Operation Hardtack 1
1958
US Atomic Veterans
Russ Cook
Russ Cook sent this excellent story about his duty on the USS Boxer.
From: fran cook 1strecon@compuserve.com
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1998
Subject: operation hardtack duty
To: "pdxavets@aracnet.com" pdxavets@aracnet.com
Stumbled upon your web page tonight and old memories abounded. Especially
when I saw the name of Larry Stanzyck . Larry and I served together in the
Marine Detachment on the USS Boxer during Operation Hardtack.
I joined the crew of the Boxer in San Diego in late 1957, shortly after
graduating from sea school at MCRD San Diego. We were told our duty, would
be among other things, nuclear weapons guards. The cruise to the Marshalls
took a long time as there were rumors of shadowing Russian submarines which
precipitated zig zag manuvers by the Boxer. We even participated in a
rescue operation of the crew of a naval cargo plane that went down in our
vicinity . We were all aghast at the horrible stories of a night in shark
infested waters related by the survivors of that crash
We arrived in the test area around February of 1958 and immediatly were
assigned to serve as orderlies for foreign military observers. I was
assigned to a missile scientist by the name of Werner Von Braun. Each day
as the evening approached he enjoyed a brisk walk around the flight deck.
He seemed to relish our conversations during these exercise sessions. He
spoke of his younger days as a German rocket scientist and how they had
heard of the heroic exploits of the US Marines in the Pacific during WW II.
I had no idea at the time as to his importance in the scheme of history.
Soon the placid South Pacific days of sunning on the beaches and diving
from landing barges into the crystal clear waters and observing the
unbelievable colors of the underwater flora and fauna vanished into the
tense atmosphere of preparing for the first atomic bomb test.
The first test took place on a balmy afternoon. All hands that were not on
duty were ordered to the flight deck to observe the shot. The officers sat
on folding chairs and donned goggles. We sat on the deck and with some
intrepidation & awaited the countdown. As the voice on the speaker
approached the end of the countdown we were told to place our eyes in the
crook of our arms. When the shot went off my first reaction was that there
wasn't the huge explosion sound that I was sure I would hear. Instead there
was a sound like an electric sound of a broken high tension wire. While I
was museing over this I was astounded to realize that I was looking at the
bone in my arm and I thought of those x-ray devices they had in the shoe
stores back home in El Cajon. Then heat, we began to be aware of heat and
it rapidly escalated to an alarming level and there began an murmur
amongst the huddled crew members on deck . As the heat escalated further
the murmurs became voices of panic and large pockets of men rose up and
began running toward the ships island. Before they got to far the heat
began to disapate and these men and everyone else stood frozen with awe as
we gazed for the first time on the unworldly spectacle of an atomic cloud.
continued........11/07/98 Russ Cook USMC
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From: fran cook 1strecon@compuserve.com
Subject: Operation Hardtack Duty
Sender: fran cook 1strecon@compuserve.com
To: "pdxavets@aracnet.com" pdxavets@aracnet.com
After the first shot the Boxer was a hive of excitement, after all we were
now among the very few in the world who had witnessed and survived a close
encounter with the most powerful weapon ever.
Several additional shots took place in what felt like fairly rapid
succession, but the experience never lost its rush. The scientist always
found ways to add new and interesting changes to the tests.
Some of the most
memorable shots were the subsurface shots. One of the first of these was a
device that was anchored to the bottom of a barge in a rather shallow
lagoon. Again, the crew that weren't essential to the operation of the ship
were ordered to the flight deck to observe. At the end of the countdown the
lagoon water jolted as if a giant hand had slapped the surface. There was a
very brief pause and then a huge water column began to form. This sight,
however is not what caught my attention and was not what caught the
attention of everyone on deck. We were all agape at the rows of what appeared
to be black clouds or as I later described them, vast swarms of insects
approaching the ships starboard side low to the water , in neat rows and
moving at breakneck speed. As these anomolies approached men rose to their
feet , pointed and I heard the question what is it ? , what is it?
..........Then the first row disappeared from our sight as it sped below
the edges of the flight deck , then.....WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, our inquiries
were answered as the shock waves slammed into the side of the Boxer,
rocking the carrier like a small rowboat. Then, again WHAM, WHAM.. and
great pieces of glass from the bridge and other areas of the ships island
crashed to the deck. The men were swarming, wanting to escape but not
knowing in which direction to flee. Meanwhile below decks several steam
lines ruptured and some of the crew were seriously burned. That evening we
were told by some of the scientific crew that the lagoon was several
hundred feet deeper than it was before the shot.
