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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.
where is the residual radiation?
Since there were places that the US could (and did) test nuclear bombs, there is no reason for them to test it there. In addition, there was no radiation, and the survivors showed no signs of radiation poisoning. It was just a normal explosion, albeit a very big one.
Wow, that was the most interesting 354-page article I've ever seen posted here. I think it said something about some stuff blowing up, but I'm not really sure. I'm going to go to sleep now.
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.
Whether or not there was a nuclear explosion, I don't think so. However, that area has always played a very important part of the military in the Bay Area.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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I skimmed some of the PDFs.
b .h tml
d e. html
h tm . ht m
What I didn't see were comparisons to larger known conventional maritime explosions like in Texas or Halifax.
Just because it was a big blast doesn't mean it was a nuke. As for Teller, it was obvious from the interviews in the Atomic Bomb Movie that Teller is off his rocker.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/maritime-2
"British Ministry of War Transport steamship (7,142 tons) loaded with 1,400 tons of munitions and a cargo of 9,000 cotton bales, was berthed in Bombay docks when a fire broke out with such ferocity that it soon reached the ammunition stored in the forward section of the ship. The resulting explosion was almost as great as the blowing up of the ammunition ship Mount Blanc in Halifax Harbour during the First World War. Fires on shore blazed for two days and nights as the flaming bales of cotton were hurled into the air only to drop onto the wooden shacks and shanties of Bombay's slums. In the harbour itself, eighteen merchant ships were either sunk or severely damaged. A total of 336 people died and over 1,000 injured."
"A gigantic explosion occurred at the West Lock Munitions Facility, Pearl Harbor, the cause of which has never been explained. The ammo-loaded ships were spaced in line apart from each other when the first explosion occurred at the dock setting off a series of explosions on the other ships. Some vessels managed to take evasive action thus terminating the domino like chain of explosions. Destroyed were the Landing Ship (Tank) LST-43, LST...69, LST-179, LST-353 and LST-480. Also destroyed were the Landing Craft (Tank) LCT(6)-961, LCT(6)-963 and LCT(6)-983. Bodies were being dragged from the water days after the event. Casualties were said to be over 1,000 killed or wounded."
So the Navy Pier accident isn't unique in violent destructive power.
There are two other explosions I've read about with similarities to the one that is pdf'ed to hell and back.
http://www.region.halifax.ns.ca/community/explo
Stored in the holds, or simply stacked on deck,of the Mont Blanc were 35 tons of benzol, 300 rounds of ammunition, 10 tons of gun cotton, 2,300 tons of picric acid (used in explosives), and 400,000 pounds of TNT.
"The Mont Blanc drifted by a Halifax pier, brushing it and setting it ablaze. Members of the Halifax Fire Department responded quickly, and were positioning their engine up to the nearest hydrant when the Mont Blanc disintegrated in a blinding white flash, creating the biggest man-made explosion before the nuclear age. It was 9:05am.
Over 1,900 people were killed immediately; within a year the figure had climbed well over 2,000. Around 9,000 more were injured, many permanently; 325 acres, almost all of north-end Halifax, were destroyed.
Much of what was not immediately levelled burned to the ground, aided by winter stockpiles of coal in cellars. As for the Mont Blanc, all 3,000 tons of her were shattered into little pieces that were blasted far and wide. The barrel of one of her cannons landed three and a half miles away; part of her anchor shank, weighing over half a ton, flew two miles in the opposite direction. Windows shattered 50 miles away, and the shock wave was even felt in Sydney, Cape Breton, 270 miles to the north-east."
http://sdsd.essortment.com/texascityexplo_rkvi.
http://www.texasoutside.com/galveston/texascity
I'm going to respond to the article logically, resisting the impulse to immediately smack the conspiracy theorists upside the head.
Being European, I was not familiar with the incident. Running a very quick search shows that there was an accident at a port (Port Chicago), when it was used for loading and transporting ammunition during WW2.
Sources say that there was an explosion of approximately 5 thousand tons of conventional explosives, started accidentally. Undoubtedly it was a massive chain reaction and there had apparently been some (certainly understandable) concern over the safety of the facility.
The article source claims it was a nuclear weapon.
