The Plutonium Files Part 8

Thus the comments made at Fort Monroe show that even before the first large-scale troop maneuvers were held, the armed forces planned to ignore inhalation hazards and considered collecting the data with instruments that would result in lower reported exposures for troops. These remarks, when combined with the cavalier att.i.tude exhibited by c.o.o.ney and other high-ranking officers toward radiation hazards, strongly suggest that some troops received greater doses than what has officially been reported.

Before the maneuvers began, the Pentagonas Joint Panel on the Medical Aspects of Atomic Warfare met to thrash out a shopping list of questions that needed to be answered at the upcoming bomb tests. aIt is, of course, obvious,a the panel acknowledged, athat a test of a new and untried atomic bomb is not a place to have an unlimited number of people milling about.a11 The top-secret panel was formed in 1949, the year the Soviets exploded their first bomb, but itas not clear when it was dissolved. Little was known about the Joint Panel until 1994, when a stack of its records was obtained by the Clinton Committee. Those records show that James c.o.o.ney, Louis Hempelmann, Robley Evans, and Hymer Friedell served as members or consultants.

Among other things, the ashopping lista prepared by the Joint Panel called for an investigation into the psychological effects of nuclear explosions on troops, research into the efficiency of protective clothing and devices, the measurement of radioisotopes in the body fluids of weapons test personnel, orientation flights in the vicinity of nuclear explosions, and studies on the effects of the atomic flash on the human eye. It so happened that the psychological tests, the orientation flights, and the flashblindness studies would all begin in the fall of 1951 and continue for the next decade.

26.

aHOT PARTICLESa

In late May of 1951, when the dust from Operation Ranger had settled, s.h.i.+elds Warren went to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to discuss the fallout hazards from several underground detonations planned for that fall. A lifelong New Englander, he must have marveled at the raw ugliness of a western spring: the stinging wind, the leafless willows and cottonwoods, a gauzy brown veil draped over the Sangre de Cristos. In Albuquerque, local officials were trying to tell residents what to do if an atomic bomb were dropped on the state. aA person in the vicinity of an A-bomb can protect himself by turning and falling away from the explosion,a the Albuquerque Journal quoted a local official as saying on May 23, athus cutting down on the danger from flying debris, burns and radiation.a1 Like so many before him, Warren followed the switchbacks that led up from the Rio Grande Valley to the tangled jumble of buildings on top of the mesa. In the arroyos that gouged their way down to the river, wild asters and prairie zinnias clung to the chalky soil. As Warren looked across the arid expanse toward the blue granite mountains, he may well have pondered the memo he had written three months earlier in which he had warned that the desert was no place to explode an underground atomic bomb.

At the time of the Los Alamos meeting, the outcome of the Korean War was still uncertain. General Douglas MacArthur had just been recalled after threatening Communist China with a naval and air attack. Many people, including Warren, believed another war was imminent. Los Alamos had once again become a beehive of activity. Dejected and uncertain about its future in the years following World War II (some even talked of making the lab a monument or museum), the lab staff had been bucked up by the atomic blasts in Nevada and at the Pacific Proving Ground. aIn Los Alamos, a sort of status symbol evolved from the Pacific tests,a the Los Alamos Historical Society wrote.2 aIf you had a giant clam in use as a bird bath or garden ornament, you were a bona fide Bikini veteran.a With the continental test site in its backyard, the laboratoryas future was secure at last.

Many of the security precautions enacted during the war were still in place when Warren arrived. The entire community of Los Alamos was off limits to outsiders. Miles of fences, set in concrete and topped by barbed wire, enclosed both the town and the laboratory. The main gate to Los Alamos, with its four lanes, resembled a turnpike toll barrier. Residents and visitors, both coming and going, were required to show their pa.s.ses to guards. The town itself would not be declared an open city until February 18, 1957. Accustomed to their isolation by then, Los Alamos residents were chagrined at the prospect of unannounced visits from ameddlers, peddlers, [and] mothers-in-law.a3 The five atomic bombs that had been exploded in Nevada in January and February of 1951 had all been dropped from airplanes. The so-called air drops did not create the immense amount of contaminated dust that underground explosions were expected to generate. The planned underground explosions were the brainchild of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. Ever since Crossroads, military planners had wondered if a bomb buried deep within the earth would create the same spectacular contamination as Shot Baker. In November of 1950, a month before the Nevada Test Site was officially approved, AFSWP had received authorization from President Truman to conduct two twenty-kiloton detonations on the island of Amchitka in the Aleutian Islands. One bomb would be detonated on the surface and the other buried dozens of feet underground.4 But once the Nevada site opened, AFSWP officials decided they wanted to conduct the tests there. It was a much more convenient location, but even more important, it would allow AFSWP to develop a comprehensive map of fallout, something that couldnat be done properly on an island.

But s.h.i.+elds Warren objected to the underground test precisely because of the fallout hazards. aIt is not possible for us to disregard a potential long-term inhalation hazard,a he told General James McCormack, director of the AECas Division of Military Application.5 aThere would be a continually recurring problem of dust contaminated with material of long half-life being blown around by the winds. The arid character of the region increases this hazard.a The dispute was one of the first of many arguments between civilian and military planners at the Nevada Test Site. Since both had legitimate interests in the nuclear weapons program, they generally came up with compromises or tried to carve out mutually exclusive areas of responsibility. In this case, the two sides reached a compromise: The two twenty-kiloton tests were canceled; instead, three bombs with yields of approximately one kiloton each were to be detonated. The first bomb, at the insistence of the AEC, was to be buried deep underground and would be used to a.s.sess the radiological hazards of the subsequent tests. The second bomb was to be exploded at the surface and the third a few feet below the ground. Although they were small, all three bombs were expected to generate significant fallout because of the tons of dirt that would be sucked up into the fireb.a.l.l.s. The radioactive dirt, being heavier than usual fallout dust sucked up in the fireball, was expected to fall to earth more rapidly instead of being carried up and away with the wind, thus posing more danger to area residents.

The meeting was so important that many of the labas top officials were there. They included Norris Bradbury, the Navy officer who succeeded J. Robert Oppenheimer as director of Los Alamos, and Thomas s.h.i.+pman, the physician who had taken over the labas health division. Louis Hempelmann, who by then had gone to the University of Rochester, returned for the discussion. Even more impressive was the presence of Gioacchino Failla, a scientist who helped set the United Statesa first radiation standards. Edward Teller, who was hard at work on the hydrogen bomb, made a cameo appearance on the second day.

Fifty-five pages of notes taken at the May 21a"22 meeting were decla.s.sified (with deletions) by Los Alamos in 1995 and show how shockingly little scientists really knew about fallout at the dawn of the atmospheric testing program.6 They also reveal that even though scientists were aware that fallout from the tests could pose serious hazards to nearby communities, they chose not to evacuate residents because they apparently feared such a move would harm public relations and jeopardize the test site.

