Recorded Feb­ru­ary 1, 2004
Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
RealAu­dio

Fol­low­ing up infor­ma­tion pre­sented in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M23 and FTRs 129, 163, this broad­cast fea­tures the land­mark research of Peter Vogel on the Port Chicago explo­sion of 7/17/1944. One of the largest man-made dis­as­ters in his­tory, the Port Chicago explo­sion claimed the lives of 320 sailors, 220 of them African Amer­i­cans. Sub­se­quently, African-American sailors refused to con­tinue load­ing ammu­ni­tion at Port Chicago and were con­victed of Mutiny. Offi­cially the explo­sion of con­ven­tional muni­tions aboard an ammu­ni­tion ship, the E.A. Bryan, the Port Chicago blast was actu­ally the test of an early atomic weapon, the auto­cat­alytic ura­nium hydride lat­eral implo­sion exper­i­men­tal device—named the Mark II. After relat­ing Peter’s long odyssey explor­ing the explo­sion and the offi­cial dis­sem­bling that sur­rounds the event, the pro­gram relates the fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­men­tary trail con­firm­ing the nature of the explo­sion and the chronol­ogy of this early, sig­nif­i­cant step in the devel­op­ment of the atomic weapons.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Peter’s proof that a suf­fi­cient amount of fis­sion­able mate­r­ial for test­ing a fis­sion weapon was avail­able in 1944 (despite offi­cial pro­nounce­ments to the con­trary); the neg­a­tive reac­tions of Edward Teller (father of the H-bomb) and Don­ald Kerr (direc­tor of Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory) to Peter’s inquiries about Port Chicago; the tremen­dous inter­est of the Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory in this (sup­pos­edly con­ven­tional) explo­sion; the back­ground of Cap­tain William Par­sons (the point man for the Los Alamos research on Port Chicago); the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the explo­sion that pin­point it as being a nuclear fis­sion blast; cor­re­spon­dence among some of the prin­ci­pals in the Man­hat­tan Project con­firm­ing that the Port Chicago explo­sion was a test of the Mark II; indi­ca­tions that the Ger­mans were work­ing on a ura­nium hydride weapon; Soviet espi­onage on the Man­hat­tan Project that indi­cated aware­ness of the test of Mark II; the pos­si­ble sig­nif­i­cance of the Port Chicago explo­sion for the revo­ca­tion of Robert Oppenheimer’s secu­rity clear­ance; the sig­nif­i­cance of the Port Chicago explo­sion in the his­tory of African-American civil liberties.

Note: This descrip­tion is for­mat­ted by pre­sent­ing the ques­tions that Dave asked Peter Vogel, and then a syn­op­tic overview of Peter’s response. For more detailed infor­ma­tion about the Port Chicago explo­sion, see The Last Wave from Port Chicago.

1. Dave: “Tell us about your dis­cov­ery of a doc­u­ment enti­tled ‘His­tory of 10,000-Ton Gad­get’ at a rum­mage sale.” Peter: Explains that the infor­ma­tion pre­sented in the doc­u­ment he picked up at a church rum­mage sale obvi­ously describes the explo­sion of a nuclear fis­sion device. The tremen­dous heat gen­er­ated by a nuclear blast causes the pecu­liar for­ma­tion of the mush­room cloud, which rises to a great height because of this heat, then cools and “mush­rooms out.” He did not rec­og­nize the ref­er­ence to Port Chicago, and (after a tip by pro­fes­sional col­leagues) found the descrip­tion of the explo­sion of the Lib­erty Ship E.A. Bryan at the Port Chicago Naval instal­la­tion in San Fran­cisco Bay on July 17, 1944. Three hun­dred and twenty men died in the explo­sion (220 of them African-American sailors). When African-American sailors refused to con­tinue load­ing muni­tions, they were con­victed of mutiny in a land­mark case for African-American civil lib­er­ties in the United States.

2. Dave: “You pre­sented the doc­u­ment to Edward Teller, the father of the H-Bomb. How did he react? Why do you think he reacted that way?” Peter: After dis­cussing the authors of the report (Joseph O. Hirschfelder and William G. Pen­ney), Peter relates his pre­sen­ta­tion of the doc­u­ment to Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb. Teller reacted in a con­tentious fash­ion, inform­ing Peter that he had a clas­si­fied doc­u­ment and stat­ing that he would deny that he had ever seen the doc­u­ment. (In Peter’s book, there are pho­tographs of Teller read­ing the document.)

3. Dave: “What was the reac­tion of then Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory Direc­tor Don­ald M. Kerr, Jr. when you asked about the paper?” Peter: Kerr told Peter that he’d never be able to prove that the explo­sion was nuclear. Peter told him he’d try. Kerr has since held impor­tant posi­tions with the FBI and CIA.

