Area 51_ An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base - Annie Jacobsen [14]
At central command, Curtis Emerson LeMay stood chomping on a cigar. LeMay was going over procedures and protocols for the Crossroads event. Just thirty-nine years old, LeMay had already graced the cover of Time magazine and was known around the world as the man who’d helped end World War II. By the time he was forty-five, Curtis LeMay would become the youngest four-star general in the U.S. military since Ulysses S. Grant. Dark, brooding, and of legendary self-will, LeMay had led the incendiary bombing campaigns against Japanese cities, including Tokyo. When the napalm bombs didn’t end war in the Pacific, President Truman authorized LeMay to lead the 509th Operations Group, based on Tinian Island, to drop the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.
Curtis LeMay rarely smiled. When he spoke, it was described as “not much more than a snarl.” Critics called him a coldhearted military strategist and attributed his calculated vision to a troubled upbringing. His father was a violent drunk, and LeMay was forced to help support the family when he was a child. At the age of seven, he was shooting sparrows for an old-lady neighbor who paid five cents per bird. Though journalist I. F. Stone called LeMay a “Caveman in a Jet Bomber,” his men adored him, often noting that he was not someone who sent his men into battle but one who led them there. During the war in the Pacific, LeMay often flew lead on bombing raids. But now the war was over and LeMay was thinking about a military strategy for the future. Beginning at Crossroads, he would shape the U.S. Air Force in a way no other individual has since. As deputy chief of air staff for research and development of the U.S. Army Air Forces, LeMay was at Bikini to determine how effective the bomb could be in nuclear naval battles against the Soviet Union.
Operation Crossroads was a huge event, described as “the apocalypse with fireworks.” To someone who didn’t know World War II was over, the scene on the lagoon at Bikini that day might have seemed surreal. An armada of captured German and Japanese warships had been lined up alongside retired American cruisers and destroyers. These were massive, football-field-size warships whose individual might was dwarfed only by the combined power of them all. Eight submarines had been tethered to anchors on the ocean floor. There were over one million tons of battle-weary steel floating on the ocean without a single human on board. Instead, thousands of pigs, sheep, and rats had been set out in the South Pacific sunshine, in cages or in leg irons, and they would face the coming atomic blast. Some of the animals had metal tags around their necks; others had Geiger counters clipped to their ears. The Navy wanted to determine how living things fared against nuclear bombs.
Forty miles west of the lagoon, Alfred O’Donnell stood below deck in the control room of an observation ship watching the control bay. Above him, on deck, Los Alamos scientists, generals, admirals, and dignitaries waited in great anticipation for the bomb. Shielding their eyes were dark, 4.5-density goggles, necessary measures to prevent anyone from being blinded by the nuclear flash. O’Donnell worked the instrument panel in front of him. There were sixty seconds to go. He watched the auto sequence timer perform its function. With less than a minute remaining, the firing system moved into automation. The bars on the oscilloscopes moved from left to right as the signals passed down through the DN-11 relay system. There were ten seconds left. Then five seconds. The light for the arming signal blinked on. Two seconds. The firing signal flashed.
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