The documentary "Trinity and Beyond - The Atomic Bomb Movie" (good footage, narrated by William Shatner) contains recently de-classified footage. It shows the US military staging a conventional explosion of the order of a kiloton, designed to help figure out what to expect from a real nuclear explosion. And guess what... it behaved very much like you would expect a nuclear explosion.
The facts are as follows:
(1) There was a big explosion.
(2) A 5-kiloton conventional explosion could at first glance be mistaken for a nuclear explosion. Big explosions look similar, it doesn't matter how they're triggered.
The critical problem with their argument is as follows: The test site of the very first atomic weapon, Trinity, is still noticably radioactive today, possibly dangerous. Indeed, the fallout effects are still noticable from other sites exposed to nuclear weapons - in the environmental and survivor's radiation poisoning.
To those who assert that the Port Chicago explosion was the result of a nuclear explosion - how do you explain a nuclear weapon with no fallout and radioactivity? I vouch that you are trying to manipulate the facts to justify a theory - rather than basing your opinions from facts.
You would have thought that during a "20 year investigation" they would have gone out there with a geiger counter and check out the background radiation. Which would have discounted nuclear weapons very quickly.
... 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.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
I was sure the incident sounded familiar, but not for the reason stated.
Port Chicago is known as a tragedy and milestone in race relations in the U.S. military, which was segregated throughout WWII. Here is the Navy account, not bad in its honesty.
"The explosion at Port Chicago accounted for fifteen percent of all African-American casualties of World War II." Some 320 people were killed instantly, nearly all of them black. The ordnance loaders were a black unit. Hundreds of the survivors refused to return to work after the accident without safety changes. A couple hundred were summarily court-martialed, and 50 more were tried for mutiny with a possible death sentence.
The incident drew a great deal of attention, again not for allegedly being nuclear, and mau have factored into President Truman's historic integration of the military.
This may not be a technological angle, but it does emphasize that poor safety practice with conventional explosives caused the disaster, as I suggested in an earlier post.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I think this article is insulting to those who were there. They complained about the unsafe conditions, and were severely reprimanded when they walked off the job. Those that did walk off the job lived. Those that didn't stand up to the man died. And a lot died. To claim that the accident was a planned test is an absurdity of the highest order. To say it was not an accident is tantamount to saying that the survivors were liars, and that their (admittedly incompetent) supervisors were suicidal/homicidal.
Also, the belief that the US had the fissionable material to waste in an uncontrolled (and murderous) test is even more absurd. Especially so close to a highly populated area such as San Francisco. Port Chicago is VERY close to SF, especially in terms of a nuclear explosion. It's only something like 30 miles as the crow flies.
This is one of the stupidest and most insulting conspiracy theories I've ever come across. It insults not only the survivors, but our intelligence as well. Right up there with the moonshot conspiracy "theory".
When the USAF was dropping Daisy Cutters during the Gulf war, a group of Brits thought the conflict had gone nuclear... easy mistake to make if you're close enough. The size of the explosion is pretty much unmatched among conventional ordinance.
15000 lbs of blasting slurry in a big metal barrel... I can see where that might mimic a small nuclear explosion quite nicely.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
- Just before
10:20 p.m. on July 17th, 1944, the worst home front disaster of WWII, occurred at a Naval pier in the San Francisco Bay Area.
That same site also lists several nuclear-conspiracy pages about Port Chicago, and almost all of them are more succinct than the one listed in the story.Five thousand tons of ammunition in ships being loaded by black sailors exploded, sending a blast more than 12,000 feet into the sky.
The explosion destroyed the pier, a train, and both ships, instantly killing everyone aboard (some 320 men).
This page in particular is short, and has a quick list of bullet points that try to show that Port Chicago was nuclear. They may all be obviously BS (to someone more versed in its history...?), but they're not simply "the explosion was so big, it HAD to be nuclear!" as others has suggested.
And lastly, when visiting this Amazon.com page for a Port Chicago book, am I the only one who sees "Customers who wear clothes also shop for: Clean Underwear"?? Maybe I'm delerious from being up in the middle of the night.
Consider the four major disasters:
- SS Fort Stikine, the ship that blew up in Bombay, was Canadian built.
- USS Maine - Maine borders Canada. Was it a message to the US from our northern "friends?"
- Port Chicago - easy access by Canadian saboteurs with limpets, also sends that same "message"
- Halifax - need I say more?
Those dastardly canadians like to blow up ships. Please stay tuned for my 352 page pdf.