MY EXPERIENCE AT THE NEVADA TEST SITE - (AREA 7)By: John DeBusk -- Editor -- yucca51@yahoo.com The photo at left was taken at Ft Campbell Airfield in 1952 soon after returning from the Nevada Test Site. Click photo to enlarge. In the fall of 1951 I was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky in the 11th Airborne Division. I was at that time in Company “A” of the 188th Airborne Infantry Regiment. Some time in early October, 1951 we were advised that in a few days our group would be going on a secret mission. There was a lot of talk and speculation about what our mission would be and the destination. Our group guarded a facility on Fort Campbell known as “The Birdcage.” It is located at the far south end of Fort Campbell. The Bird Cage was a facility consisting of several large bunkers that had two wide steel doors on each of them. The doors were large enough for a truck to enter with a load of whatever was to be stored inside. I visited Fort Campbell some time ago and the facility is still there but now is abandoned, and it had only one tall chain fence surrounding it. The 188th Airborne Infantry guarded the facility, Company Strength for two weeks at a time. For two weeks Company “A” would guard. The next two weeks Company “B” would be the guards etc. I remember after two weeks we were plenty glad to see Company “B” take their turn guarding because the duty was really boring, especially when we had no beer for two weeks! The living conditions at the Birdcage were primitive, there were several barracks and they consisted of large square wooden floors with poles supporting the roofs. The sides were of canvas that could be rolled down in winter, or rolled up for summer, there was no heat in winter. We slept on regular Army cots. Our duty time was 2 hours on duty and 4 hours off. This is how it was for two weeks at a time. I can say for sure I had rather jump out of 10 old shaky airplanes with bad oil pumping misfiring engines than to serve two weeks duty at the Birdcage! Click Here to view a warning sign located at the southeast corner of the Birdcage at Fort Campbell. The Birdcage had four tall chain link fences surrounding it and we patrolled inside the fences driving Jeeps with 30 Cal machine guns mounted on them. We were ordered to shoot anyone found inside these fences. Whatever we guarded at the Bird Cage was evidently very valuable, but I don’t believe it was gold or diamonds. The Scuttle-Butt was we were guarding atomic bombs or perhaps radioactive material from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I always thought it was something from Oak Ridge, because that facility was not far away from Ft. Campbell. Every so often there was a shipment of whatever was being stored in the Bird Cage at Fort Campbell. It would arrive at Fort Campbell Airport and the item or items would be loaded onto a flatbed truck for the trip to the south side of the base. The shipment would be guarded front and rear of the flatbed truck by Military Police riding in their Jeeps. Everything on the trailer was completely covered with a large tarpaulin so that the shipment could not be seen. The 188th Airborne Regiment at Fort Campbell were the guards of the so-called “Birdcage.” That, perhaps may be the explanation that we were chosen to be the first soldiers to participate in the atomic bomb testing at the Nevada Test Site. Click Here to view the page showing the old Atomic Birdcage bunkers we guarded at Fort Campbell. The men of Company “A” was notified to report at Fort Campbell Airport early on the morning of 12 October, 1951 and to bring extra clothing. We brought our full field pack items and our weapons from the Company supply room. Click Here to view the Morning Report for the actual date when the 188th Airborne Infantry Regiment departed Fort Campbell and when the Regiment arrived at Camp Desert Rock in Nevada. We boarded our C-46 planes at Campbell that morning at about 6:00 am, there were several planes. I don’t know how many, but enough to carry our entire Battalion. The planes droned on and on heading west. There was much talk about where we were headed and why it was so secretive. Some of the men slept, some talked and a few gambled playing a dice game. The noise inside a C-46 is quite deafening, a person can hardly hear themselves think. By the time we were near Albuquerque, New Mexico we had just about put 2+2 together and we all came to the conclusion that we were headed to the Nevada Test Site. After a while our planes landed at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, where we deplaned and had lunch and refueled the planes. After leaving Kirtland, the planes continued heading west until arriving at Indian Springs Air Force Base in Nevada. This is very near to The Nevada Test Site. We were surprised to learn after landing, there was a large welcoming party to greet us, several large buses and even the “Brass” including Major General William B. Kean who was the person in charge of the Desert Rock operation. Click Here to view General Kean's grave. In 1951, Kean was assigned to command III Corps, first at Camp Roberts, CA and later at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro. In October 1951, he led a 5,000 man task force as it took part in an exercise at the Nevada Test Site. During this event, atomic weapons tests were conducted to measure the effects on military members in close proximity.
