Nick Tulve Jr.
Nick Tulve Jr. sent email about his duty at Operation Dominic.
From: "Nick Tulve Jr." ntulvejr@hvc.rr.com
To: pdxavets@aracnet.com
Subject: Atomic Vets
Date: Tue, 22 May 2001
I just sort of stumbled upon his site. I guess I'm wondering what is it all about. I was on Christmas Island from 5 June 1962 to 13 July 1962. I was working on Project 4.2 Task Unit 8.1.3 and we were conducting vision studies. I was HM3/USN on Temporary Duty with a couple civilian researchers from American Optical. Our home base was the Naval Air Development and Research Activities Command in Johnsville, PA. I remember being one of the manned sites closest to ground zero. I can remember watching the shock wave from a detonation come across the island, moving the grass and flipping stones in the air. I can also remember the heat on my bare legs. To the best of my knowledge I was not exposed to any harmful levels of radiation. Well, guess I have rambled long enough.
Nick Tulve
ntulvejr@hvc.rr.com
From: "Nick Tulve Jr." ntulvejr@hvc.rr.com
To: "Keith" pdxavets@aracnet.com
Subject: Re: Atomic Vets (Dominic)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001
Hi Keith,
My work on Christmas Island was a manned site. We had volunteers
that looked at a detonation through a set of prisms and reflectors. This
system essentially diffused the light from the detonation so that the
volunteers would not experience any permanent injury. They would however
experience some short term loss of vision. We continued to monitor them and
measured their recovery time to full vision. The whole purpose behind this
was that we were working on a set of goggles that could be worn and when the
weapon detonated, the fireball would cause the goggles to go black
protecting the eyes. We needed to know if the goggles went black fast enough
to prevent permanent damage to the eye. Al of the volunteers experienced
full recovery within minutes however we determined that the goggles were not
fast enough, as designed, to prevent permanent damage. And we tested several
different designs and did some on site modifications to see if we could get
them to work. (I won't go into all of the calculations needed to figure from
the diffused experiment to the actual fireball and the goggle reaction
time.) So that's my story.
Best regards,
Nick Tulve Jr.
ntulvejr@hvc.rr.com
Keith Whittle
August 1, 2001
[ Operation Dominic ]