TRINITY
SITE
by the U.S. Department
of Energy National Atomic Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Contents:
Jumbo.
Schmidt-McDonald
Ranch House.
Notes.
Bibliography.
The
National Atomic Museum.

The First Atomic
Test
On Monday morning July 16,
1945, the world was changed forever when the first atomic bomb was tested
in an isolated area of the New Mexico desert. Conducted in the final month
of World War II by the top-secret Manhattan Engineer District, this test
was code named Trinity. The Trinity test took place on the Alamogordo Bombing
and Gunnery
Range, about 230 miles south
of the Manhattan Project's headquarters at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Today this 3,200 square mile range, partly located in the desolate Jornada
del Muerto Valley, is named the White Sands Missile Range and is actively
used for non-nuclear weapons testing.
Before the war the range
was mostly public and private grazing land that had always been sparsely
populated. During the war it was even more lonely and deserted because
the ranchers had agreed to vacate their homes in January 1942. They left
because the War Department wanted the land to use as an artillery and bombing
practice area.
In September 1944, a remote
18 by 24 square mile portion of the north-east corner of the Bombing Range
was set aside for the Manhattan Project and the Trinity test by the military.
The selection of this remote
location in the Jornada del Muerto Valley for the Trinity test was from
an initial list of eight possible test sites. Besides the Jornada,
three of the other seven sites were also located in New Mexico: the Tularosa
Basin near Alamogordo, the lava beds (now the El Malpais National Monument)
south of Grants, and an area southwest of Cuba and north of Thoreau.
Other possible sites not located in New Mexico were: an Army training area
north of Blythe, California, in the Mojave Desert; San Nicolas Island (one
of the Channel Islands) off the coast of Southern California; and on Padre
Island south of Corpus Christi, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico. The last
choice for the test was in the beautiful San Luis Valley of south- central
Colorado, near today's Great Sand Dunes National Monument.
Based on a number of criteria
that included availability, distance from Los Alamos, good weather, few
or no settlements, and that no Indian land would be used, the choices for
the test site were narrowed down to two in the summer of 1944. First
choice was the military
training area in southern
California. The second choice, was the Jornada del Muerto Valley in New
Mexico. The final site selection was made in late August 1944 by Major
General Leslie R. Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project.
When General Groves
discovered that in order
to use the California location he would need the permission of its commander,
General George Patton, Groves quickly decided on the second choice, the
Jornada del Muerto. This was because General Groves did not want anything
to do with the flamboyant Patton, who Groves had once described as "the
most disagreeable man I
had ever met."[1]
Despite being second choice the remote Jornada was a good location for
the test, because it provided isolation for secrecy and safety, was only
230 miles south of Los Alamos, and was already under military control.
Plus, the Jornada enjoyed relatively
good weather.
The history of the Jornada
is in itself quite fascinating, since it was given its name by the Spanish
conquerors of New Mexico. The Jornada was a short cut on the Camino Real,
the King's Highway that linked old Mexico to Santa Fe, the capital of New
Mexico. The Camino Real went north from Mexico City till it joined
the Rio Grande near present day El Paso, Texas. Then the trail followed
the river valley further north to a point where the river curved to the
west, and its valley narrowed and became impassable for the supply wagons.
To avoid this obstacle, the wagons took the dubious detour north across
the Jornada del Muerto. Sixty miles of desert, very little water, and numerous
hostile Apaches. Hence the name Jornada del Muerto, which is often
translated as the journey of death or as the route of the dead man. It
is also interesting to note that in the late 16th century, the Spanish
considered their province of New Mexico to include most of North America
west of the Mississippi!
The origin of the code name
Trinity for the test site is also interesting, but the true source is unknown.
One popular account attributes the name to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific
head of the Manhattan Project. According to this version, the well read
Oppenheimer based the name Trinity on the fourteenth Holy Sonnet by John
Donne, a 16th century English poet and sermon writer. The sonnet started,
"Batter my heart, three-personed God."[2] Another version of the
name's origin comes from University of New Mexico historian Ferenc M. Szasz.
