Area 51_ An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base - Annie Jacobsen [227]
24. accidentally flew through the Zebra bomb’s mushroom cloud: AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 21.
25. “Now pilots, not drones, would be sent”: Ibid., 23–24.
26. fear that the entire world’s atmosphere could catch on fire: Interviews with Al O’Donnell and Jim Freedman.
27. what happened to Oppenheimer sent a strong message: Interview with Al O’Donnell.
28. measurements inside the thermonuclear clouds: Now called Task Group 3.4 and operating out of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, these new drones were modified T-33 aircraft, as opposed to the old TF-80s used in earlier tests. The wing fell under the command of Colonel Thomas Gent, who was also in command of the 550th Guided Missile Wing of the Air Proving Ground.
29. crash-landed on a deserted island called Bogallua: AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 37.
30. That group included Hervey Stockman: Ibid., 82. Hervey’s name is misspelled as “Harvey.”
31. Stockman, then flew sampling missions: Ibid., 80–85. Interview with Hervey Stockman.
32. “scientists put monkeys in the cockpits”: “Conversations with Colonel Hervey S. Stockman,” edited by Ann Paden and Earl Haney (not published), from a section called “Nuclear testing program.”
33. “not serving as guinea pigs”: AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 66.
34. “In those days”: “Conversations with Colonel Hervey S. Stockman,” edited by Ann Paden and Earl Haney (not published), from a section called “Pacific testing ground.”
35. Jimmy P. Robinson was one of the six pilots: The details of Robinson’s story, including where I quote him, can be found in AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 69–75. Robinson’s name is redacted from the monograph, the words “privacy act material removed” stamped in their place. In 2009, Mark Wolverton wrote “Into the Mushroom Cloud” for Air and Space magazine and revealed the pilot’s name publicly for the first time. Robinson was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross about a year after his death, but his family had no idea how he actually had died. Wolverton wrote that Robinson’s daughter Rebecca, “a baby when her father died, spent years petitioning the government for more information about his last mission, with only limited access.” Rebecca Robinson says most of the information about her father’s death is “still classified.”
36. Atomic-sampling pilots wore lead-lined vests: AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 101.
37. “It was one of the ones that was too big”: Interview with Al O’Donnell.
38. In contrast, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima: Rhodes, Dark Sun, photograph #76, “Mike over Manhattan.” Here, the Ivy Mike fireball is shown in comparison with a Nagasaki-scale atomic bomb. Mike’s stem was 20 miles in diameter and its mushroom cap only began at 50,000 feet, approximately twice as high as commercial airplanes fly. The top of the mushroom cloud extended into the troposphere and was approximately 200 miles wide.
Chapter Fourteen: Drama in the Desert
Interviews: Colonel Slater, Dr. Wheelon, Ken Collins, Kenneth Swanson, Frank Murray, Charlie Trapp, Frank Murray, Tony Bevacqua, Dr. Robert B. Abernethy
1. air-conditioned hunting blind: Woods, LBJ, 313.
2. “I’ll be dammed”: Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising, 175.
3. “Soon they will be dropping”: Dickson, Sputnik, 117.
4. not a cause for panic: Korda, Ike, 700.
5. “What most actually saw”: Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising, 176.
6. Johnson sat in the Oval Office with CIA director: CIA Memo, Meeting with the President, Secretary Rusk, Secretary McNamara, Mr. Bundy and DCI. Re: Surfacing the OXCART, 29 November, 1963, 1.
7. it would hold aviation records: T. D. Barnes explained, “Officially, the SR-71 Blackbird still holds the world speed record for sustained flight in an oxygen-breathing plane in horizontal flight but it is common knowledge throughout the Blackbird community that the A-12 flew higher and