WELCOME TO THE NEVADA TEST SITE
Photo on right is of William R. Doyle and John J. DeBusk at Camp Desert Rock, Oct 1951 ~ Click photo to enlarge. To use the latrine, we had to walk a distance to a ditch the Army Engineers had dug using a ditching machine and had to straddle the trench to do our business. I thought the area around Camp Desert Rock was very beautiful looking toward the mountains with all the yucca plants, cactus and creosote bushes as far as the eye could see. It was a different environment than we were used to at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
I have saved an old newspaper article that appeared in my hometown newspaper at the time I was stationed at Camp Desert Rock in 1951. The file is in a PDF format. The article is quite old and has yellowed with age but has some information about the troop participation activities at that time. Click this link to download and view.
Photo on left is John DeBusk at Camp Desert Rock, with my foot on a water can ~ Click photo to enlarge.
On Or About 17 October, 1951 After the 1951 series of nuclear tests, the Atomic Energy Commision started using pigs for test animals, pigs had skin that was more like humans. They could obtain better information of the effects of nuclear radiation on exposed skin. The animal at left is typical of a test animal as a result of an atomic blast on Yucca Flat at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and 1960s. By noon out on Yucca Flat, the heat was almost unbearable, but it was time to chow down on some of those delicious C- Rations. A soldier would come by in a Jeep and throw us a few boxes of C-Rations. Now C-Rations were not nearly as good as the Army has these days. Now they have MRE’S, Meals Ready To Eat. A case of C-Rations did have everything a person would need, consisting of cans of spaghetti, pork and beans, can opener, a can of fuel to heat beans, a hard biscuit, a small packet of cigarettes, some matches, toilet paper etc. I really hated those cans of Corned Beef Hash, so I always traded with someone. We were all instructed by the higher-up Brass not to leave any trash out on Yucca Flat, they did not want us to CONTAMINATE the area. Of course after detonating over 900 nuclear bombs in the 1950s and 1960s at the site, making it unsafe for humans, rabbits, or anything else for thousands of years, I don’t know what a scrap of paper or a can would hurt. I can’t say if this can be called progress for mankind or not? A person can book a trip to Yucca Flat on certain days of the year, the trip is only for a very short time. Contact the U. S. Dept. Of Energy or others in Las Vegas for details. I would think that this would be an experience for a daring person, someone who likes to live on the edge, and after the trip to the Nevada Test Site you will be able to show off your “Rich Glow” to friends and family members. As for me, no, I don't believe I'll go at this time, I’ve been there and done that years ago! The atomic detonations were at the north side of Yucca Flat, near the base of the mountain. Yucca Flat was a large expanse of land and also a dry lake bed, it was encircled by a mountain range. From Camp Desert Rock, which is just off Highway 95 at Mercury, Nevada, we traveled north 27 miles crossing Yucca Pass. It is at the top of the mountain chain. From Yucca Pass it is down hill all the way to our destination where we set up the test positions. Ground Zero was at the northern part of Yucca Flat. Click Here to view the Buster-Jangle test area map of 1951 on Yucca Flat. This map shows the locations for Ground Zero for each test and the test positions for equipment, emplacements, animals, ammunition. The test positions were constructed south and a little to the west of Ground Zero. Below is a list of the test positions located at varying distances from Ground Zero. The top of the map is north.
Test Position 1 -- 1000 yards south of GZ -- Equipment, emplacements, animals, ammunition --- More than 1000 RADs of radiation, less than 500 RADs are fatal.