Despite his initial reservations, Warren appeared to be solidly behind the shots by the time he arrived in Los Alamos. As chairman, he was tactful and accommodating, artfully nudging the group toward the conclusion the detonations could be carried out without aundue hazard.a But a transcript of the discussion shows that several scientists, including Louis Hempelmann, had grave concerns about the ahot particlesa the bomb would throw into the atmosphere.

Scientists at the time were most concerned about particles measuring about one to two microns in diameter.7 A micron is a millionth of a meter. Radioactive particles of one to two microns can lodge in the alveoli, the tiny air sacs in the lungs where the blood receives fresh oxygen and eliminates carbon dioxide. Once lodged in the air sacs, the particles can continue to irradiate the lung for a long time or they can gravitate to the lymph nodes on either side of the sternum. There the particles can irradiate the white blood cells that pa.s.s through the nodes and the red blood cells in the bone marrow of the sternum. Larger particles will not enter the body; smaller ones will be brought up by the mucus system of the airways coughed out. Some of the smaller particles are swallowed and eliminated through the digestive system. The digestive system, in turn, is exposed to some radiation as the particles pa.s.s through the GI tract.

Joseph Hamilton, in a secret report delivered to s.h.i.+elds Warren on October 4, 1949, had warned that radioactive particles in the one-micron range awould appear most ominous particularly with respect to the possibility of carcinogenesis.a8 Hamilton had glossed over the dangers, though, by suggesting that it would take many hot particles in the lung to start a cancer. Warren and other scientists subscribed to the same theory.

Throughout the testing program, scientists focused on the external exposures to radiation and not on internal exposures from radioactive particles inhaled or absorbed through open wounds. The prevailing philosophy was that if the external dose was within a apermissiblea range, the internal dose would be negligible. But the notes of the May 21a"22 meeting suggest that even during the early period of the testing program, scientists knew internal doses posed a serious hazard.

aThe particle size problem is a great worry, primarily because we donat know much about the effect of small hot particles in the lungs,a began Walter Claus, one of Warrenas chief aides from AEC headquarters.9 aHowever, one can always say that there have been so many of these particles spread about the country (from past tests), that so many people have already breathed pretty hot particles (why be concerned with it now). [The parentheses in this quote and others cited below are in the transcript of the notes taken at the meeting and apparently represent the completion of a thought or statement.]

From his examinations of the Raitliff family, Louis Hempelmann knew fallout was unpredictable and was disturbed by the fact that the group had no hard data on which to base its recommendations. aOne point makes me unhappy,a he said.10 aAll the discussion of particle size indicated that we had absolutely no idea whether breathing these things in was serious or not. I think we should at least have some philosophy or basis for saying that we think people twenty miles downwind would be safe.a Hempelmann would not let the issue go. When the debate resumed the following morning, he again brought up the fact the committee had no hard data upon which to base its recommendations: aOur safe region is based upon how many particles this committee is willing to let another person breathe.a11 s.h.i.+elds Warren, apparently fed up with Hempelmannas hand-wringing, retorted, aLet persons breathe one particle, because chances of that happening anywhere in the northern hemisphere is a good possibility.a Warrenas group considered evacuating residents within a forty-four-mile radius from Ground Zero, but Thomas s.h.i.+pman advised against any postshot evacuation, because it would cause abad public relationsa and might expose the residents to even greater amounts of fallout. He said, aFrom our experience with the fallout after the first shot on Enewetak, we found most of the people had fallout in their hair.12 I think we could gain more by urging the people to take baths. (Again, bad public relations).a Along the same lines, another partic.i.p.ant suggested that gas masks be issued if the fallout risks were high, but Warren immediately quashed the idea. aI donat think soa"it is psychologically bad and also almost impossible to enforce.a Although Warren acknowledged the apossibility of external beta burns is quite real,a he nevertheless argued that the underground shot should proceed because scientists needed the data to prepare for nuclear war.

He added, aWe are faced with a war in which atomic weapons will undoubtedly be used, and we have to have some information about these things.13 With a lot of monitoring, the end instrumentation will give us the information we want; if we look for perfect safety, we will never make these tests.a In the end, the partic.i.p.ants agreed and decided to move ahead with the tests. But after Warren returned to Was.h.i.+ngton, several scientists at Los Alamos performed some additional calculations and concluded that the deep underground testa"the initial shot that was supposed to be used to a.s.sess radiological dangersa"might prove to be the most hazardous of all. Subsequently that shot was sc.r.a.pped, but preparations for the surface test and the shallow underground test continued.

One of the partic.i.p.ants, identified as L. Thompson, wanted to insert a disclaimer in the final report stating that the committeeas conclusions were abased on conjecture and incomplete data.a But Warren felt such a disclaimer might be misunderstood. aOne thing Iam afraid of is that in stating our scientific caution here, we overdo it from the standpoint of lay and political feeling.14 Although in our final wording we have to give due regard to our gaps in knowledge, we must not make these overly prominent so as to mislead those who are not used to scientific caution.a The final report was amazingly blunt nevertheless: The hazard in the lung is that of carcinogenesis.15 It was pointed out that isolated particles retained in the lung would probably not be carcinogenic, owing to the small number of cells affected by each, even though an effective total dose of radiation might be provided in the immediate vicinity of a given particle. It was further pointed out that there already exists an opportunity for appreciable portions of the population of the Northern Hemisphere to inhale and retain particles as a result of previous tests, but the significance of this event and its statistical probability are so slight as to render the actual hazard negligible. The actual risk involved is currently under study.

In the ensuing years, as he had already begun to do in this meeting, s.h.i.+elds Warren took the side of the scientists and politicians who contended that fallout was a small price to pay to keep America safe. In 1956, on the eve of a presidential election in which fallout was one of the most hotly debated issues, Warren said that if the atmospheric tests were to continue for another thirty years, the genetic dose to the human race would still be insignificant. aDistant or worldwide radioactive fallout is not a controlling factor in bomb testing,a he said in a telegram to Lewis Strauss.16 aTo permit us to fall behind Russians is disastrous; to wait for them to catch up to us is stupid.a

27.

SCORCHED EARTH MANEUVERS.

While s.h.i.+elds Warren and scientists at Los Alamos were discussing fallout hazards, General James c.o.o.ney and other military leaders were mapping out their strategy for the first large-scale maneuvers that would be held at the Nevada Test Site. Unlike Operation Ranger, which involved only a few hundred men, the military exercises that began in the fall of 1951 would involve thousands of troops and specific activities designed to acclimate soldiersa"both psychologically and physicallya"to atomic weapons.

