Re-examining the Port Chicago Disaster

GoneGaryT writes "Say chaps, this might be old hat, but there's a fab site for conspiracy theory aficionados at portchicago.org ; it's a pdf book expounding the theory of Peter Vogel's that the Port Chicago magazine explosion (1944) was a nuclear weapons test. It's actually pretty thorough, like 20 years of research thorough. Would the US really blow up their own people for the sake of global military supremacy? Naaaah..." Chapter 9 of the book has a factual account of the disaster (which I'd never heard of before); if you're not interested in the rest of the theory, at least reading the historical account is informative and will give you an appreciation of the explosive power of several million pounds of military ordnance.

Comments

Residual Radiation?

[MonkeyBoyo]

where is the residual radiation?

Re:Residual Radiation?

[orangesquid]

Before you throw something out as "full of shit", here something a simple googling turned up:
"The induced radioactivity decayed very quickly with time. In fact, nearly 80% of the above-mentioned doses were released within a day, about 10% between days 2 and 5, and the remaining 10% from day 6 afterward." [regarding Hiroshima]

So it seems residual radiation isn't so hard to hide, after all. Whether the conspiracy theory still holds water, though, is another matter...

Re:Residual Radiation?

[mesocyclone]

Others have pointed out the problem in your physics exposition.

Let me point out that the large amount of "residual radiation" (fallout) produced by the Hiroshima bomb did not fall near Hiroshima, so there was no residual radiation in Hiroshima itself. The bomb was exploded at altitude and the radioactive components (other than the tiny amount converted to energy) was turned into extremely hot gas. That gas rose into the stratosphere and was distributed, more or less evenly, throughout the northern hemisphere.

In general, air bursts of nuclear weapons do not produce local fallout.

The Port of Chicago explosion, had it been nuclear, would have resulted in the lifting of large amounts of dust and other terrestrial material. This would have formed condensation nuclei for the radioactive material, which would have then fallen back to the ground at and within a few hundred miles of the blast. This is classic nuclear fallout for a ground burst. This would have led to significant injury and death, and the residual radiation would still be detectable (although at low levels today).

Once again, uh-huh

[MacAndrew]

I know it's consider incorrect around here to comment on spelling, but the author begins to lose credibility when he misspells "Manhattan Project" on his front page.

One observation is that many people are slow to draw the connection between nuclear and ordinary explosives because today's nuclear yields are so high. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki each had raw explosive power of around 10 kilotons each (the Nagasaki plutonium bomb was a good deal more powerful than the U-235 Hiroshima bomb, but because of inaccurate placement inflicted about half the damage). Nuclear explosions are worse for human life by heat and gamma radiation, but otherwise this tonnage could realistically be delivered by aircraft by conventional explosives or, in equivalent destructive terms, by firebomb bombardment such as had leveled most of Tokyo and Dresden.

So there was some resistance at the time to focusing on the nuclear program when waves of 1,000 B-29's delivering 10 tons each could do the same task with proven technology. In another parallel, some estimates are that the "$3 Billion Dollar Gamble" B-29 may have cost more to develop and build than the bomb!

Also, all large explosions assume the familiar mushroom cloud appearance.

I don't address at all the propriety of dropping "the bomb," just the reasons a conventional explosion might be mistaken for one.

An enormous grain of salt

[stwrtpj]

... is what anyone should take this theory with.

I will openly admit that I did not RTFA, simply because the FA is too F long. I did go to the site and tried to skim the salient points, and I read the historical account (of an event I had never heard of, and I tend to consider myself something of a WW II history buff).

At first glance, this is shaping up to be a case of someone starting from a false premise and building an argument to support it. Several times people have attempted the old "wow this was way too powerful to have been a conventional explosion it must be nuclear" gambit.

I can easily cite an example of another historical event that resulted in a very large conventional explosion that mimicked atomic bomb effects. On December 6, 1917, a French cargo ship carrying a large amount of picric acid, TNT, benzole, and guncotton caught fire and exploded in Halifax harbor. The force of the explosion is estimated to have been in the neighborhood of 3 kilotons. It had all the effects of a atomic blast: fireball, mushroom cloud, shock wave, even a small tidal wave since the explosion was over water, and so on, all but the radiation. However, no one by any conceivable stretch of the imagination can claim that this was an atomic explosion.

