Wes,
Here is something that you might be able to use on your
site some day.
As you know, some of the barrier crews were tapped to
go to Johnston Atoll and Christmas Island in 1962 to participate in the
atmospheric atomic
tests. All of these tests were all part of Operation
Dominic 1.
Well, I found a web page that gives a description of
every "event" (as
they were called then) in the Dominic
1 series of tests. The guys that
participated can go to this site, and if they know the
dates they were
deployed to the area, they can get the names and description
of the
tests. For example, the tests that I was involved with
were called
Arkansas, Questa, and Frigate Bird.
Another interesting thing. On July 9 1962, they sent a
large device up
into the upper atmosphere aboard a rocket. It went off
in the late
evening before midnight. You may have seen it from Midway
or Hawaii.
Vicki and I were attending a Miss Hawaii pageant at an
outdoor theater
near Diamond Head when it went off. It was spectacular.
The sky went
from pitch black to a bright turquoise green, horizon
to horizon. This
wasn't just a flash - the colors stayed for a couple
of minutes. At
its' brightest, you could have read a newspaper from
the light. As time
went by the turquoise changed to blue, then dark blue,
then purple, and
finally balck again. I'm sure many people thought that
the end of the
world had come! When it went off, I remember saying to
Vicki, "They did
it". When I had been on Christmas Island a couple of
months earlier, I
had heard rumors that they were going to put up a "big
one" by rocket.
Also, there is a web page for the National Association
of Atomic
Veterans that I found:
http://www.naav.com/
I don't belong, but someone might want to join.
Regards,
Bob
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