During September and October of that year, thousands of troops from military installations throughout the country were trucked to the test site. Among them were cooks, mechanics, radar operators, machinists, and paratroopers. The operation was so secret that most of the soldiers barely had time to pack a duffel bag. Few knew where they were headed or why. Most were too young to care.

The GIs lived in a hastily erected camp dubbed Camp Desert Rock, which was located some thirty miles from where the atomic bombs were detonated.1 The soldiers slept in rows of tents that had been staked out in the middle of the desert. With dirt floors and one pot-belly stove for heat, the tents were freezing in winter. In an effort to keep warm, GIs lined their cots with newspapers and wrapped bath towels around their necks. In the days leading up to the shot, they dug foxholes and beautified the campsite with cactus transplanted from the surrounding desert.

Fresh fish and jumbo shrimp were flown in for the military bra.s.s and dignitaries. The troops had 16-mm movies and trucks to ferry them into Las Vegas during the waiting period. For many, the visions that greeted them in the casinos were as dazzling as the dawn explosions. The GIs got free drinks, free admittance to the shows, but no free betting, recalled Venlo Wolfsohn, then a public information officer for the 11th Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky.2 The first military exercise began on November 1, 1951. In the frigid, predawn hours, some 3,000 troops were ordered out of their bunks and trucked to Frenchman Flat. As they sat on the cold desert floor, a man on a P.A. system began talking about the atomic explosion they would soon witness: Shot Dog, the fourth bomb detonated during Operation Buster-Jangle. The briefing officer emphasized the safety of their position. Within ninety seconds of the blast, any danger from the radiation would be over, he said. With simple protective clothing, they could have been positioned much closer to Ground Zero. Most important, they were told the detonation would not make them sterile. Ribbing each other good-naturedly and pa.s.sing binoculars back and forth, the helmeted GIs had no reason to doubt their officers. As the soldiers jostled each other impatiently, the darkness receded, revealing the contours of a wide valley enclosed by ragged mountains. Five minutes before detonation, the men were ordered to turn away from Ground Zero. Some had film badges and goggles; most did not. Seven miles from where the men knelt in the sand, the twenty-one-kiloton bomb exploded 1,417 feet in the air.

Even with their backs to the explosion, their eyes shut and arms flung over their faces, they could feel the presence of the white light obliterating the long shadows of the morning sun. From the direction of the rising cloud of dust came a tremendous blast of heat. Thirty seconds later the first shock wave rolled over the troops. Some of the men were knocked over like bowling pins. aThe ground was running at you like a roller coaster,a recalled William Brecount, an equipment operator from Was.h.i.+ngton state.3 Robert Saunders, a Marine, said it felt like an oven door suddenly had opened behind him.4 Ubaldo Arizmendi, a small plane mechanic from California, remembers rocks falling on him.5 A few moments later, the soldiers were instructed to turn around and look at the fireball. It was beautiful and terrifying, capped by a thin layer of ice. High winds sliced off the mushroom cap and carried it adangerously closea to a mountain range on which reporters stood. aThough they drove frantically away, the newsmen were slightly contaminated,a Life magazine reported.6 A young corporal later told Life he was surprised troops could enter the blast area so soon after detonationa"unwittingly lending support to the no-residual-radiation argument put forth by the generals.

A short while after the detonation, some 2,796 men who had watched the explosion were transported to Ground Zero, where they were instructed to walk through a display area where make-believe fortifications and equipment had been subjected to the blast. Meanwhile, a combat battalion composed of nearly 900 troops who had also observed the test then aattackeda in the direction of Ground Zero where imaginary enemy soldiers were waiting.

Afterward, the troops went to a decontamination station where they were swept off with brooms and monitored for radiation. aIf the radiation intensity could not be lowered to 0.01 r/hr the individual was to shower and change his clothing, and vehicles were to be washed,a an official summary of the test noted.7 Some of the soldiers underwent psychological testing to determine the effectiveness of indoctrination programs. Researchers from HumRRO, the Human Resources Research Organization, an Army contractor based at George Was.h.i.+ngton University, found the troopsa confidence in the use of atomic weapons had aincreased materially.a8 But psychologists from the John Hopkins University Operations Research Office, known as ORO, claimed their studies showed deep worry and anxiety among the troops despite the indoctrination lectures.

Many of the troops returned to their home bases following Shot Dog. But several hundred remained behind to observe the last two explosions of the Buster-Jangle seriesa"the small surface detonation and the shallow underground detonation that s.h.i.+elds Warren had gone to Los Alamos to discuss the previous spring. As expected, both of these shots produced huge amounts of radioactivity. One hour after firing, the lips of the two craters measured 7,500 roentgens per hour. The troops waited until the radioactivity had decayed, but as a precautionary measure, they toured Ground Zero by bus instead of on foot. That arrangement, wrote DOE historian Barton Hacker, prevented the soldiers from getting much exposure, but he acknowledged, aThe absence of film badges for most of these troops a leaves much uncertainty.a9 The armed forces, not satisfied that the atomic maneuvers were realistic enough, pressured the AEC at the conclusion of each test series for permission to move the troops closer to Ground Zero. During the 1951 Operation Buster-Jangle, the soldiers were seven miles from the blast. The following spring, during the 1952 test series, they were four miles. They were moved up to two miles from Ground Zero during the 1953 series. And for a select group of aofficer volunteers,a eventually the gap was narrowed to one mile or less.

Military leaders also chafed under the dose limits that had been set by s.h.i.+elds Warren, arguing that soldiers should be allowed to receive higher doses than AEC employees because they would be receiving only ainfrequenta exposures. With the Cold War in full swing and the three branches of the military jockeying for their share of the atomic a.r.s.enal, Warren and the other members of the AEC were no match for the pressure. In the end, they gave the generals what they wanted, then they washed their hands of the problem.