Test Position 2 -- 1500 yards south of GZ -- Equipment, emplacements, animals, ammunition Test Position 3 -- 2500 yards south of GZ -- Equipment, emplacements, animals, ammunition Test Position 4 -- 3500 yards south of GZ -- Equipment, animals Test Position 5 -- 5000 yards south of GZ -- Equipment, emplacements, animals Test Position 6 -- 7000 yards south of GZ -- Equipment, animals
Dates of the 1951 tests: The Buster-Jangle nuclear tests conducted at The Nevada Test Site in the fall of 1951 consisted of 7 atomic tests code-named: Able, Oct 22, 1951 -- Baker, Oct 28,1951 -- Charlie, Oct 30, 1951 -- Dog Nov 1, 1951 -- Easy, Nov 5, 1951 -- Sugar, Nov 19, 1951 -- Uncle, Nov 29, 1951 The "Able Test" 22 October 1951 was a dud, the high explosives blew the plutonium pit to smithereens and deposited radioactive material on Yucca Flat where we worked for weeks setting up the atomic tests Click Here to read about this this dud. This was the very first detonation in the Buster-Jangle series of tests. Murphy's Laws: (1) Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. (2) If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway. (3) If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then. (4) It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. After placing sheep, various types of equipment and ammunition and radiation film badges in foxholes and emplacements for the atomic test, our unit would draw back and be seated on the desert floor facing south looking away from the detonation. I might as well mention here that each of the soldiers were issued film badges, they were worn during tests and turned in after the tests. We had to be seated because the blast would knock us down if standing even at 7 miles distance. When the bomb exploded, the flash was 100 times brighter than the noon-day Sun. After the flash we could turn around to observe the mushroom cloud. No sound was heard immediately but one could see it coming, it came toward us at approximately 760 miles per hour, the speed of sound. The sound and overpressure from the blast looked like a giant heat wave. It was like a wave one can see on a hot day driving down a road but a lot bigger. When the wave reached us there was a giant boom, a deafening sound that would make a person’s ears ring. Then there were smaller booms that echoed through the mountains a few moments. Some of us used dark glasses to wear, like welder’s goggles but others did not have any. Many of the men claimed they had their hands over their eyes, and with their eyes closed at the instant of the explosion, they could see the bones in their hands. I was one of the lucky ones and did have dark glasses to wear. There is a photo of a group of soldiers watching an atomic bomb explosion in the November 12, 1951 edition of Life Magazine. All the men are from my Company “A”. I am the soldier wearing dark glasses on the far left of the picture. Life Magazine has a nice article in that issue. The photograph is from the November 1, 1951 detonation of atomic bomb, “Dog”. Click Here to view the photo of men watching detonation at Yucca Flat. The detonation of this device had a yield equivalent to 21,500 tons of TNT. This atomic bomb was the size of the Nagasaki, Japan blast that killed over 50,000 persons and injured many more. Prior to atomic testing in Nevada, the testing was done in the Marshall Islands on Bikini Atoll, and other locations. Now they had brought the nuclear testing to America’s back yard to detonate the atomic bombs. On the day of an atomic detonation we were always upwind from the detonation. The Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense made sure the prevailing wind was coming from the south and blowing to the north toward Saint George, Utah and not toward Las Vegas. Those poor folks who lived in that direction got the full effect of all that radioactive fallout from the atomic testing. I really felt sorry for them, but then after a shot we jumped onto trucks like idiots and went down to Ground Zero within the hour to retrieve equipment, film badges. I’m not going to mention the hapless sheep because the animal rights folks would get their bowels in an uproar. After the Buster-Jangle series of tests, the AEC and DOD started using sheep, dogs, pigs, cattle, and rats as test animals. We carried Geiger Counters, number MX-5-GM, but they only registered 0-20mr/hr, the range was very low and they were too heavy. When getting a reading almost anywhere near Ground Zero the Geiger needle just lay over on the maximum, so we started not to pay much attention to whatever the reading was on those Geiger Counters. There is about 10% of a plutonium bomb that doesn’t fission, so the left over fissionable material is deposited on or near the point of the detonation or sucked up in the mushroom cloud and deposited downwind on others. The term is “Fallout“ because the radioactive particles fall out of the mushroom cloud. When the AEC conducted tests, many times children were playing outside on school grounds, teachers or officials in towns were not alerted of the radiation hazard of an approaching nuclear mushroom cloud. I remember something that happened on the 1 November 1951 which was the “Dog” atomic shot. My good friend whose first name was Henry was seated next to me at our observation area. It was just minutes before the B-29 let the bomb loose. Henry asked me, “John, do you think we are safe here”? I asked him if he remembered when we made a night jump at Fort Campbell. The Jump Master mistook the light on the water tower and thought it was the Drop Zone, and we jumped onto the Fort Campbell Hospital. He told me he remembered. Then I told him that more likely than not the pilot in the B-29 would miss the target at Ground Zero and that all of us would be incinerated in just a few minutes. I don’t know if my comment helped or hurt, but the pilot did deliver the bomb where it was supposed to go and only missed the target by only a few feet.