In his 1984 book, The Day the Sun Rose Twice, Szasz quotes Robert W. Henderson
head of the Engineering Group in the Explosives Division of the Manhattan
Project. Henderson told Szasz that the name Trinity came from Major
W. A. (Lex) Stevens. According to Henderson, he and Stevens were
at the test site discussing the best way to haul Jumbo (see below) the
thirty miles from the closest railway siding to the test site. "A
devout Roman Catholic, Stevens observed that the railroad siding was called
'Pope's Siding.' He [then] remarked that the Pope had special access
to the Trinity, and that the scientists would need all the help they could
get to move the 214 ton Jumbo to
its proper spot."[3]
The Trinity test was originally
set for July 4, 1945. However, final preparations for the test, which
included the assembly of the bomb's plutonium core, did not begin in earnest
until Thursday, July 12. The abandoned George McDonald ranch house located
two miles south of the test site served as the assembly point for the device's
core. After assembly, the plutonium core was transported to Trinity Site
to be inserted into the thing or gadget as the atomic device was called.
But, on the first attempt to insert the core it stuck! After letting
the temperatures of the
core and the gadget equalize, the core fit perfectly to the great relief
of all present. The completed device was raised to the top of a 100-foot
steel tower on Saturday, July 14. During this process workers piled up
mattresses beneath the gadget to
cushion a possible fall.
When the bomb reached the top of the tower without mishap, installation
of the explosive detonators began. The 100-foot tower (a surplus Forest
Service fire-watch tower) was designated Point Zero. Ground Zero was at
the base of the tower.
As a result of all the anxiety
surrounding the possibility of a failure of the test, a verse by an unknown
author circulated around Los Alamos. It read:
From this crude lab
that spawned a dud.
Their necks to Truman's
ax uncurled
Lo, the embattled
savants stood,
and fired the flop
heard round the world.[4]
A betting pool was also started
by scientists at Los Alamos on the possible yield of the Trinity test.
Yields from 45,000 tons of TNT to zero were selected by the various bettors.
The Nobel Prize-winning (1938) physicist Enrico Fermi was willing to bet
anyone that the test would wipe out all life on Earth, with special odds
on the mere destruction of the entire State of New Mexico!
Meanwhile back at the test
site, technicians installed seismographic and photographic equipment at
varying distances from the tower. Other instruments were set up for recording
radioactivity, temperature, air pressure, and similar data needed by the
project scientists.
According to Lansing Lamont
in his 1965 book Day of Trinity, life at Trinity could at times be very
exciting. One afternoon while scientists were busily setting up test instruments
in the desert, the tail gunner of a low flying B-29 bomber spotted some
grazing antelopes
and opened up with his twin
.50-caliber machine guns. "A dozen scientists, ... under the plane
and out of the gunner's line of vision, dropped their instruments and hugged
the ground in terror as the bullets thudded about them."[5] Later
a number of these scientists threatened to quit the project.
Workers built three observation
points 5.68 miles (10,000 yards), north, south, and west of Ground Zero.
Code named Able, Baker, and Pittsburgh, these heavily-built wooden bunkers
were reinforced with concrete, and covered with earth. The bunker designated
Baker or South 10,000 served as the control center for the test. This is
where head scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer would be for the test.
A fourth observation point
was the test's Base Camp, (the abandoned Dave McDonald ranch) located about
ten miles southwest of Ground Zero. The primary observation point was on
Compania Hill, located about 20 miles to the northwest of Trinity near
today's Stallion Range Gate, off NM 380.
The test was originally scheduled
for 4 a.m., Monday July 16, but was postponed to 5:30 due to a severe thunderstorm
that would have increased the amount of radioactive fallout, and have interfered
with the test results. The rain finally stopped and at 5:29:45 a.m.
Mountain War Time, the device
exploded successfully and the Atomic Age was born. The nuclear blast
created a flash of light brighter than a dozen suns. The light was seen
over the entire state of New Mexico and in parts of Arizona, Texas, and
Mexico. The resultant mushroom cloud rose to over 38,000 feet within
minutes, and the heat of the explosion was 10,000 times hotter than the
surface of the sun! At ten miles away, this heat was described as
like standing directly in front of a roaring fireplace. Every living thing
within a mile of the tower was obliterated. The power of the bomb was estimated
to be equal to 20,000 tons of TNT, or equivalent to the bomb load of 2,000
B-29, Superfortresses!