The push to put the soldiers 7,000 yards, the equivalent of about four miles from Ground Zero, started almost immediately at the conclusion of Buster-Jangle. aSo strong is the feeling about the importance of being at a tactically realistic distance from Ground Zero that the Marines have stated they would not partic.i.p.ate if the seven mile limitation fixed during Desert Rock were again imposed,a said Brigadier General Kenneth Fields, the AECas director of Military Application.10 s.h.i.+elds Warren would not relent on the distance. He was worried not so much about fallout hazards as the potentially harmful effects of the blast on the troopsa"not to mention the potentially negative publicity attendant on any such disaster. aAccidents occurring at the time and place of an atomic explosion are magnified by the press out of all proportion to their importance, and any injury or death during the operation might well have serious adverse effects,a he wrote.11 aThe explosion is experimental in type and its yield cannot be predicted with accuracy.a But the military representatives were adamant, and after a lengthy debate, AEC commissioners overruled Warren. AEC Chairman Gordon Dean, in a letter to Brigadier General Herbert B. Loper, chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, formally approved the 7,000-yard stipulation as well as the militaryas request to maneuver on foot in the vicinity of Ground Zero as soon as practical after detonation. He cautioned, though, that the 7,000-yard line meant the soldiers would be afrom two and one-half to three miles to a bomb run.a12 The following year nearly 11,000 Defense Department personnel partic.i.p.ated in Operation Tumbler-Snapper, the 1952 test series in Nevada governed by the four-mile limit. Afterward the military decided that four miles was still too far from Ground Zero for soldiers to get a realistic sense of the nuclear battlefield. aHere again,a explained Lieutenant General L. L. Lemnitzer in a letter to U.S. Representative Carl Durham, awe found that we had not yet reached the point where the atomic explosion itself had any significant effect, psychological or otherwise, on the ability of the troops to maneuver after the explosion.a13 The military began lobbying to put soldiers even closer to Ground Zero for Operation Upshot-Knothole, the 1953 test series. In conjunction with this plan, they also launched a campaign to force the AEC to waive its 3.9 roentgens limit.14 The Department of Defense felt the AEC was anot realistica in setting exposure limits. The AEC had authorized up to 20 roentgens of exposure for crews of sampling aircraft, but ground crews had been limited to 3.9 roentgens. The AEC eventually capitulated to the militaryas demand, provided the armed forces issue a public statement announcing that it had a.s.sumed responsibility for troop safety. aOur position,a said one AEC official, ais that we probably cannot dictate exposure limits to the military, but we do have the responsibility of informing them of the hazards in order that they may be fully aware of the responsibility which they a.s.sume.a15 Before the 1953 Upshot-Knothole series began, the Pentagon conducted a study to determine the aminimum distancea from Ground Zero that troops could be placed. The armed forces knew how soldiers would respond if a nuclear weapon were detonated miles away, but what about soldiers who were called upon to provide aclose atomic weapon support?a16 mused Colonel John Oakes, secretary of the Army General Staff. aUnder conditions of a tower explosion, such as currently being conducted in the Nevada tests, it may be possible to place troops in deep foxholes as close as 800 yards from Ground Zero without these troops suffering serious injury.a General Kenneth Nichols, the officer who had run the Manhattan Projectas daily operations, recommended that selected soldiersa"who subsequently became known as aofficer volunteersaa"be allowed to receive up to ten roentgens per test and no more than twenty-five roentgens for the entire series while maneuvering within 1,500 yards of Ground Zero.17 aThe Surgeon General has agreed that it is highly improbable that such exposure will result in any injury to these selected individuals,a he wrote.

The officer-volunteer experiments, which began during Upshot-Knothole, were carried out in a democratic fas.h.i.+on: The volunteers themselves calculated the distance from Ground Zero from which they felt it would be safe to watch the detonations. The proposed distances then were approved by their commanding officers. The officer-volunteers, a memo later stated, amust have sufficient indoctrination in weapons effects to be fully aware of all the risks involved in exposure of this nature including possible latent effects, and must volunteer for such duty.a18 In 1955 Army Major R. C. Morris suggested that humans be used to validate tests conducted on dummies and animals at Ground Zero: aVolunteers in foxholes and p.r.o.ne on the surface of the ground can be exposed to low levels of blast and thermal effects until thresholds of intolerability are ascertained.a19 The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project was vehemently opposed to the idea. aIt is evident that the injury threshold cannot be determined without eventually exceeding it,a an official succinctly observed.20 Although atomic maneuvers would continue for another seven years, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project felt by 1955 that no more auseful dataa could be obtained at the Nevada site, according to a memo decla.s.sified in 1995. Like the scientists in the Atomic Energy Commission, AFSWP was also obsessed with the possibility of future lawsuits, that memo reveals: In particular it is significant that the long range effect on the human system of sub-lethal doses of nuclear radiation is an unknown field.21 Exposure of volunteers to doses higher than those now thought safe may not produce immediate deleterious effects; but may result in numerous complaints from relatives, claims against the government, and unfavorable public opinion, in the event that deaths and incapacitations occur with the pa.s.sage of time.

The statement was a harbinger of events to come. Following their tours of duty in Nevada or at the Pacific Proving Ground, the military partic.i.p.ants returned home with mysterious rashes, blisters, and allergies that still plague them today. Some have said in sworn testimony that their hair and teeth fell out and they suffered from nausea and vomiting. Many believe they carried away damaged cells that over the decades have developed into cancer and other diseases. These veterans also believe that the radiation they were exposed to at the bomb tests resulted in genetic mutations that have caused a vast a.s.sortment of diseases among their children and grandchildren.

Ubaldo Arizmendi, the airplane mechanic who witnessed the detonation of Shot Dog, said his face turned bright red and he came down with an extremely high fever twenty-four hours later. He was sent to the camp hospital, where he said he saw other men with similar symptoms. He has had skin and joint problems ever since. William Brecount, the young equipment operator, developed blisters on his feet. Forty-five years later the blisters still plague him, and sometimes his feet burn so much at night he canat keep a blanket over them. He said, aAt that age, I didnat think there was anything big enough to whip me.a Robert Saunders, the Marine who said it felt as if an oven door had opened behind him, had a melanoma on his back removed seventeen years ago and now has skin cancer.

The Defense Nuclear Agency, a successor to the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, contends that only 1,200 of the approximately 205,000 military personnel who partic.i.p.ated in at least one test in Nevada or in the Pacific got more than five rem of radiation. Based on that data, President Clintonas Advisory Committee calculated that only a handful of excess cancer deaths would have been caused by doses received during the troop exercises.22 But the veterans claim the data are inaccurate. Doc.u.ments show unequivocally that many veterans were not issued film badges, and the records for some film badges are missing altogether. Los Alamos scientist Harry Jordan in 1981 said one person in a platoon or company was often given a badge, and that dose was a.s.sumed to be the same for all other members of the group. aThere were also innumerable instances,a he recalled in an interview, ain which arbitrarily the executive decision was madea"that those people had no exposuresa"and therefore they werenat given film badges.a23 Newly decla.s.sified records, such as memos describing General c.o.o.neyas comments at the Fort Monroe conference in which he recommended using agamma detectors of low sensitivity (and very few of them)a show that some exposures were surely underestimated. Film badges in general could not measure the radiation from the alpha particles, beta particles, and neutrons. Whatas more, many reports, including the militaryas own official accounts, show that unexpected fallout blew over the trenches or was found in the areas where the troops maneuvered. Despite the s.h.i.+fting winds, unpredictable fallout, hot spots, inaccurate recording instruments, and insensitive or missing film badges, the official doses a.s.signed to the soldiers were always and invariably low.

