FTR#1307 Interview with Peter Vogel (Reprise of FTR#444 Because of the Attention Generated by the Movie “Oppenheimer”)

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.

FTR #444 Interview with Peter Vogel

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 […]

FTR #129 Interview with Peter Vogel

Lis­ten: MP3 Side 1 | Side 2 Much has been writ­ten and said about the devel­op­ment of nuclear weapons. Per­haps the most intrigu­ing chap­ter in the devel­op­ment of the bomb was revealed by researcher Peter Vogel, who devel­oped com­pelling infor­ma­tion that the 1944 explo­sion of an ammu­ni­tion ship was, in fact, the explo­sion and prob­a­ble […]