4. Dave: “What were the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Port Chicago explo­sion that con­vinced you that it was a nuclear explo­sion?” Peter: After dis­cussing the mush­room cloud and the dis­tinc­tive heat con­vec­tion that forms a mush­room cloud, Peter explains that the explo­sion lit the Bay Area as brightly as noon with a bril­liant flash of white light. That dis­tinc­tive white color (char­ac­ter­is­tic of a nuclear explo­sion) also derives from the extremely high tem­per­a­tures gen­er­ated by a nuclear explo­sion. In addi­tion, Peter notes that pilots in air­craft fly­ing over the Bay Area noted what appeared to be a Wil­son Con­den­sa­tion Cloud—a large, ring-shaped cloud pro­duced by the det­o­na­tion of a nuclear device over water. (Although it is pos­si­ble for a Wil­son Con­den­sa­tion Cloud to be gen­er­ated by a pow­er­ful con­ven­tional explo­sion, the very large size of the ring-shaped cloud around Port Chicago is almost cer­tainly char­ac­ter­is­tic of a nuclear detonation.)

5. Dave: “Offi­cially, there was not sup­posed to have been enough fis­sion­able mate­r­ial avail­able for a 1944 test. Relate to us what your inves­ti­ga­tion even­tu­ally uncov­ered.” Peter: Upon pen­e­trat­ing the offi­cial posi­tion that there was not enough U-235 avail­able for a test of a weapon prior to the 1945 Trin­ity explo­sion, Peter obtained doc­u­men­ta­tion that, in fact, enough mate­r­ial was available.

6. Dave: “You dis­cov­ered that there was a tremen­dous amount of inter­est in the [sup­pos­edly con­ven­tional] Port Chicago explo­sion on the part of the Los Alamos Lab­o­ra­tory. Tell us about that, and the back­ground of Cap­tain William Par­sons, who wrote the study. Peter: Peter relates that there was a tremen­dous amount of inter­est in the explo­sion on the part of the Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory, and that the inves­ti­ga­tion was super­vised by Cap­tain William Par­sons, an expert in the devel­op­ment of Naval guns. (The Hiroshima explo­sion involved the use of a mod­i­fied 5-inch naval gun bar­rel, used to achieve crit­i­cal mass by fir­ing a pro­jec­tile of U-235 into the main con­cen­tra­tion of the fis­sion­able load.) Par­sons was the bomb­ing offi­cer on board the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Later, Par­sons super­vised the Oper­a­tions Cross­roads tests con­ducted around Bikini Atoll.

7. Dave: “A critic might raise the issue of resid­ual radi­a­tion and what that might deter­mi­na­tion that would have for your asser­tion about the Port Chicago explo­sion being a Nuke. How would you address that issue?” Peter: After not­ing that the Port Chicago explo­sion was rel­a­tively low-yield and that the blast was atten­u­ated by the hull of the E.A. Bryan, Peter notes that the back­ground radi­a­tion level would have returned to nor­mal within a rel­a­tively short time after the explo­sion. Chap­ter 16 of the book deals with this issue.

8. Dave: “Tell us about the Mark II—What was the full name of this device and how did it dif­fer from the Marks I and II.” Peter: He notes that the Mark II car­ried the lengthy name of “auto­cat­alytic ura­nium hydride lat­eral implo­sion exper­i­men­tal device.” In addi­tion, Peter notes that the Mark I was the “Gun” device used on Hiroshima and that the Mark III was the device used on Nagasaki. The Mark II tested at Port Chicago had a rel­a­tively low yield of explo­sion 2–3 hun­dred tons. Robert Oppen­heimer had pro­jected the devel­op­ment of such a weapon in 1939.

9. Dave: “Let’s turn to some of the key doc­u­ments you uncov­ered dur­ing your inves­ti­ga­tion. Tell us about a 7/4/1944 mem­o­ran­dum writ­ten by Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Pres­i­dent James Conant

to Gen­eral Groves.” Peter: This mem­o­ran­dum projects that the Mark II should be ready for oper­a­tional use and indi­cates a pro­vi­sional intent to proof-fire the Mark II, oblig­a­tory if Mark II were to be vouched fea­si­ble for oper­a­tional use.

10. Dave: “Another doc­u­ment dis­cussed in Chap­ter 13 of your book con­cerns a con­ver­sa­tion that occurred just hours before the Port Chicago explo­sion. Tell us about that con­ver­sa­tion and its sig­nif­i­cance.” Peter: Relates the dis­cus­sion at the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago in which Conant urges Oppen­heimer to test the Mark II as soon as pos­si­ble. In this con­ver­sa­tion, it is stated that, if suc­cess­ful, the Mark II could be “put on the shelf” and work on the more pow­er­ful weapons could be accel­er­ated. This con­ver­sa­tion estab­lishes explicit intent to proof fire the Mark II.