Even more unconscionable, internal doses received by military partic.i.p.ants as they marched toward Ground Zero on maneuvers or through equipment display areas have been ignored. This practice continues today even though the government knows partic.i.p.ants were not wearing respirators and that extremely high blast winds blew radioactive material from past tests into the soldiersa faces. William Jay Brady, a scientist at the test site for many years, said internal doses would be much higher than external doses but appear to have been ignored to prevent paying the veteran or his survivors the benefits mandated by Congress. Brady began working at the Nevada Test Site in 1952 and actually observed many of the military exercises. During his nearly forty-year career, he served as a radiation monitor, a security officer, an expert witness, and a health physicist. When he retired from the nuclear weapons program in 1991, he began helping atomic veterans and their widows with their claims. With his scientific background and firsthand knowledge of what went on, he has proved to be a powerful ally for the veterans. When asked why he switched sides, Brady responded, aI thought it was time to even the score.a24 No comprehensive epidemiological study has ever been done of the atomic veterans. The National Academy of Sciences in 1985 concluded a mortality study of 46,186 veterans who partic.i.p.ated in five test seriesa"Operations Upshot-Knothole, Plumbbob, Greenhouse, Castle, and Redwinga"but the study had serious flaws. It erroneously included 4,500 veterans who had never partic.i.p.ated in an atomic test and excluded 15,000 individuals who partic.i.p.ated in one or more of the test series.25 Another serious flaw was using the general public as the control cohort. Soldiers are healthier than civilians and generally have less cancer. Even so, excess leukemia cases were detected in the 1957 Plumbbob series.

In 1996, the federal government released the results of a mortality study of Crossroads partic.i.p.ants, which produced equally confusing results.26 The study concluded that Crossroads veterans had a higher death rate but lower cancer rate than nonexposed veterans. Although the authors were unable to fully explain the higher mortality rate, they said the findings do not support the notion that radiation exposure caused the increased deaths among Crossroads partic.i.p.ants.

Congress has pa.s.sed several major laws aimed at compensating veterans suffering from cancer possibly related to the radiation exposure they received while partic.i.p.ating in the atmospheric testing program or the American occupation of Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki. The Veterans Dioxin and Radiation Exposure Compensation Standards Act of 1984 requires that veterans prove that they received at least five rem of radiation exposure, an expensive and all-but-impossible task for vets. The Radiation-Exposed Veterans Compensation Act of 1988 provides compensation if a veteran can show that he or she partic.i.p.ated in the occupation or testing program and suffers from certain specified cancers. Although the 1988 law does not require a dose reconstruction, many atomic veterans feel the list of cancers is too restrictive.

According to Pat Broudy, the widow of an atomic soldier and longtime lobbyist for the veterans, fewer than 500 of the 450,000 military personnel who partic.i.p.ated in the occupation of j.a.pan or the atmospheric testing program are receiving awards under the two laws established by Congress.27 Hundreds of thousands of veterans who helped clean up the Marshall Islands following various detonations or were involved in other nuclear weapons activities are not even covered by these laws, she added.

The Department of Defense has opposed compensation for atomic veterans for many years. In 1981 William Taft IV, general counsel for the Defense Department, warned that proposed legislation to compensate the veterans would have a disastrous and far-flung effect on military and civilian programs. The proposed legislation, he wrote: creates the unmistakable impression that exposure to low-level ionizing radiation is a significant health hazard when scientific and medical evidence simply does not support that contention.28 This mistaken impression has the potential to be seriously damaging to every aspect of the Department of Defenseas nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion programs. The legislation could adversely affect our relations with our European allies, impact upon the civilian nuclear power industry, and raise questions regarding the use of radioactive substances in medical diagnosis and treatment.

According to doc.u.ments obtained by Pat Broudy, the Defense Nuclear Agency paid $13.6 million between 1978 and 1994 to a contractor called Science Applications International Corporation to areconstructa the doses needed by veterans to qualify for compensation under the 1984 law. To arrive at the doses, a whirl of data about the atomic explosion and the soldieras whereabouts are fed into a computer. The results have been overwhelmingly in favor of the government; fewer than fifty veterans or their widows have qualified for awards under the 1984 law.29 Scientist William Jay Brady said the internal dose estimates developed by Science Applications are based on incorrect a.s.sumptions. The contractor used the amount of radiation delivered to the bone to decide whether an internal dose reconstruction was necessary, but most veterans who partic.i.p.ated in the Nevada tests received the largest doses of radiation to their lungs and lymph nodes from inhaling the so-called hot particles that s.h.i.+elds Warren and others were so worried about. In testimony submitted to Congress in 1996, Brady said that many of the internal organ doses awere in the hundreds or thousands of rads, certainly high enough to cause concern regarding incidence of radiogenic as well as nonradiogenic disease.a30

28.

CITIZEN VOLUNTEERS.

The military maneuvers at the Nevada Test Site captured the nationas imagination. Letters poured into Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., from citizens throughout the United States who wanted to witness the fury of an atomic bomb. The commission had a stock response for the letter writers: aThe Atomic Energy Commission does not deliberately expose any human being to nuclear radiation for research purposes unless there is a reasonable chance that the person will be benefited by such exposure.1 Needless to say, we are interested in exploring all possible means of evaluating the biomedical effects of atomic blasts, but we have restricted such experimentation to laboratory animals.a The following are excerpts from some of those letters: Dear Sirs: Please inform me how to apply for a job in the experimental department (guinea pig). Yours truly, Walter, East Liverpool, Ohio, April 6, 1953.

War Dept., Army, Pentagon Building: If you would like a guinea pig for the next A explosiona"Iam your boy. Jacob, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., no date.

Dear President Eisenhower: I hope you donat think Iam crazy. But I am offering myself to be used as a aguinea piga to an atomic bomb blast.a P.S. My age is 13. Gary, Carlsbad, N.M., June 8, 1953.

Dear Sir:aWith all of these tests that are being made with the atomic bomb would you have any need for a live human to be placed in the target area where you make the tests? If you do, I would like to be that person. Clarence, Minneapolis, Minn., July 20, 1953.

Dear AEC chairman: Was greatly disappointed that you did not acknowledge my letter dated March 25th in which I volunteered to expose myself in the next atom blast. I am as anxious as the government to learn the biomedical effects from an atomic blast. Robert, Beloit, Wis., April 6, 1953.

Sirs: You are experimenting these days with human beings near atom bomb blasts. Will you let me be one of your human guinea pigs? a I will not be aat homea to newspapermen or anyone wanting to play up my volunteering to be a human guinea pig.a I will also volunteer to be a pa.s.senger on a rocket being sent into the stratosphere, or for any other dangerous mission anywhere on earth. Lloyd, Indianapolis, Ind., March 26, 1953.

