13 VOLUNTEERS AT ATOM TEST

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27642, 26 April 1955, Page 13

13 VOLUNTEERS AT ATOM TEST

Officers To Shelter In Trench

(Rec. 9 p.m.) LAS VEGAS, April 24. Thirteen volunteers will huddle in a six-foot deep trench less than a mile and a half from the fury of a 40 kiloton atomic burst planned, for Tuesday, if present favourable weather reports are correct.

The 13, all Army officers except for one civilian Army instructor, spent Saturday and early today checking the preparation of their narrow trench, which is topped with timber staves and covered with wire mesh.

Both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were, of about 20 kilotons (a kiloton equals 1000 tons of T.N.T.). At tests here in 1953 volunteer groups were in trenches 2000 and 2500 yards distant from atomic explosions—but these were also of much less intensity than the one prepared for Tuesday. So that no-one may ever have been as close before to such a powerful explosion. Dr. Alvin Graves, chief scientist of this year’s tests at the 640 square mile Yucca Flats desert site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, gave the 40-kiloton estimate to 440 correspondents—including eight British—covering the nuclear experiment. The publicity is encouraged by officials of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Civil Defence Administration, who wish to bring home urgently to the American people exactly what an atomic attack would do to their towns, and how to recover afterwards.

Dr. Graves, in sports shirt and rumpled trousers, spoke informally to correspondents and the 1600 civil defence leaders from all over the United States who will watch the test from a vantage point eight miles away from Ground Zero —the 500-foot tower topped bv a cabin containing the device.

Dr. Graves refused to give a hard and fast estimate of the explosive power of Tuesday’s test device, insisting that it was an experimental burst designed to answer some of the scientists’ questions, but he repeated several times that his best guess was 40 kilotons. He laughed when a correspondent asked if it was true that the device was about the size of a baseball. “Or, no, it’s not like a baseball or a hand grenade or anything like that,” he replied. “It’s not something you could pick up by yourself. It’s heavier than that. It’s a reasonably heavy and sizeable object.” Army and civil defence wo r • ana planning for this test began in the winter of 1953. and 65 major experiments, apart from the device itself, will be conducted simultaneously. Nine of these are for the Army, 17 for the scientists, and 48 for civil defence. Army Task Force The Army will send tanks straight over Ground Zero within minutes of the burst, almost under the familiar mushroom cloud. The 55 Patton heavy tanks and two Walker Bulldog light tanks with full crews will withstand the initial shock of heat and pressure of 3100 yards, moving forward immediately the fireball burns out. Behind them 2500 infantry will climb from trenches 3500 yards from Ground Zero to check radio and telephone equipment of a full regiment, which has been laid only 1000 yards away from the burst point. The 13 special volunteers will also move forward. The rest of the armoured battalion —weapon carriers and lightly-arm-oured self-propelled guns—will roll up from positions 3900 yards from Ground Zero to join the tanks in a simulated breakthrough of an enemy line demolished by the explosion. It will be the first “atomic breakthrough” in military history, but in theory at least the tanks will not have it all their own way. A “ghost battalion” of empty tanks, unmanned guns, and small arms—hulks from previous tests —will challenge them from 5000 yards the other side of Ground Zero. These demolished weapons have been arranged in bunkers and behind barbed wire and dummy land mines to form an enemy line which the tanks’ “Task Force Razor” must force before reaching their objective in the brown hills surrounding Yucca Flats.