonation."

The 6-day-old Quinault Victory arrived at Port Chicago at approximately 7 p.m. on July 17 - less than three hours before the explosion. It was not being loaded, but was opposite the pier from the E.A. Bryan. It was the Quinault Victory that the visitors of the "shiny, black car" were visiting.

The box cars were on the pier. The first explosion is reported to have taken the pier out first - the second explosion on the ships.

TESTING VOGEL'S THEORY

Now, on the assumption that Vogel's theory is correct, that the government purposely blew up Port Chicago, there are certain characteristics that are important:

* The ship would not be mixed with loaded munitions because the total test result would be inaccurate.
* Would the government destroy its most productive West coast ammunition port which was only 80 percent completed?
* Would two brand new ships be used in a test, rather than older vessels?
* Would an untested bomb be used in a populated area and jeopardize thousands of lives and critical infrastructure?
* Would there be two explosions? And why would the pier area blow up before the ship?

There are too many improbabilities associated with Vogels' theory of a test - when other facilities in the South Pacific or more isolated, less important facilities could have been use as a test site.

POSSIBLE SCENARIO

Based upon the records and documents that have been made public and at least reviewed, the following scenario might be drawn:

* The first atomic bomb was indeed loaded. Not on the E.A. Bryan, but on the Quinault Victory.
* That bomb, like the two later dropped on Japan, was destined for the South Pacific. The bomb would be held on Tinian and a B29 - which already existed - would carry that bomb over Japan.
* The "shiny, black car" contained scientists from Los Alamos, checking on the security of the system.
* The Navy was filming Port Chicago - not to capture an explosion, but to provide a complete documentary of the ship's progress, the filming process would continue through delivery to Tinian and beyond.
* Because it was an atomic bomb that exploded, the U.S. government had to classify everything so as to avoid the enemy learning of the device. Future reclassification could protect the U.S. from a major international embarrassment during a nuclear-freeze frenzy in this country.
* There was some type of accident in the loading process, which caused a major explosion - but not he main one. That explosion ruptured and activated the nuclear device.

Obviously, these theories are speculative at best, but they are based upon the documentation that even some of the Naval inquiry people did not have in 1944. Regardless of Vogel's conspiracy theory - the fact is that Vogel has provided sufficient evidence to prove a very high probability that a low-yield atomic explosion destroyed Port Chicago - and that American sailors were the first nuclear casualties in warfare, not the Japanese.

SOURCES

* The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1962.
* Computational Evaluation for the Energy Released in the Port Chicago Explosion, 1988.
* Confidential Memoranda B-3-16437 from District Intelligence Officer, Twelfth Naval District on Explosion Naval Magazine, Port Chicago, July 21, 1944. Declassified 1989.
* Confidential Memoranda ND12-16-Bd (SC) S78 Serial 40312 from Commandant, Twelfth Naval District, Evaluation of Hydrogen from Torpex, September 23, 1944. Declassified 1989.
* Intra-Office memoranda ND12-02-MI-WWJ from District Legal Offices, Board of Investigation of damages sustained by Port Chicago, August 14, 1945. Declassified 1989.
* Letter to Don Cox, Enrichment Office Division, U.S. Department of Energy, Oakridge, Tennessee, Production of U235 during the years 1913-1919. December 9, 1980.
* Manhattan District History, Project Y. The Los Alamos Project, Vol. 1, LAMS-2532. Los Alamos 1961.
* History of a 10,000 ton gadget, Los Alamos Laboratories Autumn 1944.
* KVON Doubletalk with Peter Vogel, December 26, 1989.
* The Port Chicago Mutiny, Robert L. Allen, 1989.
* No Share of Glory, Robert E. Pearson, 1964.
* California History, Black vs. Navy Blue: The Mare Island Mutiny Court Martial, Charles Wollenberg, Spring 1979.
* The Black Scholar, Port Chicago Disaster And Its Aftermath, Robert Allen, 1982
* The Black Scholar, The Last Wave From Port Chicago, Peter Vogel, July 1982.
* Interview. Peter Vogel, January 1990.
* San Jose Mercury News, Port Chicago remains enigma 45 years later, July 16, 1989.
* San Francisco Chronicle, Blast Death Toll Now 377: 1000 Injured! July 19, 1944.
* St. Helena Star, Terrific Explosion at Port Chicago Startles St. Helena Residents, July 211, 19454.
* Napa Journal, Phone Crews Act Quickly to Mend Explosion Damage, July 28, 1944.
* Napa Journal, Napa Red Cross, Doctors and Nurses Assistant at Port Chicago. July 21, 1944.

Additional evidence surfaces in Port Chicago Blast

By Harry V. Martin

Sometimes obscure personal documents from the past can help to substantiate theories of today. Recently the Napa Sentinel ran a series of articles on the Port Chicago explosion. The articles indicated that the theory of Peter Vogel, as voiced on KVON's Doubletalk, had plausibility in one area, and lacked supporting documentation in the other.