In addition, it is my understanding that it took a great deal of time and expense to build first the test device that was exploded in the desert and then the two that were dropped over Japan. That represented the sum total of America's nuclear arsenal at the time. A great deal of care was taken with these devices. It seems very odd to me that there would be some sort of "accident" with a heretofore unknown weapon that America possessed at the time. Atomic weapons just do not simply "go off" unless the bomb were specifically armed, and there would be no reason to keep an armed atomic weapon in the hold of a ship.

As for purposely detonating a device to test its effects on a populated area? Please. I can only stretch my incredulity so far. Yes, the US government has done some terrible things in the past, but it would take a great deal of very compelling evidence to make me believe they would do something that blatant.

Anyone who has read the entire book from beginning to end, feel free to poke holes in my argument. My research into this theory was hampered by the fact that the site did not contain a concise summary of the theory itself. For someone with the time, perhaps this would be a good candidate for applying the Carl Sagan Baloney Detection Kit.

Re:Global military supremacy?

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

Instead, we were trying to develop a weapon which would obviate the need to land troops in Japan, which would have led to one of the bloodiest invasions ever. (Read about the Japanese preparations for the invasion - the villagers with pikes training to "stave" off armed infantry.)

According to John Kenneth Galbraith, who worked on an independent civilian commission appointed by President Roosevelt to study what really happened in the aftermath of WWII, Japan was ready to surrender before the A-Bomb was dropped.:

Didn't the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki shorten the Pacific war?

The bomb did not end the Japanese war. This was something that was carefully studied by our bombing survey. Paul Nitze headed it in Japan, so there was hardly and bias in this matter. It's ironic that he has since become fascinated with the whole culture of destruction. The conclusion of the monograph called Japan's Struggle to End the War was that it was a difference, at most of two or three weeks. The decision had already been taken to get out of the war, to seek a peace negotiation.

The Japanese government, at that time, was heavily bureaucratic. The decision took some time to translate into action. There was also a fear that some of the army units might go in for a kind of Kamikaze resistance. The decision was not known in Washington. While the bomb did not bring an end to the war, one cannot say Washington ordered the attacks in the knowledge that the war was coming to an end.

Would not millions have been lost, American and Japanese, in the projected attack on the mainland, had it not been for the bomb?

That is not true. There would have been negotiations for surrender within days or a few weeks under any circumstances. Before the A-bombs were dropped, Japan was a defeated nation. This was realized.

Taken from "The Good War," by Studs Terkel

I think the "we had to drop the A-bomb becauase the invasion would have been worse" story is a remarkably well done piece of propaganda which has endured to the point of becoming accepted fact. As Mr. Galbraith points out, the US did not know that Japan was ready to surrender at the time. However, it is wrong to keep using that story now, given that it is probably false. I would rather the US say, OK, we didn't know that Japan was going to surrender, but we wished we did because we wish we didn't drop the bomb on them.

As far as villagers training with pikes, that's probably on the same level as the bomb drills in US schools where everyone hid under their desk -- something to give ordinary citizens some feeling of security, nothing more.

Largest WWII conventional explosion...

[cruachan]

Wasn't in Port Chicago at all. Large explosions are quite common during war time, but don't get publicity at the time for obvious reasons. I'd never heard of the Port Chicago one before this post but it seems nothing unusual.

In fact the biggest single conventional explosion of the second world war happened less than 10 miles from where I grew up in Burton-on-Trent, England. Only the Hirmoshima, Nagasaki and New Mexico tests were larger. It was 'common knowlege' at the time locally, and cracks in ceilings were regularly pointed out to me as a kid as having been caused by 'the dump blowing up', but few people outside the area have ever heard of it.

The Fauld dump exploded in November 1944 taking 4,000 tons of bombs with it. There's good pages here (http://www.carolyn.topmum.net/tutbury/fauld/fauld crater.htm) and here (http://www.healeyhero.fsnet.co.uk/rescue/blew_up1 .htm). I remember seeing the crater being used as a motor cycling scrambling route in the late 1970's. The size was impressive to say the least.

Theres's also a couple of earlier large naval explosion that may be of interest as similar forgotten tragedies. Bothe happened in Sheerness harbour in WWI - the HMS Bulwark and later the Princess Irene. The BBC did an program on these recently - http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/beyond/factsheets/m akhist/makhist6_prog8b.shtml