11. Dave: “Yet another doc­u­ment repro­duced in chap­ter 13 of your book is a ‘Report to Gen­eral Groves on Visit to Los Alamos on August 17, 1944.’ This informs the gen­eral of a deci­sion taken at Los Alamos. Tell us about that deci­sion and its sig­nif­i­cance.” Peter: This con­ver­sa­tion relates a deci­sion to put the Mark II on the shelf, after which it could be read­ied for oper­a­tional use in 3–4 months’ time. The sig­nif­i­cance of this deci­sion lies in the fact that it indi­cates (in light of the pre­vi­ous doc­u­men­ta­tion) that the Mark II was suc­cess­fully test-fired. In addi­tion, there is dis­cus­sion of pos­si­bly improv­ing the Mark II if the explosive-lens devel­op­ment goes badly. (These explo­sive lenses were inte­gral to the devel­op­ment of the Mark III.)

12. Dave: “The August 17 mem­o­ran­dum also con­tained some spe­cific dis­cus­sion of dam­age radii. Explain the “Class B” dam­age dis­cus­sion and its sig­nif­i­cance.” Peter: In this dis­cus­sion, it is agreed that the B-level dam­age radius—damage beyond repair—for Port Chicago is .75 miles. Again, this infor­ma­tion con­firms the nature of the Port Chicago explosion—a test of the Mark II.

13. Dave: “Tell us how the Port Chicago test—with 2–3 hun­dred tons TNT equiv­a­lent from the Mark II plus the con­ven­tional ordinance—anticipated the opti­mal air-burst effec­tive­ness of the Mark II.” Peter: He relates that the com­bined explo­sive equiv­a­lent of the Mark II and the con­ven­tional ordi­nance approx­i­mated the dam­age pro­duced by the 1,000 tons equiv­a­lent of TNT of an opti­mal Mark II air burst.

14. Dave: “Shortly after the Port Chicago explo­sion, the nature of the work at Los Alamos shifted in a sig­nif­i­cant way. Explain the change in the nature of the lab’s work.” Peter: Peter relates that the work at Los Alamos shifted to devel­op­ing the explo­sive lens tech­nol­ogy that would be used in the Fat-Man (Nagasaki) weapon. He notes that the devel­op­ment of the explo­sive lenses also fig­ured in the pro­jected devel­op­ment of the H-bomb.

15. Dave: “What was the S-1 Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee and what did they have to say about Ger­man atomic research?” Peter: This was a group that pre­ceded the for­mal estab­lish­ment of the Man­hat­tan project. It pro­jected that Ger­many might have a Ura­nium hydride weapon avail­able for oper­a­tional use by mid-1944. This would have made the devel­op­ment and test­ing of the Mark II all the more imperative.

16. Dave: “In your book you dis­close that Soviet espi­onage into the Amer­i­can atomic research pro­gram had unearthed infor­ma­tion about a ura­nium hydride weapon. Tell us about Igor Kur­cha­tov and his spec­u­la­tion about the progress of U.S. research.” Peter: Kur­cha­tov was in charge of review­ing infor­ma­tion about atomic espi­onage for Soviet espi­onage chief Lavrenti Beria. He had infor­ma­tion in early 1945 that the U.S. appeared to have devel­oped and tested a Ura­nium hydride weapon. Peter relates that he hasn’t seen any clue as to the iden­tity of the Amer­i­can spy who pro­vided the infor­ma­tion about the Mark II to the Soviets.

17. Dave: “In a purely spec­u­la­tive mode, Peter, do you think the Kur­cha­tov obser­va­tions and the Mark II explo­sion at Port Chicago bear in any way on the issue of Robert Oppen­heimer hav­ing his secu­rity clear­ance lifted?” Peter: He spec­u­lates that Oppen­heimer may have been both­ered by the deaths of 320 sailors and that this may have been a fac­tor in Oppenheimer’s impeach­ment dur­ing the McCarthy period. Obvi­ously, any pub­lic dis­cus­sion of Port Chicago might have become a major pro­pa­ganda foot­ball dur­ing the Cold War. Inter­est­ingly, Cap­tain Par­sons died of a mas­sive heart attack the day after Oppen­heimer lost his secu­rity clear­ance. Peter con­cludes the dis­cus­sion by not­ing that he has called for a rever­sal of the con­vic­tions of the Port Chicago “muti­neers.” In addi­tion, he notes that there has been some media inter­est by major out­lets in the U.S. and Britain. It remains to be seen if they bring the pro­jected cov­er­age of the Port Chicago explo­sion to fruition.

18. Be sure to read Peter’s on-line book The Last Wave from Port Chicago.