Operation DOMINIC Nuclear Tests 1962, Section 1

Joint Task Force 8 was created as a military command structure for interservices participation in the DOMINIC I series.

DOMINIC I was assigned to Pacific Basin tests, while the II phase was conducted at what is now the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS/N2S2).

In the spinup toward, during, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, 96 nuclear tests took place in 1962. Here are the numbers listed by related fiscal year operations:

34 NOUGAT: weapons development
36 DOMINIC I: weapons development, high altitude and underwater nuclear phenomena, delivery systems, tracking, and military effects
22 STORAX: weapons development and one overlapping PLOWSHARE excavation test called Sedan
4 SUNBEAM (DOMINIC II): tests of small tactical warheads, a mobile delivery system, their military effects, and troop maneuvers

All nuclear tests required the command approval of United States presidents in office during those operations.

The "better dead than red" Cold Warriors would be appalled at the left image.

Instrument trailers were pervasive during nuclear testing operations, for capturing valuable scientific data.

Weapon development airdrop tests were conducted off of Chistmas Island/Kiritimati, now part of the Republic of Kiribati, in the Line Islands group.

Compare to a third party posting, of the original color condition:

 Bureaucratic military "good to go" concept in action:

September 1961: Soviets resume testing with the greatest megatonnage series in history
October 24, 1962: film's stated activation of Joint Task Force 8 by presidential decree
April 1, 1962: targeted date for the beginning of testing in the Pacific theater
Early November 1962: DOMINIC I is completed

What? The date for activation should have been said as 24 October, 1961, within a month of Soviet nuclear resumption trials.

Local Gilbertese culture was briefly profiled. This woman was eating copra, a dietary staple of Micronesia.

This was on Christmas Island, at a military zone gate.

This was Operation DOMINIC I's Johnston Island aerospace command center, with the firing panel of the Thor test rockets. Los Alamos Test Director Dr. William E. Ogle (white shirt) and Maj. General Alfred Starbird are to the right. Lieutenant Commander P. Kwart (far right) was the Project Officer for Range Safety (RSO), who personally triggered firing of the missiles, and the warhead's asymmetric explosive destruction if the missile failed to reach the targeted burst altitude.

Notice the bright green artifact at the top right. These scenes are essentially rebuilt color, and they create defect colors in other zones, therefore demanding further treatment of the scene.

A Thor rocket waits for lift-off.

Recovery of a high altitude nuclear fireball environment instrument pod, among those launched by Thor rockets that also carried the nuclear warheads. Before detonations, these pods were released at specific altitudes below and near the bursts. These became radioactively hot during the thermonuclear explosion.

A Martin B-57 Canberra circles near a test site, as part of U.S. Air Force danger zone reconnaissance security.

53 Lockheed P2V-5F Neptunes, provided by the Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet, had many uses during DOMINIC I:

1. Conduct searches of designated areas
2. Detect, warn, and escort any unauthorized craft out of the danger area
3. Assist in the collection of scientific data and provide radiological surveys
4. Carry out SAR (search and rescue) assignments

A multimegaton droptest fireball rapidly rises at hundreds of kilometers per hour 30 mi/55 km south of Christmas Island. UPDATE: This was the Questa shot.

This is an early color test before spot, scratch, and noise removal.

Questa drop location:

Technicians were unloading crates on Christmas Island.

Standing 6' 5" (1.96 m) tall, U.S. Army Major General Alfred D. Starbird (second from the far right) was the supreme commander of Joint Task Force 8, responsible for executing the objectives and safety standards of Operation DOMINIC I, from April to November of 1962.

Learning among the lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis, military engineer Starbird was also assigned with directing the implementation of the world's first direct communication system between world leaders, between the White House and the Kremlin. This system is often called "the hotline," and since expanded to reach more than 40 foreign leaders.

Starbird was nearly involved in hostile incident with Soviet spies:

An Account of the Return to Nuclear Weapons Testing by the United States after the Test Moratorium
1958-1961

 William E. Ogle

October 1985

Thor rockets lofted all DOMINIC I high altitude test warheads, except for CHECKMATE (by XM-33 Strypi) and TIGHTROPE (in a Nike-Hercules). All these tests comprised Operation FISHBOWL.

Those black buildings were standard Thor liquid oxygen (left) and kerosene fuel valve (right) complexes.

In a magnified view from the same location as the scene immediately above, instrument pods hang from the Thor missile.

Aerospace engineer Maxwell Hunter was the chief designer of the Thor, Nike-Ajax, Hercules, Sparrows I, II, and III, and others. 