The article stated Vogel's theory was that an atomic bomb exploded at Port Chicago was highly plausible according to documents obtained by Vogel and the Sentinel. The article disputed Vogel's claim that the atomic explosion was really a test conducted by the U.S. Navy. The Sentinel maintained that the explosion was an accident - and perhaps a nuclear accident, at that.

New information has surfaced to give additional credibility to the nuclear accident theory. Carl Wehr, who died some time ago, was a Navy commander at Port Chicago and other ammunition loading facilities on the West Coast. His widow still lives in St. Helena. Wehr wrote a history of his Naval career entitled Up Through The Hawse Pipe, a compendium of events of life in the working navy through the enlisted ranks to commission status. Wehr's records were not written for public review, but his comments on pages 33 through 36 give credence to the Sentinel articles. The Sentinel did not exist during Wehr's lifetime.

"By 1944, we were shipping 180,000 tons (ammunition) a month to the Pacific theater. We loaded ammunition out of every major port on the West Coast, the largest tonnage by far, going through facilities in the Bay Area - principally the ammunition depot at Port Chicago which was built primarily as a shipping terminal for ammunition," his personal notes state. Wehr indicates that some 250 box car loads of ammunition were in revetment on the base waiting to load, "The explosion aboard the Quinault Victory took took 322 lives, most of them instantly. The dead were the ship's crew, stevedores, and trainmen," The amazing fact, according to Wehr, who was a high official at Port Chicago, was that of the 250 car loads of ammunition waiting to be loaded and in the revetments, "none of the ammunition was damaged."

Wehr pointed out what he felt might have been the cause of the explosion, though he admits he had not seen any official reports. "We do know that Torpex bombs were being loaded that night and it's quite possible that one of these could have been roughly handled or even dropped down into the hold of the ship," he wrote. "Torpex was a new explosive introduced into the Navy early in the war, it was extremely powerful, much more than the standard TNT, and more sensitive. Wehr cited two incidents related to torpex. "There were two accidents reported involving torpex bombs. In one case, a bomb fell from a bomb trailer being towed along a runway at an airfield near Norfork, Virginia and exploded. In another instance a torpex bomb exploded at the ammunition depot on Oahu in the Hawiian Islands. This occurred when the bomb was jolted in handling." Wehr also stated. "The explosive had a propensity on rare occasions to detonate with rough handling. And rough handling of ammunition in the loading operation was not uncommon." Wehr added, "One day at Port Chicago, I was standing near a hatch watching gun powder for fourteen inch guns being loaded. A damaged container holding nearly a hundred pounds of smokeless powder was set aside on the hatch cover, one of the loading crew was told to remove it, which he did - by rolling it along with his foot. The container got away from him and dropped through the open hatch and down two decks."

The Sentinel had projected that torpex bombs may have accidentally exploded - and if a nuclear device was at the Port, set it off as well.

Vogel theorized that the explosion was actually a test of an atomic weapon and the Port was expendable. The Sentinel theory indicated that whatever type of explosion it was, it was accidental. "The loss of the Port Chicago facility was aggravated by the severe restriction placed on the movement and handling of explosives at facilities other than those specifically designated for that use," Wehr wrote. "After the explosion, we couldn't transport a thirty caliber bullet over the Bay Bridges. Moreover, loading demands increased as tonnage escalated. For the invasion of Okinawa I needed berthing for twelve shiploads of Marine Corps ammunition. I flew to Seattle and, in conference with the Commandant of the Thirteenth Naval District and the Coast Guard, arranged for loading several ships at Tacoma." Wehr was admitting that the destruction of Port Chicago was a crippling blow to the war effort as a major push was being made to capture Okinawa and the Marianas.

The Sentinel articles also indicated that the atomic bomb that dropped on Hiroshima was shipped aboard the cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis. In Wehr's notes he states, "One night about midnight, I received a telephone call at home from a lieutenant at the Oakland Naval Supply Depot, saying the Southern Pacific had two express cars which had arrived at the rail yard with a shipment of classified material identified only as "Bowery." The cars were under Marine guard and what to do with them? I told him I knew nothing about it but would get on it first thing the next morning. At eight o'clock the next morning I went into the office of my commanding officer, Commander Weatherwax, and told him of the arrival of project "Bowery." He leaped to his feet and shouted, "Where the hell did you learn about Bowery? The Admiral, the Chief of Staff and myself know of this!" After he calmed down, he told me this was a highly classified project and he would take care of it himself. Later I learned that "Bowery" was the first atomic bomb shipment. It was loaded aboard the cruiser Indianapolis and shipped to Guam." He even verified the statement in the Sentinel that the Indianapolis was sunk after delivering the bomb.