After witnessing the awesome
blast, Oppenheimer quoted a line from a sacred Hindu text, the Bhagavad-Gita:
He said: "I am become death, the shatterer of worlds."[6] In Los
Alamos 230 miles to the north, a group of scientists' wives who had stayed
up all night for the not so secret test, saw the light and heard the distant
sound. One wife, Jane Wilson, described it this way, "Then it came. The
blinding light [no] one had ever seen. The trees, illuminated, leaping
out. The mountains flashing into life. Later, the long slow rumble.
Something had happened, all right, for good or ill."[7]
General Groves' deputy commander,
Brigadier General T. F. Farrell, described the explosion in great detail:
"The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful,
stupendous, and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power
had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The
whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times
that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray, and
blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain
range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but
must be seen to be imagined..."[8]
Immediately after the test
a Sherman M-4 tank, equipped with its own air supply, and lined with two
inches of lead went out to explore the site. The lead lining added
12 tons to the tank's weight, but was necessary to protect its occupants
from the radiation levels at ground zero. The tank's passengers found that
the 100-foot steel tower had virtually disappeared, with only the metal
and concrete stumps of its four legs remaining. Surrounding ground
zero was a crater almost 2,400 feet across and about ten feet deep in places.
Desert sand around the tower had been fused by the intense heat of the
blast into a jade colored glass. This atomic glass was given the
name Atomsite, but the name was later changed to Trinitite.
Due to the intense secrecy
surrounding the test, no accurate information of what happened was released
to the public until after the second atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan.
However, many people in New Mexico were well aware that something extraordinary
had happened the morning of July 16, 1945. The blinding flash of light,
followed by the shock wave
had made a vivid impression on people who lived within a radius of 160
miles of ground zero. Windows were shattered 120 miles away in Silver City,
and residents of Albuquerque saw the bright light of the explosion on the
southern horizon and felt the tremor of the shock waves moments later.
The true story of the Trinity
test first became known to the public on August 6, 1945. This is when the
world's second nuclear bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, exploded 1,850 feet
over Hiroshima, Japan, destroying a large portion of the city and killing
an estimated 70,000
to130,000 of its inhabitants.Three
days later on August 9, a third atomic bomb devastated the city of Nagasaki
and killed approximately 45,000 more Japanese. The Nagasaki weapon was
a plutonium bomb, similar to the Trinity device, and it was nicknamed Fat
Man. On Tuesday August 14, at 7 p.m. Eastern War Time, President Truman
made a
brief formal announcement
that Japan had finally surrendered and World War II was over after almost
six years and 60 million deaths!
On Sunday, September 9, 1945,
Trinity Site was opened to the press for the first time. This was mainly
to dispel rumors of lingering high radiation levels there, as well as in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Led by General Groves and Oppenheimer, this widely
publicized visit made Trinity front page news all over the country.
Trinity Site was later encircled
with more than a mile of chain link fencing and posted with signs warning
of radioactivity. In the early 1950s most of the remaining Trinitite in
the crater was bulldozed into a underground concrete bunker near Trinity.
Also at this time the crater was back filled with new soil. In 1963 the
Trinitite was removed from the bunker, packed into 55-gallon drums, and
loaded into trucks belonging to the Atomic Energy Commission (the successor
of the Manhattan Project). Trinity site remained off-limits to military
and civilian personnel of the range and closed to the public for many years,
despite attempts immediately after the war to turn Trinity into a national
monument.
In 1953 about 700 people
attended the first Trinity Site open house sponsored by the Alamogordo
Chamber of Commerce and the Missile Range. Two years later, a small group
from Tularosa, NM visited the site on the 10th anniversary of the explosion
to conduct a religious service and pray for peace.