Thor specifications:

Length: 64 ft. 10 in. (19.76 m)
Diameter: 8 ft. 0 in. (2.44 m)
Weight: 109, 330 lbs. (49, 591 kg mass) at launch
Armament: Nuclear warhead
Engine: Rocketdyne liquid-propellant
Thrust:: 150,000 lbs. thrust (667, 233 Newtons)
Cost: $660,000

(Motor Vessel) MV Acania was moored in Pago Pago, American Samoa, near the southern geomagnetic conju- gate point. Its mission was to record measurements of cosmic noise attenuation due to high altitude nuclear weapons bursts.

  Courtesy of Wikipedia

The magnetic and geographic poles are not in the same orientations, and the N-S magnetic poles continually, slowly wander over far northern Canada and Antarctica. This angular difference between geographic and magnetic poles is called the magnetic declination.

Magnetic conjugate points of a high altitude nuclear test were regions of careful studies.

Beta particles -- free electrons created during nuclear fission or natural electroweak interaction decay of neutrons -- oscillate back and forth at nearly the speed of light along these lines of magnetic force, until finally absorbed by ionized gases in the upper atmosphere.

High above the atmosphere there is little to no gas to quickly absorb these fast electrons.

Energetic, charged particles give off electromagnetic energy if their trajectories are significantly changed by a magnetic field. Spiralling around lines of magnetic force fields in the high atmosphere or space (≥ 62 miles/100 km), particles including beta electrons can emit large amounts of energy in the form of an electromagnetic pulse. These massive electrical currents also produce moving magnetic fields that can damage electrical systems, including power grids below, as well as severely disrupt long range communications and radar tracking. The lengths of the oscillation pathways also hugely increase at much higher altitudes, threatening entire continents.

The MV Acania is now in a restoration process by a private owner.

Note in the History section of the restorer's website, the records of the Acania between 1957 and 1985 are a complete mystery to the restoration team and owner. ;-)

The RSO fired the rockets from a simple toggle switch control panel.

TIGERFISH was a non-nuclear rehearsal for flight testing the Thor rocket, and complex recovery operations of the fireball data-collecting external pods.

High altitude nuclear tests were run during the darkness of night.

Thor TIGERFISH liftoff took place on May 1, 1962. Starting April 26, 1962, in the days leading to the TIGERFISH launch, while fixing problems with the pods, there were half-hour practice countdowns twice daily.

To avoid losing pods, each included a radio beacon, a flashing light, and a green dye.

A 400 pound (180 kg) instrument pod was photographed about the USS Grapple (ARS-7) during a recovery operation, after a high altitude shot:

Operation DOMINIC I 1962

DNA 6040F

Operation DOMINIC I 1962

DNA 6040F

Flag Plot is the supreme commander's operational planning, navigation, and tactical control center. Located aboard the USS Princeton (LPH-5), seen here were Maj. General Starbird, his technical operations deputy, Air Force Lt. Colonel George Kallis, an unidentified senior scientific team member, and Dr. William Ogle, (seated at the far right) Operation DOMINIC I's top Los Alamos J-7 Division scientific commander (the test director).

Minor color details need to be corrected such as the blue bordering and green.

 

Operation DOMINIC Nuclear Tests 1962, Section 2

A tracking array on a ship

 

Thor missiles were stored under this rollover shelter that covered them before firing. The shelter was rolled away on tracks, the rocket raised upright and then fueled before launches.

An M52 truck maneuvered this Thor to its launch platform, to ready placement of its Mk 2 nosecone reentry vehicle that contained the nuclear device.

Douglas Aircraft (before its 1967 merger with McDonnell) built the Thor missile body, while Rocketdyne made the engines, AC Spark Plug the primary inertial guidance system, Bell Labs the backup radio guidance system, and General Electric the nose cone/reentry vehicle assemblies.

Trailers like this allowed the Douglas team to monitor the rockets, yet the military range safety officer fired the missiles from the aerospace command center.

Final preparations were made for a SJI-151 Nike-Apache on its launcher, as part of the STARFISH PRIME experiment. 10 of these rocket configurations probed X-ray and beta emissions, and other properties of the 1.45 megaton explosion, from 106 miles (172 km) to 140 mi (230 km) high.

Heavy construction was common during Operation DOMINIC I, including the presence of planers like this.

Extensive brush and other vegetation needed to be cleared for instruument stations throughout the Pacific, before DOMINIC I test operations could begin.

