Cloud Delays High-Level Test In Pacific

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29853, 20 June 1962, Page 15

Cloud Delays High-Level Test In Pacific

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) HONOLULU, June 19. High cloud yesterday in the Johnston Island area forced a postponement until today of the United States’ big nuclear test blast 200 miles above the island in the Pacific. The detonation, the biggest planned in the current Pacific

test series, originally was set for last night. It has been rescheduled for between 11 p.m. local time Tuesday and 2.30 a.m. Wednesday (9 p.m. Wednesday and 12.30 a.m. Thursday, New Zealand time). A Joint Task Force 8 spokesman said only that the delay was caused by weather conditions in the test area. The Honolulu weather bureau said reports from Johnston Island had indicated dense cloud at 40.000 feet There was a thinner layer of cloud at about 15,000 feet, the forecaster said. The blanket of clouds would have prevented scientists from photographing the explosion in detail. Size Of Explosion

The explosion is expected to be 50 to 500 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and will up the Pacific night like a giant flash bulb, the Associated Press reported. Official sources have kept silent on the strength of the nuclear device to be used. They described it as of “megaton-plus” range—more powerful than one million tons of TJN.T.

Unofficially, sources say the warhead to be boosted aloft on a Thor missile will be about 10 megatons. It is to be exploded at an altitude of 200 miles or higher. Scientists say communications will be disrupted throughout the Pacific for hours by the gigantic explosion. An auroral effect is expected to flash across the Pacific when the blast dis. rupts magnetic belts around the earth.

The initial flash should be visible in Hawaii, 750 miles north-east of Johnston Island.

Joint Task Force 8 reported late on Sunday that every-

thing was ready at tihe test site. Adverse weather conditions developed early yesterday when clouds “just seemed to bunch up” across the Pacific, the Weather Bureau said. An earlier attempt to explode a nuclear device over Johnston Island was postponed three times because of weather and technical difficulties. That first test, on June 4, was cancelled after the Thor missile carrying the warhead aloft was destroyed when its tracking systems broke down.