Gentlemen:aI have been wondering exactly how close a human being can be to an exploding atomic bomb, absorb its effects (radiation) vibrations, etc. and still live. I suppose you might have wondered, too! a I also suppose it would benefit mankind a great deal to know how much the human being can take and what can be done for him (if anything) after its effects. That, to me, sounds like a real experiment you, too, may like to find out. If you are further interested, I may be your aguinea pig.a Ernest, no address, Aug. 8, 1953.

29.

THE CLOUD SAMPLERS.

Sandwiched between the soft blues of sky and ocean, four fighter pilots cruised toward a tower of mud and water directly in front of them.1 The column was twenty miles wide and 45,000 feet high.2 As they drew closer to the unearthly shape, the jets looked no bigger than flies. In groups of two, they pierced the curtain of dirty clouds and entered the dull red glow of the worldas first thermonuclear detonation.

It was the morning of November 1, 1952, in the Pacific Proving Ground, October 31 in the United Statesa"and three days away from a presidential election. Atop the muddy column of water floated a diaphanous cloud that eventually flattened out to more than 150 miles in diameter.3 The apparition, shockingly incongruous in the middle of the tropical mildness, was aMike,a the first shot in Operation Ivy and the most powerful explosion ever experienced on Earth. The blast incinerated the island of what was then called Elugelab and left a huge crater on the ocean floor. Its yield was estimated at 10.4 megatons, or five hundred times the size of a Nagasaki-type bomb. A amonster,a declared an Air Force historian a decade later.

The four pilots were members of the aRed Team,a the first wave of samplers who were scheduled to penetrate Mike and gather radioactive debris and gases for scientists back in the United States. A aWhitea and aBluea team were also slated to enter Mike later that morning. The leader of the Red Team was Virgil Meroney, code-named Red One. His fellow pilots included a Captain Brenner, Red Two; Captain Robert Hagan, Red Three; and Captain Jimmy P. Robinson, Red Four.

Jimmy P. Robinson was a newcomer to the Pacific Proving Ground where the wind and rain were often fickle companions. Just twenty-eight years old, Robinson had a little over six hundred hours of flying time. At Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas, his home base, he had completed a course in water survival. After attending a weeklong ground school for Radiological Indoctrination at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he had flown to Nevada where he partic.i.p.ated in one sampling mission during the 1952 tests. Nearly six feet tall and 170 pounds, Robinson thought he was ready for the nuclear tests. But the Pacific blasts were bigger and more dangerous than those held in Nevada. And Mike was the biggest explosion yet.

The day before the shot, the four men had been briefed on what to expect by Dr. Harold Plank, a Los Alamos scientist who was in charge of the scientific aspects of the sampling operations. (aA dingaling but a brillant one,a retired cloud sampler William Wright described him.)4 As the men listened intently, Plank reviewed the shot with them, but no onea"not even Planka"knew how big Mike would be or whether it would actually work. Be sure to keep your canopies closed until the aircraft have come to a complete stop, he cautioned the men. The planes were extremely radioactive following the sorties, and potentially harmful amounts of alpha and beta particles could be blown back into their faces.

The sampler pilots were buckled into their c.o.c.kpits. Then ground crews draped lead-filled gowns over their shoulders and placed lead-lined helmets on their heads. The gowns weighed fifty-five pounds each and the helmets six pounds, a combined weight that was equal to nearly a third of what some of the pilots weighed. Although the gear provided the partic.i.p.ants with some degree of protection and psychological comfort, the scientists at Los Alamos undoubtedly knew the lead would not fully protect the pilots from the penetrating radiation in the heart of a thermonuclear cloud.

When the Red team arrived in the sampling area aone hour after Ha hour,a they split into pairs. Virgil Meroney and Captain Brenner were the first to fly into Mikeas stem. Filled with many tons of water, debris, and the coral remains of Elugelab, the stem was highly radioactive and extremely turbulent due to the convective forces set up by the temperature changes.5 When the head of the cloud moved off, a 1963 decla.s.sified Air Force history of the cloud sampling program states, the stem remained in the upright position, pouring down into the ocean the radioactive water and muddy debris for one to two hours.6 It took Meroney and his teammate about fifteen minutes to make contact with the roiling column of mud and water. aWhen he reached the cloud, Colonel Meroney was in for a busy time,a the Air Force history reported.7 The two men put their planes on automatic pilot while they hastily gathered information. There were three radiation instruments to monitor, data to be recorded on a report sheet, and numbers to be radioed back to Harold Plank, who hovered in the nearby scientific control aircraft. The pilots also carried a stopwatch to time their stay in aradiation over one roentgen in intensity.a Wrote the Air Force history: Inside the cloud Colonel Meroney was impressed with the color.8 It cast a dull red glow over the c.o.c.kpit. His radiation instruments all ahit the peg.a The hand on the integron, which showed the rate at which radioactivity was being acc.u.mulated aa went around like the sweep second hand on a watch a and I had thought it would barely move!a the colonel reported. With aeverything on the pega and the red glow like the inside of a red hot furnace, Colonel Meroney made a 90-degree turn and left the cloud. He had spent about five minutes in radiation over one roentgen intensity.

The aradiation over one-roentgen intensitya could refer to anything from 1 to 1,000 rads, and the history does not disclose how much radiation Colonel Meroney was subjected to during his five-minute sortie. When Meroney cleared the cloud, he turned his jet around to watch Robert S. Hagan and Jimmy P. Robinson make their runs. Meroney cautioned them not to go too far. Soon he heard Hagan, the Red Three pilot, tell a controller that he was changing direction, indicating that he, too, had run into a pocket of intense radiation. Next he heard heavy breathing over the radio, as if someone were holding his mike down. Jimmy Robinson also apparently had run into a hot spot while gathering scientific data. When he made a tight turn to escape, he somehow overtaxed the abilities of the planeas autopilot. The aircraft stalled and went into a spin.

It was a nightmare come true. The jet tumbled down 20,000 feet through the radioactive steam, mud, and coral smithereens of Elugelab. Finally it leveled out.

Meroney radioed Robinson and asked him if he was okay. The pilot responded, aI am O.K. and the aircraft is O.K. except it flies as if my flaps are dragging.a Meroney then instructed Robinson and Hagan to get together, return to the control aircraft, and then head for the tanker plane for refueling. Both pilots acknowledged the instructions and switched to a different station. It was the last time Meroney heard Robinsonas voice. The young pilot was to become a footnote in history, a tragedy quickly forgotten on the day when the fusion that burns deep within stars was first harnessed on earth.