Since the British destroyed most of the military facilities, or left them in ruins after they finished their superbomb tests at Christmas Island, Joint Task Force 8 went to work on construction.

Most of Christmas Island (now Kiritimati) is white coral sand.

Gilbertese language pronounces ti as an s sound, therefore Kiritimati is prounced as [kəˈrɪsməs], which sounds nearly the same as the English "Christmas."

Great Britain loaned Christmas Island to the United States, after a mutual agreement was made between both nations. USA supplied nuclear weapons to the British after the British were forced to give up on their own production and development, facing the punishing costs of the program.

By far the greatest cost in nuclear weapons development is the related delivery technology: bombers, missiles, and more.

Johnston Island is inside the protection barrier of Johnston Atoll. This size of the island greatly increased from 1958 to 1964, through extensive dredging by the military.

Under construction during this sequence, this large antenna on Johnston Island was used for high altitude signal tests.

Chart recorders

USS Richard B. Anderson (DD-786) bored through rough seas in this scene. The Anderson participated in the Pacific Basin ASROC test.

The RUR-5 ASROC (Anti-Submarine ROCket) was fired from the destroyer USS Agerholm (DD-826).

The target was a raft 4348 yards (3976 m) from Agerholm, floating in water 17,140 ft (5224 m) deep.

SWORDFISH detonated at 1:02 PM local Pacific Time, 11 May, 1962. Its yield was 10 kilotons. Exploding at -650 feet (198 m) below the surface, the W44 warhead was in a (40 second delay from launch) depth bomb configuration (in difference to its optional, self-tracking torpedo mode). The hypocenter was 370 nm (686 km) southwest of San Diego, California.

More information about SWORDFISH: Operation DOMINIC I 1962 DNA 6040F

Click to expand the map of the test array at shot time, to better understand what happened.

Click to enlarge each thumbnail

Instrument buoys like this were pulled through the SWORDFISH test zone by USS Molala (ATF-106). The instruments were levitated on a spring base to prevent the powerful incident and reflected shockwaves from destroying them. Hills and valleys of the ocean floor created interference patterns in the reflected waves that multiplied their power in various locations along the surface.


Soviet spy ships lingered close to the borders of the danger zone. During STARFISH PRIME these heavily instrumented boats monitored the nuclear tests in both the northern and southern hemisphere conjugate point regions.

The American military flew regular patrols to observe these ships, or the U.S. Navy shadowed them, frequently with destroyers.

Adding to annoyance and possible confrontations, personnel from these ships also tracked commanders on islands outside of the security zone, including Joint Task Force 8's supreme commander.

A radar tracked aerial tests from this vessel, yet the location outside the security zone prevented any sort of legal recourse to stop them.

The Kremlin tactily sent its regards as crewmembers appeared outside.

The Red Bank Register of Red Bank, NJ, USA article on these expeditionary ships sent by the Soviets (June 12, 1962) [Defunct publisher]:

Part 1: Part 2:
Click to expand

Click to see the DOMINIC I danger areas in the central Pacific:

Operation DOMINIC I 1962 

DNA 6040F

Frame-by-Frame color editing is in progress from this dynamic sequence, because the bright disk was late in the yellowish stage, before changing to the other colors. Obviously there is considerably more tinkering needed before the final scene version:

The BLUEGILL TRIPLE PRIME W50 warhead exploded over Johnston Island, at 30 miles (48 km) up.

Military observers logged their observations of this event:

Operation DOMINIC I 1962 

DNA 6040F

A telescopic film camera tracked the only live test of the Polaris A2 missile with a W47 (Y1 Mod) 600 kiloton nuclear warhead, in an operation called FRIGATE BIRD, 6 May, 1962.

After a series of weather and technical equipment problems, a launch from the USS Ethan Allen (SSBN-608) finally took place. The third missile of 4 available on the submarine, flew 1100 miles (1770 km) southwest toward its burst location at 8300 feet (2530 m) altitude over open sea. More information is here.

The water in the original has a hazy appearance of a semi-overcast day, added to the softening of shadows. A U.S. Navy Submarine Force news magazine article, linked above, confirmed the low ceiling cloud cover.

The U.S. Air Force Military Air Transport Service's (MATS) 13520 Photo Group was based at Lookout Mountain Laboratory (LML) in the Hollywood Hills of California. LML was responsible for photographic documention of both development and both military and scientific effects of all nuclear tests during the atmospheric era, 1946 - 1962.

The laboratory profiled its many important roles in this short film:

The location now serves as a rehabilitation center after laboratory's dismantling in 1969 and sequential passage into private ownership.