After the atomic bomb test was over, soldiers were loaded onto 2.5 ton trucks and headed to Ground Zero to retrieve the film badges that had been left on equipment, we also gathered up some of the equipment to return. While there we looked around at the devastation left behind by the explosion and there was plenty of it to see. Where there had been grass and bushes, now was only scorched Earth. I was surprised to see some green lizards running about, I suppose they had been down in their holes before the blast and because of all the commotion they came out to see what was happening. When we were through inspecting the area and loading up all the film badges and equipment, we returned to the trucks and drove to a staging area to turn in the film badges and equipment to the Atomic Energy Commission. There at the staging area were soldiers who used Geiger Counters to check us for radiation, of course this was a useless operation because the Counters only went to 0-20mr/hr. Click Here to view a photo of old Geiger Counters. There were other soldiers that swept the radioactive fallout particles off our clothing with brooms, that was the decontamination process used at the test site. Then it was time to return to Camp Desert Rock and the showers. At the shower tent the Army furnished us with that good old lye soap and GI brushes. If the lye soap and GI brushes wouldn’t do the trick of removing fallout, nothing would. After the atomic testing was finished, our Battalion was given a 3 day pass to go to Las Vegas. This was the highlight of the whole trip for most of us because we had never been to such a place before. We took showers and put on our dress uniforms and loaded onto the Army buses for the trip to town. The busses were just ordinary school bus types but instead of being yellow they were olive-drab, an army color. The busses ran every few minutes from Camp Desert Rock to Las Vegas, so there was no problem with transportation. Las Vegas was not nearly as large in 1951 as it is today. It was just a small gambling town. The Golden Nugget Casino was there, I remember it well. They had not even thought of building the Las Vegas Strip yet. The folks in downtown Las Vegas at the Casinos were super nice to all of the personnel and soldiers from the Nevada Test Site. The government was spending millions and millions of dollars on the testing program and the Casinos were making tons of money from the activity. They wouldn’t dream of us being in their places without a drink or a sandwich in our hands, everything was free of charge. Now to all of us, we thought we had died and gone to heaven. People from all around America and the world arrived to watch the atomic bomb explosions. The test Site was 75 miles from Las Vegas but folks could see the mushroom clouds even from that distance. Some of the detonations on Yucca Flat were so powerful as to break window panes in homes and businesses in Las Vegas. But after a few years of atomic testing people began to wonder if detonating atomic bombs so close to Las Vegas was such a good idea. Because by then the number of persons contracting various types of cancers started to rise sharply.