When Red Three and Red Four exited the thermonuclear stem, the skies were filled with rain clouds. Neither could visually see the control aircraft or the refueling tankers. According to a 1952 accident report that was decla.s.sified in 1998, the electromagnetic interference from Mike had disrupted the electronic equipment on their jets and also had caused the radar equipment on the nearby control aircraft to malfunction.9 The two pilots could not pick up the electronic signals that would tell them where the refueling aircraft was or the emergency landing strip at Enewetak. Nor could the military controllers, who suddenly found their radar inoperative, give the pilots accurate directions.

The two men circled in the asoupa for nearly an hour. As they circled aimlessly, their jets, which burned 1,200 pounds of fuel per hour, grew dangerously low on fuel. Suddenly Red Three picked up a signal for Enewetak. With only 600 pounds of fuel in his tanks, he made a beeline for the emergency landing strip. Then Jimmy Robinsonas aircraft picked up the beacon. The spinout in the cloud and the climb back up to alt.i.tude has cost him more fuel; he had perhaps 400 to 500 pounds of fuel left. He, too, raced toward Enewetak.

The island was covered in rain squalls. With his fuel tanks on empty, Captain Hagan landed on the runway. The touchdown was so rough that his right main tire blew out. Then it was Robinsonas turn. He radioed the tower at 19,000 feet and told them his fuel gauge was on empty. At 13,000 feet he reported that his engine had just aflamed out.a At 10,000 feet he was given steering instructions to the runway. At 3,000 feet Robinson radioed the tower and said that he couldnat make it. At 2,000 feet he said he could see a helicopter pilot who had been dispatched to look for him. Then, a second later he screamed, aIam bailing out.a Donald Foss, the helicopter pilot, spotted Jimmy Robinsonas plane just north of the atoll. The jet was in a level glide at 150 knots. Foss jumped in behind the aircraft and followed it. He a.s.sumed Robinson was attempting a water landing and thought he saw the wing tanks and canopy being released. Other observers later told accident investigators they saw what looked like a seat being ejected from the aircraft. If Robinson were in that seat, he would have been weighed down by an extra 61 pounds of lead.

The jet landed with a agreat deal of forcea on the water, Foss told authorities, skipping like a stone for another 100 to 300 yards. Then the belly of the plane slammed onto the sea again. The nose plowed into the water, flipping the aircraft on its back. Rapidly it began to sink. The helicopter pilot kept circling the plane, calling for aid. He watched helplessly as Robinsonas plane disappeared into the lagoon three and one-half miles from the runway.

In the rain, the rescue teams kept looking for Robinson. Other units arrived to help. One aircraft, in an effort to reach the search area as fast as possible, knowingly took the shortest route: through a fallout zone. The seven-member crew received exposures ranging from 10 to 17.8 roentgens.10 Long after the muddy stem of Mike had collapsed back into the sea and the four winds had shredded the diaphanous mushroom cap, the rescue crews kept searching for the downed pilot. They found an oil slick, a couple of maps, and one glove.11 The small coral island of Elugelab and Jimmy P. Robinson were gone.

For Edward Teller, the successful detonation of Mike was the culmination of a lifetime and a deeply satisfying victory over naysayers like J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had once called the H-bomb a amiserable thinga that could be gotten to battle only by aox cart.a12 Although Mike was a bona fide thermonuclear detonation, it still could not be gotten to the battlefield: It weighed sixty-five tons and occupied an entire building on the soon-to-be vaporized island of Elugelab.

Teller, like Oppenheimer, was a brilliant physicist, but he had none of the former Los Alamos leaderas charisma. With his volatile temper and huge ego, Teller had grown so estranged from his Los Alamos colleagues that he had not flown out to the Pacific to watch the detonation. Instead he sat in a darkened bas.e.m.e.nt in Berkeley, his eyes trained on a seismograph in front of him that would tell him whether the thermonuclear device had worked. As Teller watched the small point of light on the seismograph, he felt as if he was aboard a agently and irregularly moving vessel.a13 Suddenly the light began to move erratically, recording the shock waves from Mike as they struck the California coastline. For many minutes Teller watched the dancing point of light. When the light finally grew still, the film was taken away and developed. In an article for Science magazine, Teller later wrote that he was unsure if what he had seen awas the motion of my own hand rather than the signal from the first hydrogen bomb.aa14 Back in the United States that evening, there were phone calls, telegrams, whispers of congratulations following Mikeas successful detonation. Officials in the State Department, Pentagon, and White House immediately began discussing ahow to take psychological advantage of this tremendous stride in weapons development,a wrote Kenneth Nichols, the Army officer who directed the Manhattan Projectas daily operations and went on to become the Pentagonas atomic czar.15 The test was not announced to the public because of fears that it might influence the presidential election. Truman, who had been shown a model of Mike at the White House five months earlier, was delighted when he heard the news. He wrote in his memoirs: aIt was an awesome demonstration of the new power, and I felt that it was important that the newly elected President should be fully informed about it.16 And on the day after the election I requested the Atomic Energy Commission to arrange to brief President-elect Eisenhower on the results of the test as well as on our entire nuclear program.a Of the thousands of enlisted personnel who partic.i.p.ated in Americaas atmospheric testing program, perhaps no humans got closer to the exploding heart of a nuclear weapon than the sampler pilots. Straight into the heaving, turbulent clouds they flew. Built into the wings of their aircraft were special tanks equipped with filter paper attached to meshed screens. As the aircraft pa.s.sed through a radioactive cloud, the pilot opened the valves to the tanks, allowing the debris to acc.u.mulate on the filter paper. Radioactive gases were collected by long, hollow probes located in the nose section of the aircraft. When the planes returned from the sampling missions, ground crews removed the bottles and filter paper and sent them back to weapons scientists in the United States for a.n.a.lysis. As Robinsonas flight showed, the sampling missions were dangerous and unpredictable, and the pilots received some of the largest doses of anyone in the nuclear testing program. The cloud samplers were used in several actual experiments, but it goes without saying that the entire program was highly experimental. The General Accounting Office estimated that some 4,000 people were involved in units responsible for manning or decontaminating aircraft.17 Although Robinson was relatively inexperienced, many of the sampler pilots were combat-hardened veterans who had dodged aircraft fire over the skies of Korea, Germany, and Italy. A sortie through a nuclear cloud, a flight that one scientist said would give the air crews a radiation dose equal to a couple of chest X rays, was supposed to be a breeze. But on their maiden voyages, many of the pilots were asimply overwhelmeda"so badly that they could not function satisfactorilya"by the awesomeness of the cloud interior,a recalled Los Alamos scientist Paul Guthals.18 One officer, he remembered: volunteered to get an early sample (H + 45 minutes). It was his first sampling mission.19 As he entered the cloud, he, in a normal voice, reported an aRa reading of 30. In rapid succession his aRa reading reports came over the radioa"each report higher in radiation intensity and each report in a voice of higher pitch. As his instruments pa.s.sed 100 roentgens per hour readings, his voice was pitched so high that it didnat seem possible that a man was transmitting.

