Technology - Nuclear tests

Hood, 5 July 1957, 74 kilotons yield. Part of Operation Plumbbob, a series of nuclear tests in mid-1957. This was the largest device (as they were called) set off aboveground at the Nevada Test Site. It was a thermonuclear device (i.e., a hydrogen bomb), despite the fact that the AEC denied for many years that thermonuclear devices had been set off aboveground in the US. I saw this one as a small child, watching from off Lee Canyon in the Spring Mountains about 30 miles away. Scanned from an official AEC (Atomic Energy Commission--now absorbed into the US Dept. of Energy) photo that had been cleared for public release, and so is in the public domain. A little judicious Photoshopping has repaired some cracks in the original emulsion.

Priscilla, 24 Jun 1957, 40 kilotons yield. Another in the Operation Plumbbob series. However, although this picture was identified as Priscilla by the AEC, it actually looks to be Grable. Apparently the Priscilla pictures have been misidentified for years--see www.radiochemistry.org/history/nuke_tests/plumbbob/index.... Scanned from an official AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) photo that had been cleared for public release, and so is in the public domain. As with Hood, I would have seen this as a small child, watching with my mom and kid sister from the Spring Mountains about 30 miles away. Of course, you can't watch the initial detonation without heavy-duty eye protection, but you can certainly watch the fireball afterward.

From Max Canyon Road off Lee Canyon, in the Spring Mountains southwest of Las Vegas. When I was a small child in the late 1950s we would watch the above-ground nuclear tests from near here. At the time it was a popular activity among Las Vegas residents! There were always a number of other parties also out to see the test. Of course, you can't watch the actual detonation without heavy-duty eye protection--my kid sister and I would have to hide our faces under a blanket--but you certainly can watch the fireball afterward. I still have a small child's memory of mushroom clouds out in the desert. My mom would watch the detonation through welders' goggles my dad had borrowed from the AEC. (My dad typically was at the Test Site for the test.) She says that at the moment of detonation, the inside of those goggles would go completely white--and then immediately go dark again. But, when you took the goggles off it would still be as bright as day as the fireball rose off the desert floor. Just a few photons released at that instant of detonation ... :)