Regular visits have been
made annually in recent years on the first Saturday in October instead
of the anniversary date of July 16, to avoid the desert heat. Later
Trinity Site was opened one additional day on the first Saturday in April.
The Site remains closed to the
public except for these
two days, because it lies within the impact areas for missiles fired into
the northern part of the Range.
In 1965, Range officials
erected a modest monument at Ground Zero. Built of black lava rock, this
monument serves as a permanent marker for the site and as a reminder of
the momentous event that occurred there. On the monument is a plain metal
plaque with this simple inscription: "Trinity Site Where the World's First
Nuclear Device Was Exploded on July 16, 1945."
During the annual tour in
1975, a second plaque was added below the first by The National Park Service,
designating Trinity Site a National Historic Landmark. This plaque
reads, "This site possesses national significance in commemorating the
history of the U.S.A."
Notes
[1] Szasz,
Ferenc. The Day the Sun Rose Twice. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico
Press, 1984. p. 28.
[2] Hayward,
John, ed. John Donne: Complete Poetry and Selected
Prose. New York: Random
House, Inc., 1949. p. 285.
[3] Szasz,
The Day the Sun Rose Twice, p. 40.
[4]
Wyden, Peter. Day One: Before Hiroshima and After. New
York:
Simon and Schuster, 1984.
p. 204.
[5] Lamont,
Lansing. Day of Trinity. New York: Atheneum, 1965.
p.
123-124.
[6] Kunetka,
James W. City of Fire: Los Alamos and the Atomic Age,
1943-1945.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978. p.
170.
[7] Wilson,
Jane S. and Charlotte Serber, eds. Standing By and
Making
Do: Women in Wartime Los Alamos. Los Alamos: Los Alamos
Historical Society, 1988.
p. x, xi.
[8] Brown,
Anthony Cave, and Charles B. MacDonald. The Secret
History
of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Dell, 1977. p. 516.
Bibliography
Bainbridge,
Kenneth T. Trinity. Los Alamos: Los Alamos Scientific
Laboratory, (La-6300-H),
1946.
Brown,
Anthony
Cave, and Charles B. MacDonald. The Secret History of
the
Atomic Bomb. New York: Dell, 1977.
Compton,
Arthur Holly. Atomic Quest: A Personal Quest. New York:
Oxford University Press,
1956.
Fanton,
Jonathan F., Stoff, Michael B. and Williams, R. Hal editors.
The
Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age.
Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1991.
Feis,
Herbert. Japan Subdued: The Atomic Bomb and the End of the War
in the Pacific. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1961.
Groves,
Leslie R. Now it Can be Told: The Story of the Manhattan
Project.
New York: Da Capo Press, 1975.
Hersey,
John. Hiroshima. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.
Jette,
Eleanor. Inside Box 1663. Los Alamos: Los Alamos Historical
Society, 1977.
Kunetka,
James W. City of Fire: Los Alamos and the Atomic Age, 1943-
1945.
Albuquerque; University of New Mexico Press, 1978.
Lamont,
Lansing. Day of Trinity. New York: Athenaeum, 1965.
Rhodes,
Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon
and
Schuster, 1986.
Skates,
John Ray. The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb.
Columbia; University of
South Carolina Press, 1994.
Smyth,
Henry DeWolf. Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. Princeton:
Princeton University Press,
1948.
Szasz,
Ferenc. The Day the Sun Rose Twice. Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1984.
Tibbets,
Paul W. Flight of the Enola Gay. Reynoldsburg, Ohio:
Buckeye Aviation Book Company,
1989.
Williams,
Robert C. Klaus Fuchs, Atom Spy. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press,
1987.
Wilson,
Jane S. and Serber, Charlotte, eds. Standing By and Making
Do:
Women in Wartime Los Alamos. Los Alamos: Los Alamos Historical
Society, 1988.
Wyden,
Peter. Day One: Before Hiroshima and After. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1984.
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| The
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| Atomic
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| Nuclear
Weapons |
| World
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100
Suns
by
MICHAEL LIGHT
Between July 1945 and November
1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater
nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the United States
and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It became
literally invisible—but more frequent: the United States conducted a further
723 underground tests, the last in 1992. 100 Suns documents the era of
visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with 100 photographs drawn
by Michael Light from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and
the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified
material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based
in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen and still photographers were
sworn to secrecy.
