Operation Dominic US Atomic Veterans Cecil R. Coale, Ph.D Cecil Coale sent this web page about his duty at Operation Dominic. Here I am, clowning around on Canton Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in July, 1962. That's the Canton atoll lagoon in the distant background. After earning my doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Texas in 1961, I worked for the Electro-Mechanics Company in Austin making magnetometers that measured the earth's magnetic field. During June-July, 1962 I got to take two of them to the Pacific for the JTF-8 high altitude nuclear test series. We had a contract with the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories at Hanscom Field in Massachusetts. We put one magnetometer station with a three man team on Canton Island and the other on Tutuila, Samoa with a two man team. Canton Island was on the earth's magnetic equator and Tutuila was at a geomagnetic "conjugate point" for the Starfish detonation over Johnston Island. Nuclear tests required the services of many technical and military disciplines. They were organized into huge "Joint Task Forces." The one that I worked with was called Joint Task Force-8 or simply JTF-8. It was an eleven hour flight from Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii to Canton. That sure was a big ocean! Just water visible in all directions. We flew in a USAF cargo plane sitting inbetween our packing cases of equipment. The airplane turboprop engines were too loud for conversation. Canton Island is a coral atoll several miles long about half way from Hawaii to Australia. We lived in a tent city constructed by the Holmes & Narver company. We had army cots in army 4 man tents. There was a day room tent with books and a radio. There was a latrine and shower tent. There was an outside movie arena where a movie was shown each week. There was a dining tent. We ate well. Custom cooked prime steaks every day! One ex-Navy fellow said that we ate as well as submariners. We set up our magnetometer station in a remote abandoned concrete building that had once housed a World War II radio station. It was far from island traffic so our magnetometer would have a quiet magnetic background. Canton Island had been a staging area for the Battle of Tarawa in 1943. There was never any fighting on Canton Island, but thousands of U. S. Marines and military personel had camped here for several months. The island was littered with concrete bunkers, concrete pads and latrine pits dug in solid coral rock. We spent some of our idle time exploring these old bunkers and found lots of crumbling concrete, rusty iron, hermit crabs, nesting sea birds and wasp nests. There were lots of sharks in the lagoon. Their dorsal fins were easy to spot on the otherwise calm lagoon surface. The lagoon was teeming with marine life. The political atmosphere on Canton Island and throughout the entire Pacific test site was pure Cold War. The U. S. Army supplied our secure communications. The U. S. Air Force shuttled the scientists and engineers from island to island as needed. Once a U. S. Navy antisubmarine P2V airplane flew around and around our atoll hunting for a supposed Russian submarine near Canton. There were several Russian ships one mile offshore from Canton Island. I could see their red flags flying faintly in the distance. The Russians said they were making repairs to their ships and got permission from the British island governor to anchor in territorial waters. Canton Island was a territory jointly governed by the British and the United States. These were the same Russians that had monitored the recent Christmas Island nuclear tests. There sure were a lot of antennas and sensors visible on these ships. This photo shows our magnetometer being installed by our scientists on Tutuila, Samoa. It was just like the one that was installed on Canton Island. Several native children watch the operation. The magnetometer was buried at a depth of 4 or 5 feet to provided a near constant ambient temperature, since it was slightly sensitive to temperature changes. It is remarkable that this 16 mm film sequence ended up on the official Dominic report film and was declassified and made available to me some 39 years later by the Department of Energy nuclear test archives in Nevada! Our data recording station featured packing crate furniture, pen and ink strip chart recorders, a Hammarlund short wave radio and various analog vacuum tube instrumentation all neatly bolted into 19 inch wide racks.The only transistor equipment was my magnetometer electronics. Not a computer anywhere! We had two Army 5 kilowatt gasoline powered alternators for 120 volt 60 hertz power sitting on the coral about 100 yards from our station. There were several cases of official government "emergency drinking water" in steel cans that opened with a beer can opener. There was an obelisk monument near the lagoon entrance stating that the U. S. National Geographic Society had explored this uninhabited atoll in 1936. We went to the British part of the atoll to celebrate the Queen's birthday in June. The British came to our July 4th celebration of American Independence. American Coca-Cola and Australian whisky were favorite drinks. The British invited the offshore Russians to join in the festivities, but they declined. There was a radio station on Johnston Island at 10 megahertz called "April Weather" that broadcast coordination information to all participants in the Pacific. When they weren't sending real information, they continuously broadcast this staccato recorded message: "This is April Weather, broadcasting for the purpose of identification and equipment adjustment." We also got the correct zulu time at 10 megahertz from WWVH (Morse code only) in Hawaii or the Japanese time station JJY in English. Sometimes we would listen to Australian short wave programs on our radio. As a former Eagle Scout and ham radio operator W5VHO, I felt quite at home here. Starfish Prime as seen from Canton Island The Hawaiian news media touted this high altitude nuclear test series as the "rainbow bombs" because of the spectacular auroral displays that had been visible from Hawaii. On the night of July 9, 1962 when Starfish Prime was scheduled, the hotels in Hawaii offered roof top bomb watching parties. It seemed that everyone in the Pacific hemisphere was watching the sky over Johnston Island and listening to April Weather. We calibrated and started our magnetometer recording data about 30 minutes before the scheduled shot to get some background data for comparison later with the changes caused by the detonation. It was pitch black on Canton Island. We waited and listened to April Weather. Finally, April Weather announced lift off of the Thor Delta. We listened as it went up and up. Ten seconds before detonation, April Weather began the count down 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Then a brilliant white flash erased the darkness like a photoflash. Then the entire sky turned light green for about a second. In several more seconds, a deep red aurora, several moon diameters in size, formed where the blast had been. A white plasma jet came slowly out of the top of the red aurora (over Johnston Island) and painted a white stripe across the sky from north to south in about one minute. A deep red aurora appeared over Samoa at the south end of the white plasma jet. This visual display lasted for perhaps ten minutes before slowly fading. There was no sound at all. The strip chart recorders hummed loudly as soon as the flash occured. Wow, was there a big change in the earth's magnetic field! Welcome to the electromagnetic pulse! As all this was happening around me, April Weather said "detonation has occured" and I said "no kidding." The morning after the Starfish Prime shot, the Russian ships announced that their repairs were complete and they departed. When I left Canton Island, I picked up this rock for a souvenir of my island adventure.It is a baseball sized basalt rock from the Pacific beach of Canton Island. The rock is volcanic glass bubbles that floats in sea water. The little white rocky spots on it are the remains of barnacles that attached to it, while in the sea water. Tons are blown out of underwater volcanoes and they float around the Pacific Ocean and a few land on Canton. Actually, the beaches were black sand, being ground up basalt and coral fragments. This rock is worn smooth from being tumbled against the basalt sand for countless years by the surf. I still have it displayed in my home in McKinney, Texas in 2003. Several months after I had returned to Texas, I received two certificates from the JTF-8 management. One colorful certificate was for actually working on site in the Pacific area. The other certificate was for being a part of the JTF-8 organization