Enrico Fermi, the brilliant Italian physicist, might be said to be the first sampler of the nuclear age. J. Robert Oppenheimer had warned before the Trinity explosion that airplanes amust maintain a minimum distance from the detonation in order to avoid radiation.a20 So Fermi rumbled to Ground Zero in a lead-lined Sherman tank.21 A mechanical arm operating from inside the tank scooped up samples of sand from the desert floor. The radioactive debris was then taken back to Los Alamos, where it was a.n.a.lyzed in order to help its creators determine what happened in the first milliseconds of the bombas birth. Louis Hempelmann had talked avery seriouslya with Fermi about the potential exposure, Stafford Warren remembered. aAs I recall, he would not wear a film badge; but he took along a meter and in he went a he came back later with the statement that head gotten a little bit but not very much.22 He never said how much or how long he was in there.a Fermi developed stomach cancer that is believed to have been caused by his many years of exposure to radioactive materials.23 He died in 1954 at the age of fifty-three.

During Operation Crossroads, drone aircraft operated by remote control were used to a.n.a.lyze the radioactive fission products from shots Able and Baker. The material was captured by filter paper placed within boxlike holders attached to the top and bottom of the aircraft fuselages. Radioactive gases were collected by large rubber bags capable of gulping ninety cubic feet of air during a pa.s.s through an atomic cloud. Manned flights began in 1948 during Operation Sandstone when a young lieutenant colonel named Paul Fackler accidentally flew through a cloud and suffered no aill effects.a24 Just to be on the safe side, though, Fackler flew his aircraft through several rain squalls before landing.

Organized sampling missions began in 1951 and continued at both the Pacific Proving Ground and at the Nevada Test Site for more than a decade. Weapons scientists came to depend on the fission products and radioactive gases that the pilots brought back from their sorties. Occasionally the sampler pilots scooped up radioactive debris on overseas missions in order to obtain scientific intelligence on the atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs being detonated by the Soviet Union and China.

The program was still in its rudimentary stages when Jimmy P. Robinson made his fatal flight. Often the procedures and equipment were modified following each test series. The year after his flight, for example, a lead-gla.s.s vest covering the sides and front of the men replaced the shroud, and the c.o.c.kpits were lined with thin sheets of lead.25 Film badges were placed on the pilots and scattered throughout the c.o.c.kpit. The aircraft also were equipped with several other devices that measured radiation. The pilots kept a close watch on an instrument called an aintegron,a which measured the c.u.mulative amount of radiation they were absorbing.

The samplers donned rose-colored gla.s.ses to help them hunt down the shapes of mushroom clouds.26 Eventually the gla.s.ses were replaced with face s.h.i.+elds embedded with gold dust. Langdon Harrison, a retired sampler pilot, said the gold face s.h.i.+elds enabled the samplers to better see the reddish hues that distinguish an atomic cloud from a regular cloud.27 The dirty colors signified the presence of nitrogen dioxide, oxides from iron, and the condensed oxides from the casings of the nuclear devices and other equipment.

The pilots also got spotting help from the scientific control aircraft that usually hovered anywhere from ten to fifty nautical miles from the cloud. A military director and a scientific director normally rode in the aircraft. Harold Plank, who helped develop many of the innovations used in the sampling program, was Los Alamosas scientific director from about 1950 to 1957. Paul Guthals succeeded Plank in 1957 and continued until the program was terminated. In an Air Force newsletter, Plank praised the squadron that performed the cloud sampling. aIts members during test operations have an urgent and important mission, which is to pursue and penetrate the bomb cloud as a target.28 This mission has inherent elements of risks and of personal devotion to duty which are not normally required during peacetime.a The sampling program was fraught with tension caused by conflicting goals. The weapons scientists were interested in obtaining radioactive debris and gases emitted in the first seconds of a detonation. However, this was also the time in which the radiation levels in the clouds were so high that pilots could be killed or seriously injured. As the Air Force history explained: aNeeded for planning purposes was an aoptimum timea at which an acceptable radiation exposure would not necessarily or accidentally be exceeded but at which it would always be possible to collect the required sample.a29 One Los Alamos official said the preplanning was so well done that the pilotsa doses were known before the mission started. aThe same for ground personnel and natives was not always true, although no serious and long-lasting illnesses have resulted from unplanned fallout or routine contamination.a30 Other doc.u.ments, however, indicate that, in the early days of the testing program, the estimations for expected yields from atomic or hydrogen bombs could be off by as much as 50 percent, or so approximate as to be almost useless. Mikeas designers, for example, estimated the thermonuclear device would have a yield of between four and ten megatons. Such uncertainty made dose predictions mere guessing games, a fact that was acknowledged in the Air Force history: aA scarcity of information on the dimensions of, and radiation intensity in clouds, from megaton devices at operational alt.i.tudes for times up to one hour after detonation made athe prediction of air crew radiation doses in transit through such clouds questionable.a a31 During most of the atmospheric testing period, the AEC limited the apermissible dosesa test personnel received to no more than 3.9 roentgens during a thirteen-week period.32 But the dose limits were waived for air crews. The Air Force Surgeon General permitted up to 50 roentgens for air crews during the 1956 Redwing test series, but no partic.i.p.ant received that high a dose.33 The actual exposures the pilots received are a matter of controversy. The Defense Nuclear Agency, a successor to the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, could not provide an average dose received by the samplers but said the largest dose any one pilot got was 42.5 roentgens. Several retired sampler pilots believe their exposures were much higher than that.34 And the General Accounting Office uncovered evidence in the mid-1980s that bolstered the claims that exposures were underestimated.

When the pilots completed their flights, they continued to be irradiated on the way home from the debris that collected in the engines and on the external surfaces of the planes.35 aAs a result a radiation flux or ac.o.c.kpita radiation background existed within the interior of a sampling aircraft after its departure from the cloud,a the Air Force history stated.36 aWhile returning to base the pilot received additional radiation exposure.a When the planes landed, special forklifts were rolled up so that the pilots could step from their c.o.c.kpits onto the platform and be rolled away without touching the sides of the planes.37 Air Force officials, embarra.s.sed when visitors saw the pilots being wheeled away on platforms, eventually tried to do away with the forklifts. aThose aircraft never calmed down completely for 10 or 20 years,a pilot William Wright remembered.38 If time permitted, the aircraft usually were towed to an isolated area and the radioactive debris allowed to decay overnight. Then the planes were scrubbed down by ground crews. One pilot said Duz, a common laundry detergent, was used on the exteriors of the planes and ground walnuts shoveled into th