The title, 100 Suns, refers
to the response by J.Robert Oppenheimer to the world’s first nuclear explosion
in New Mexico when he quoted a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, the classic
Vedic text: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at
once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I
am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” This was Oppenheimer’s attempt
to describe the otherwise indescribable. 100 Suns likewise confronts the
indescribable by presenting without embellishment the stark evidence of
the tests at the moment of detonation. Since the tests were conducted either
in Nevada or the Pacific the book is simply divided between the desert
and the ocean. Each photograph is presented with the name of the test,
its explosive yield in kilotons or megatons, the date and the location.
The enormity of the events recorded is contrasted with the understated
neutrality of bare data. Interspersed within the sequence of explosions
are pictures of the awestruck witnesses. The evidence of these photographs
is terrifying in its implication while at same time profoundly disconcerting
as a spectacle. The visual grandeur of such imagery is balanced by the
chilling facts provided at the end of the book in the detailed captions,
a chronology of the development of nuclear weaponry and an extensive bibliography.
A dramatic sequel to Michael Light’s Full
Moon, 100 Suns forms an
unprecedented historical document. |
|
Survival
City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America by Tom Vanderbilt
The Cold War was the war that
never happened.
Nonetheless, it spurred
the most significant buildup of military contingency this country has ever
known: from the bunkers of Greenbrier, West Virginia, to the "proving grounds"
of Nevada, where entire cities were built only to be vaporized. The Cold
War was waged on a territory that knew no boundaries but left few traces.
In this fascinating--and
at turns frightening and comical --travelogue to the hidden battlefields
of the Cold War, Tom Vanderbilt travels the Interstate (itself a product
of the Cold War) to uncover the sites of Cold War architecture and reflect
on their lasting heritage. In the process, Vanderbilt shows us what the
Cold War landscape looked like, how architecture tried to adapt to the
threat of mass destruction, how cities coped with the knowledge that they
were nuclear targets, and finally what remains of the Cold War theater
today, both its visible and invisible legacies. Ultimately, Vanderbilt
gives us a deep look into our cultural soul, the dreams and fears that
drove us for the last half of the 20th century. |
|
The
Day the Sun Rose Twice: The Story of the Trinity Site Nuclear Explosion,
July 16, 1945by Ferenc Morton Szasz
First published in 1984, this
prize-winning history of the Manhattan Project is now available in paperback
for the first time... |
|
Standing
by and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos by Jane S. Wilson, Charlotte
Serber
Nine women residents described
in 1946 their lives in Los Alamos while the atomic bomb was being developed.
The shock of arrival, housing conditions, security and secrecy, medical
care, relations with Pueblo neighbors, and more--told with insight and
humor. |
|
Dark
Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
by
Richard Rhodes
An engrossing history of the
scientific discoveries, political maneuverings, and cold-war espionage
leading to the creation of mankind's most destructive weapon. Includes
94 archival photographs and a glossary with brief descriptions of the hundreds
of people interviewed and discussed in the book. Author Richard Rhodes
won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book
Critics Circle Award for his previous atomic tome, The Making of the Atomic
Bomb. |
|
Picturing
the Bomb: Photographs from the Secret World of the Manhattan Project
by Rachel Fermi, Esther Samra, Richard Rhodes
This visually compelling
collection of private and official photos found in family albums and laboratory
archives offers a closer look at the Manhattan Project scientists who built
the first atomic bombs, the military men who delivered them to the target
and various sites connected with that effort (principally Los Alamos, N.M.;
Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and Hanford, Wash.). Included are informal shots of physicists
J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr and other key figures in
the historic project; photos of technical facilities; pictures of the components
of the atomic devices; and a stunning graphic record of the first explosion
at the Trinity test site. |
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Now
It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (Quality Paperbacks
Series) by Leslie R. Groves
"One day in mid-September, 1942,
about a month and a half before the invasion of North Africa..." |
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