Op GRAPPLE
Christmas Island sported two Austers used for DDT spraying, c/s's Flit 1 and Flit 2, in the early 60's. 48 Squadron had a rotating detachment of two Hastings at Christmas Island to provide airlift capacity to/from Hickam AFB, some 1000 miles north, and ASR cover for that (no-one else flew the route and the Navs would get their own winds back at met briefing for the return flight some days later).
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Longitude Zero
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Op Grapple Y
I have undertaken further research on my father's involvement in Grapple Y.
His log books reveal that he travelled to Christmas Island arriving on 25 April 1958 following a three-day mixed commercial/military flight combination via Goose Bay, New York, San Francisco and Honolulu. The airburst weapon known as Dickens was exploded on April 28 just south of CI and yielded 3 megatons. He flew home on the reverse route the following day. His logbook has no entries covering his time on the island. Why was he there? What was so important that he was required to spend 6 days travelling for three days on CI? I will probably never know since he died of multiple carcinomas in 1985.An account of Operation Grapple Y by Susie Boniface in a Mirror Special Report includes harrowing detail of one pilot's involvement in the tests as 'sniff 2' and his most unfortunate legacy. You may find this very upsetting.The Damned: Chapter 3 - Operation Grapple RB
His log books reveal that he travelled to Christmas Island arriving on 25 April 1958 following a three-day mixed commercial/military flight combination via Goose Bay, New York, San Francisco and Honolulu. The airburst weapon known as Dickens was exploded on April 28 just south of CI and yielded 3 megatons. He flew home on the reverse route the following day. His logbook has no entries covering his time on the island. Why was he there? What was so important that he was required to spend 6 days travelling for three days on CI? I will probably never know since he died of multiple carcinomas in 1985.An account of Operation Grapple Y by Susie Boniface in a Mirror Special Report includes harrowing detail of one pilot's involvement in the tests as 'sniff 2' and his most unfortunate legacy. You may find this very upsetting.The Damned: Chapter 3 - Operation Grapple RB
Though admitting to thread drift, I feel compelled to offer the following, as I embrace the family members of all who had the unparalleled courage to involve themselves in atomic testing. So should we all.
Having graduated in 1971 from Vanderbilt University with a baccalaureate in Psychology, I wound up being the Purchasing/Material Controls Manager for Allastics, a Division of Kusan, a Wholly-owned Subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel Corporation. That's what it said on my business card. We did injection molding: sporks for Mickey D's. separators for DeLaval, and dashboards for Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. None of that has any importance whatsoever.
What is noteworthy was that our Plant Engineer, Ernie *********, a slight, dark-eyed gentleman who oozed genius, kindness, and sense of irreparable loss, had a story to tell. It was this: his father, a physicist, had been gathered up from a college classroom by Big Gummint and shipped off to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. There, in the company of a cadre of other gentlemen of superior intelligence, Ernie's father specialized in high-explosive lensing of nuclear explosives. He was good at it. He was there, right beside Robert Oppenheimer, when Trinity was set off on 16 July, 1945. The inventors of that awful and terrible (in the old and proper sense of those words) weapon had two immense worries. The worst was that no detonation would occur. The second was that the Earth's atmosphere would be set afire. The "Gadget" yielded approximately 20 kilotons.
Ernie said that "Oppy", after the early morning sky had become as illuminated as a blistering mid-day in the desert, did, in fact, turn to the others close by and said "Thus I am become Death, the destroyer of Worlds."
Ernie's father's name is one of the seven men's names on the U.S. patent for Device, Nuclear, Explosive. Of those seven, five, including our plant engineer's father, died of testicular cancer. (The ones who would bring two half-grapefruit-sized castings of Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239 in proximity to one another barehanded just to witness the eerie glow.) Another perished from CA of the lung.
All who grabbed the tail of "The Dragon" risked their lives. They all earned our enduring respect and gratitude. I feel particularly fortunate to have known someone whose father helped to take the concept from blackboard theory to the weapon that, in its ability to destroy life on this planet, kept a peace, however uneasy.
Ernie told me that he and his father embraced just when the Reaper came swinging the scythe for his father. Far too soon. He told me that his father's last words were "Never do this again!" The elder then became the precious, whirling, inscrutable, unamalgamated collection of atoms which he was when he started life. So do we all...
- Ed
Having graduated in 1971 from Vanderbilt University with a baccalaureate in Psychology, I wound up being the Purchasing/Material Controls Manager for Allastics, a Division of Kusan, a Wholly-owned Subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel Corporation. That's what it said on my business card. We did injection molding: sporks for Mickey D's. separators for DeLaval, and dashboards for Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. None of that has any importance whatsoever.
What is noteworthy was that our Plant Engineer, Ernie *********, a slight, dark-eyed gentleman who oozed genius, kindness, and sense of irreparable loss, had a story to tell. It was this: his father, a physicist, had been gathered up from a college classroom by Big Gummint and shipped off to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. There, in the company of a cadre of other gentlemen of superior intelligence, Ernie's father specialized in high-explosive lensing of nuclear explosives. He was good at it. He was there, right beside Robert Oppenheimer, when Trinity was set off on 16 July, 1945. The inventors of that awful and terrible (in the old and proper sense of those words) weapon had two immense worries. The worst was that no detonation would occur. The second was that the Earth's atmosphere would be set afire. The "Gadget" yielded approximately 20 kilotons.
Ernie said that "Oppy", after the early morning sky had become as illuminated as a blistering mid-day in the desert, did, in fact, turn to the others close by and said "Thus I am become Death, the destroyer of Worlds."
Ernie's father's name is one of the seven men's names on the U.S. patent for Device, Nuclear, Explosive. Of those seven, five, including our plant engineer's father, died of testicular cancer. (The ones who would bring two half-grapefruit-sized castings of Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239 in proximity to one another barehanded just to witness the eerie glow.) Another perished from CA of the lung.
All who grabbed the tail of "The Dragon" risked their lives. They all earned our enduring respect and gratitude. I feel particularly fortunate to have known someone whose father helped to take the concept from blackboard theory to the weapon that, in its ability to destroy life on this planet, kept a peace, however uneasy.
Ernie told me that he and his father embraced just when the Reaper came swinging the scythe for his father. Far too soon. He told me that his father's last words were "Never do this again!" The elder then became the precious, whirling, inscrutable, unamalgamated collection of atoms which he was when he started life. So do we all...
- Ed
