Bill Flint sent email about his duty at Operation Castle.
Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004
From: william flint bflint@airmail.net
To: pdxavets@aracnet.com
Subject: Castle
Hi Keith:
I was a Crew Chief in the B-36 Squadron on Operation Castle.
Here is a picture of our maintenance group standing by a 36 during
Operation Castle. I can't remember more than two B-36s being over there but am not sure. My aircraft was 1086 (tail number) and is shown in picture. Our plane was equipped with cameras.
This picture was taken toward the end of the operation. I don't know
who took it and I don't remember it being taken.
I will identify the men as best can, after 50 years. From left to right.
Sgt. Longmire, Sgt. Carrol, Sgt. Rasmussen, Sgt. Kawalsky, Sgt.
Zimmerman, Sgt. Calvert, Sgt. Flint, Sgt. Allison, Sgt. Wyatt, Sgt
McDuff and Sgt. Jigamora.
I took the picture from the original print with my digital camera.
Most of our radiation exposure was receives from washing down and
performing maintenance on our aircraft after it returned from
participating in the tests. We always had to scrub in the shower until
we reached an acceptable radiation level before we were allowed to leave
the flight line. It seems that they did issue us some white coveralls that we wore while we washed down and worked.
My highest reading came after I had changed an alternator drive unit in
one of the inboard engine inlet tunnels. It took several scrub showers
that day before I cooled down. Normally a couple or three did the job.
Believe it or not, we used Tide and water to wash down the airplane but
we had to use G.I. soap and a brush in the showers to cool us off,
radiation wise, Man! after a few scrub-downs with a brush and G.I. Soap
we were red as a beet and we could tell every place those fatigues
touched us.
I got exposure data, best I can remember, from the Atomic Energy
Commission years after the fact. There was a notice in Fort Worth Star
Telegram wanting people to contact a given address if they had
participated in the tests. I contacted them giving Operation Castle,
name, rank, S/N etc. and they sent me data and offered an opportunity
to for a physical at V. A. but never did go. I had
that "too busy" attitude at time.
I still have every thing they sent me. Some time later they sent me
revised data and I wrote them asking that they recheck but never heard
from them again other that to say data was no longer accessible.
I don't know about any other airplanes but 1086 went to Consolidated
Vultee-Convair-General Dynamics now Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth (just
across the runway) from our home base, Carswell, when we brought it
home. Remember it well because workers there got hazardous duty pay for
working on them. Always did gripe us.
We have a B-36
restoration project in work at Fort Worth. If interested, check B-36
PEACEMAKER MUSEUM.ORG website. Plane is restored but there is no place to
display it to date.
Thanks again
Bill Flint
Richardson, TX
Email: bflint@airmail.net
Keith Whittle
Febuary 16, 2004
[ Operation Castle ]