After the Port Chicago blast, the manifest of the destroyed box cars were revealed after a public records request. The government supplied all the details of every boxcar - except two. The government indicated that the manifests of those two boxcars probably contained the nuclear components and that the manifests were classified top secret. In Wehr's report of the atomic bomb shipment to Port Chicago in 1945 - less than a year after the explosion - he stated the contents were contained in two box cars. Accidents do happen. In 1957 - 13 years after Port Chicago - an Air Force plane hit turbulence over New Mexico and it accidently dropped a hydrogen bomb, which was 625 times greater than the atomic bomb that was used on Hiroshima, The U.S. government covered up this accident until 1985, when an Albuquerque journalist began investigating New Mexico's nuclear weapons research facilities with a simple question: Have they ever had any nuclear accidents? He finally filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Pentagon - 10 months later the file was released. The 42,000 pound MK-17 bomb was the nation's first "droppable" hydrogen bomb. It was the largest bomb ever produced by the United States.

Fortunately, in this case, the explosives gouged a 25-foot crater in the earth, but the nuclear device was not detonated. Like the Port Chicago case, the U.S. government emphatically denied the accident, but when it released the public records, it showed the government had lied. The journalist challenged the governments first refusal to submit the material. He wrote, "It strains the credibility of the Air Force to contend that release of information about accidents involving 35-and 28-year-old weapons - which are now obsolete - will in any way endanger national security. "After 10 months, the investigative reporter received stacks of document from the Air Force Inspection and Safety Center concerning the nuclear accident.

The old diary and the Freedom of Information Act provides critical data that is not easily obtained from government officials - who will often deny events at first. When the media accepts the government's line, without verification, it only serves to aid deception and misinformation,. The Sentinel has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain full documentation on the Port Chicago blast, including Technical Report No. 6 which was reclassified after inquiries about the explosion began to proliferate.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Evan Burton]

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq80-3a.htm

"Port Chicago devastation nowhere near the scale of Hiroshima."

The atom bomb theorists try to excuse this by postulating that the device which detonated was an early prototype which lacked the destructiveness of its later siblings. So on the one hand, they're claiming the size of the explosion indicates it was nuclear, while on the other they're forced to make excuses why it wasn't as big as a nuclear bomb should have been.

lol.

The first generation weapon was a 'gun' type trigger utilising uranium. There was no doubt that it would work.

The next generation bomb was the plutonium bomb, which used a shaped charge to 'compress' the plutonium core into a critical mass. The design of the shaped charges were very important, and that's why they needed it to test it at Trinity.

Hiroshima was a yield of 16 kt and Nagasaki was 21 kt.

[Evan Burton]

As a note of interest, there was another similar ship disaster from this general time period ( http://sdsd.essortment.com/texascityexplo_rkvi.htm ).

In 1947, a French ship carrying 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded in Texas City harbour, killing some 600 people and "virtually annihilating" the city. The explosion was heard 150 miles away, while in Houston "a rumbling reminiscent of a small earthquake was felt." The shock-wave also created a small tidal wave that washed inland. In spite of the massive damage, no one has come forward to claim it was the result of a nuclear bomb.

Yet.

And don't forget the infamous Bombay Docks explosion of 1944. That was about 1500 tonnes of explosives.

[Steven Gaal]

It was a deliberate atomic explosion at Port Chicago. The odds that the Navy would film the explosion from across the bay at the right time is not a billion to one ,its a trillion to one.Only the palpably desperate and silly would believe it wasn't a deliberate atomic explosion.

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The Film

The Navy has a film record of the disaster at its Concord Naval Weapons Station. After being challenged, the Navy claimed this was a Hollywood simulation of a miniature explosion. The film shows a typical nuclear explosion, which would have been hard to simulate. According the Navy, the film was created to support their argument to the US Congress sometime in the 1960s that the remains of the town of Port Chicago be purchased by the Navy and incorporated into the Concord Naval Weapons Station as a buffer zone in the event of another large explosion.

Significantly, the Navy did not claim the film was a re-creation until after it was suggested that the film could be the record of a nuclear detonation. However, Dan Tikalsky, public affairs chief at Concord, told Peter Vogel, writing for The Black Scholar magazine, that the film was a nitrate-base film, which would require the film to have been produced prior to 1950 when nitrate-base film was replaced with non-explosive cellulose-base film.

Peter Vogel wrote in the Spring 1982 edition of The Black Scholar:

Based on viewing an edited video copy of that film which was made available to me, I have concluded that the film records, in every detail, the progression of the actual explosion of July 17, 1944 at Port Chicago. For example, early frames of the film suggest a record of the expansion of the Wilson condensation cloud during which the formation of the ball of fire is obscured. Furthermore, the movements exhibited by several large, independent fragments of the explosion over time compared to the speed of the explosion itself are evidence of the very large distances those fragments travelled during the course of the film sequence.

It is obvious, of course, that only an intentional film record of the blast could have been made since the probability of having, by chance, a motion picture camera rolling and pointed in the right direction at the right time at night is exceedingly remote.

If the explosion was filmed at the Port Chicago site, it would follow that the explosion was planned and anticipated.

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It was a deliberate atomic explosion at Port Chicago. The odds that the Navy would film the explosion from across the bay at the right time is not a billion to one ,its a trillion to one.Only the palpably desperate and silly would believe it wasn't a deliberate atomic explosion.

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Edited March 3, 2014 by Steven Gaal