Operation Greenhouse
US Atomic Veterans
Roy Norman
From: "roy norman" usnmustang1@bellsouth.net
To: "Keith" pdxavets@aracnet.com
Subject: Re: Is this site still active?
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004
I joined the Navy 5 days after Pearl Harbor as an E-1 and retired 30 years later as an O-4. I am now a 80 year old retired Navy Officer. Considering all of the radiation exposure I have had, it is a wonder I am still here, Trying to find old shipmates I have served with only brings me information that they have all died. Some of natural causes and a lot of others of cancer.
In Feb. of 1948 I was assigned to the Navy Special Weapons Unit # 471. This was the first Navy unit assembled to put Atomic bombs together for storage and training. I was an Et 1st at the time. I was responsible for handling the Nuclear components for the "Fat Man and the Little Boy" bombs. Why I was chosen for this duty, I have no idea.
On 15 Feb, 1951, I received orders TDY at the Naval Research Laboratory, Wash. DC. There I was assigned to a multi service team assembling, repairing and installing equipment to measure the neutron growth in the weapon during the first 200 micro seconds of detonation. It involved a lot of equipment, two 7 foot relay racks full, for each measurement.
After I had become familiar with the equipment, I was ordered to escort some priority gear to Eniwetok. This was in the day before jets and took several days to get there. I arrived at Eniwetok Atoll on 16 March. Would live on and operate out of Perry Island for the next two months. It was a long trip across the lagoon in an LCT. Our site was a dense concrete cube 30 feet on a side, set 10 feet into the sand. Our room in the center was 10 feet on each side. We had 12 relay racks, all identical in this room. No ventilation.
For tests Dog and Easy we were evacuated on either an LST or a merchant ship to below the horizon. and came back the next day to get ready for shot George. I knew this would be different because we were always carrying several Dewars of liquid air. When we had all of our tests run and they were ready, we closed up the water tight door, placed two feet of lead bricks against the door and filled the last 8 feet of the passage with sand bags.
The next morning, 9 May at 0930, this weapon was set off. It had a yield of 225 kilotons. The nations proof that a Hydrogen bomb could be built. As I understand it, the major yield was from a capsule of Tritium that weighed less than 1 ounce. For a reason I was never told, we did not evacuate the Island for this test. Maybe they did not think it would work. Let me tell you it did. I was standing on the beach of Perry Island facing away from the detonation and when it went off I could feel the heat on my back. When we could turn around and take off our dark goggles, I saw a very large rolling brown cloud. I was glad to see it begin to lift off the surface.
Looking off to the East, I could see the shock wave bending the palms over as it advanced across the lagoon. Suddenly there was a 6 inch high wave of water advancing toward us with the speed of sound. It was a loud roar and broke a lot of the windows out of the building behind us. Because the data on our instruments was recorded on film, our NRL supervisor flew over the site that afternoon and decided it was too radioactive for us to go into recover. Estimated radiation read on the plane was 50 R at the site.
The next morning 3 other NRL members and I boarded an LCT for the long trip to the site. There were Army and Air Force members also going to their own test sites along the way. As we approached Eberiru Island the water became green and there were a lot of dead birds on the water. LCT's have a trough for the toilet and one of the Army men had a survey meter with him and he went in and read the radioactivity of the water. 10 R. At that point we all got on top of the trucks on board.
When we let down the ramp, the trucks drove off on glass at least 1 and 1/4 inches thick. I had been to the "Trinity" site in July of 1949 and the soil there was fused to about 1/4 inch. We ran off to our site and started taking out the sand bags and then the lead bricks. My dosimeters were reading and the 10 R dosimeter was already at 3.2 when we got the site open. The other 2 men rushed in, put the film in a lead lined box we had left there and brought it out and handed it to the pilot of a small Army plane. He was supposed to come back and pick us up. While standing in the hot passage way, we had a message saying the plane was down and it would be 2 hours before they could pick us up. It was too hot to stay in the passage and certainly too hot to stand outside. We made a rush for the East side of the island and out into the fresh ocean water being blown in by the trade wind.
Sat there up to our noses till the plane came in and picked us up. There had been a very short, fierce, 6 hour battle for that island in 1944. Bullets littered the sand we were sitting on. We had to have an army demolition expert there as the trenches were dug for the signal cables. The ditcher kept bringing up belts of machine gun bullets and on occasion an unexploded shell or bomb. Even a few skeletons which were reburied. When we got back to Perry Island it was to a hot shower and I threw my clothes and shoes away. A good cold beer topped of an exciting day.
About 5 days later, the decision was made that I had enough exposure, over 5 R by this time and I escorted some equipment back to NRL. Talked the pilot into stopping in Albuquerque on the way east and had the tower call my wife to let here know we were arriving. The day was 20 May, 1951 and we had been married 1 year. I got to hold her and kiss her and then left her a bag of dirty clothes and the promise I would be home as soon as possible.
I went on to install equipment for all of the tests at Nevada site for Buster/Jangle.
Somebody recommended me for Warrant and I managed to stay for the next 5 tests at Nevada for Tumber/Snapper.
Roy Norman
usnmustang1@bellsouth.net
--Keith Whittle
September 26, 2004
Operation Greenhouse