The next subsurface blast proved to be the most amazing sight I think I'll
ever see. This was a deep water blast where the bomb was anchored a hundred
feet beneth an old Japanese supply ship. Several other Japanese war vessels
and obsolete Navy vessels were placed in close poximity to the supply ship.
When the explosion took place, the waters' surface again jolted, stiffened
and then began to slowly rise up as a column with great circumference and
with a flat top. Sitting very securely on the top of this slowly rising
column of billions of gallons of seawater was the old Japanese supply ship.
We all watched in awe and I could hear the crewmembers near me speaking in
low, almost reverent voices. When the column ceased its upward movement
there was a slight pause and then it slowly began to decend and the supply
ship vanished from view as the mist from the base surge covered the entire
area. None of us left, we wanted to know the fate of that ship that took
the ride of the century on top of that atomic column. We waited and we
waited what seemed an eternity . Finally most of us had to return to our
duties. An hour later as I was polishing my webbing brass in the Marine
compartment below decks, a resounding roar went up from the crew topside.
We all dropped what we were doing and raced through the hatches and up the
ladders to the flight deck so excited about what we knew must be the cause
of such an uproar that several times on the way up people got jammed in
hatches and on ladders. When I reached the flight deck I immediatly focused
on the sea where the blast had taken place and .....YES,YES there she was ,
that gallent old warrior stlll afloat and almost totally undamaged. We
cheered until we were hoarse.
To be continued ll/08/98
Russ Cook
Email: 1strecon@compuserve.com
Keith Whittle
November 7, 1998
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From: fran cook 1strecon@compuserve.com
Subject: Operation Hardtack # IV
To: "pdxavets@aracnet.com"
You say what?? They're going to do what?? They're going to shoot off two
megatonnage bombs simultaniously to see if they can get twice the
destructive power in one blast. This ought to be huge, what if it gets out
of hand?
I remember this conversation or one close to it about a week before they
actually tried the simultaneous shot. When the day arrived for the shot, it
seems to me we were at sea and not anchored as we were in many of the other
shots . During the week preceeding the shot, foreign military officials
began arriving on the Boxer in unusually high numbers. There were high
ranking officers from almost every nation allied with the United States.
The night of the shot, the flightdeck was lined with rows of folding chairs
and the dignitaries were either in their chairs or filing onto the deck
with their assigned Marine orderlies trailing a respectful one step behind
and to the right, when a stiff breeze broke the calm of the balmy south
seas night. My buddy Cpl. Red Robertson was standing beside me and my
dignitary, a Dutch officer, when the breeze caught the floppy hat of his
dignitary, I believe an Australian officer and sent it rolling towards the
forward section of the flightdeck. Red dutifully took off after the hat . I
watched with amusement as he made stabs at the hat only to miss . Then I
noticed the hat and Red were rapidly approaching the end of the flightdeck
and Red showed no signs of realizing that. When he was no more than fifteen
feet from the edge everyone was yelling warnings and he was still running
at full clip. When the hat disappeared over the front edge of the deck,
Red finally realized his situation and made the right choice of diving to
the deck with only two feet to spare. Had he tried to stop his forward
progress while standing, his momentum would have carried him overboard.
Red picked himself up and received a loud round of applause from those
gathered and returned to his duty station at the side of his dignitary
somewhat mussed but not showing any other negative signs of his ordeal.
Eventually, everyone settled in to their chairs and the countdown began. We
figured that if this shot accomplished what the scientist were hoping that
it would accomplish, namely increasing the power of one shot by
simultaniously firing two bombs, this could be an interesting experience
to say the least.
At the end of the countdown the night sky lit up like noon time. No
difference from other shots so far. Then came the same "silent rumble "
sound. Still no difference. Night began to close in again and I was kind
of disappointed because nothing was any different from the multitude of
preceeding shots that we had witnessed. We, apparently had sensed
correctly, as we heard later through our dignitaries that the simultanious
theory was proven to be false by the test on the balmy night one day
earlier.
Semper Fi...
Russ
November 29, 1998
Email: 1strecon@compuserve.com
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