All of this atomic testing stuff had all of us scratching our heads. We wondered why we were chosen to be used as guinea pigs at the test site. The AEC and DOD had already conducted many tests out in the Pacific area and knew the hazards of nuclear radiation and from fallout. The question was, "Since they already knew the dangers of radiation, why are they still using personnel at test sites"? After our group left the Nevada Test Site, the AEC and DOD continued with the testing for many years bringing other contingents of military personnel to the site. Then, they started placing military personnel in trenches, detonating atomic bombs near them to see what the effects would be. They continued doing the same thing over and over, like complete idiots hoping for a different result I suppose. The test site became more and more contaminated with each series of atomic testing until in the 1960s when they ended the atmospheric testing at the Nevada Test Site. But that didn't stop the testing, they started detonating the bombs underground until the area now looks like a baron landscape on the moon with large craters. Click Here to view craters at present day Yucca Flat. The Department of Defense did a great job coverning up their tracks, there is no mention of our participation in our DD-214 record. Then there was that strange 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center at Saint Louis, Missouri that destroyed our Military records. Ha, Ha, -- LMAO Soon after our 3 day pass to Las Vegas the 188th Infantry Regiment boarded the old shaky C-46s and headed back to our home base at Fort Campbell, it was an uneventful trip. After a few days, the Department of Defense sent research teams from four agencies to interview us at Fort Campbell, wanting to obtain information from us pertaining to our experience at the NTS. The names of these organizations were: The Operations Research Office, John Hopkins University; the Attitude Research Branch, Department of Defense; the Attitude Assessment Branch, Department of the Army; and the Human Resources Research Office . The heading of the Human Resources Research Office report read as follows: In October of 1951 the Army staged Operation Desert Rock, the first of a series of maneuvers in which atomic weapons were detonated as part of a tactical exercise using participant troops. A major objective of Exercise Desert Rock was a psychological evaluation of men’s behavior. By means of attitude measurement methods measuring psychological effects of stress, both applied at critical points during the maneuver, an attempt was made: 1. To evaluate effects of atomic indoctrination on troop participants and 2. To estimate effects of the detonation together with its accompanying affects on performance.
They brought questionnaires for us to fill out, on the questionnaire form was a list of 57 questions. By that time we were fairly disgusted with the whole NTS ordeal and now we have to contend with these geeky guys showing up on our doorsteps wanting to obtain more information. Would there ever be an end to this load of crap?
Most of the questions were very laughable, Questions like: Did you yourself have any of the following reactions on the same day the last test bomb went off? These are just a sample of the questions, we thought the whole episode was completely over the top. Most of us weren't too impressed with those Washington, DC types and we didn't mind it a bit when they departed Fort Campbell.
The Nevada legislature authorized a new license plate in 2002 depicting a mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion. The design symbolized the 928 nuclear weapons tests conducted in the Nevada desert from 1945 through 1992. Ultimately, however, the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles rejected the concept, noting that “any reference on a license plate to weapons of mass destruction is inappropriate and would likely offend our citizens.” Now isn't this special, I think I'm already totally offended..!! When I contacted Bechtel Nevada (U. S. Department of Energy in Las Vegas) to obtain my records pertaining to my participation at the NTS and about the amount of radiation I had received from the nuclear tests all I got was the old Run-A-Round. But finally I was able to obtain a sheet of paper, it is called “Form for recording Film Badge Issue and Processing - Personnel Roster.” On the page my badge number was blotted out, there is no way I could read it and the radiation dosage was completely redacted. Click Here to view the Personell Roster page. This is just one more example of government road-blocks and cover-ups that Atomic Veterans have always been subjected to when trying to obtain their records. Click Here to read text about Radiation, Death, and Deception By: Thomas G. Alexander. This is on a State of Utah web site explaining in detail the lies and cover-ups of the Atomic Energy Commission during nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and 1960s. We had a Guest Book on this Web Site for many years but all of a sudden Lycos decided they weren't going to host Guest Books any longer, so we lost more than 1,500 entries from Atomic Veterans and others. Photos below are at the entrance of The Nevada Test Site Click Here to view a photo of me at the entrance of the Nevada Test Site. Old Camp Desert Rock was to the rear of where I'm standing. Click Here to view a second photo of me standing next to a sign designed in the shape of the State of Nevada. If you would like to read the text that is written on the sign that is in the shape of Nevada, Click This Link. Thanks for visiting. John DeBusk (Atomic Veteran) Click Here To submit your Post on our Atomic Veteran Comments Blog.
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