RONGERIK
Part 1.
Everyone was aware of what happened on Rongerik and there was all kinds of speculation as to what happened. I never once subscribed to the theory of some people that the winds aloft data provided by the Rongerik crew was in error and if the correct data had been provided the test shot would've never been scheduled.
My theory was that the winds aloft shifted by some rogue air mass and caused the radioactive dust cloud to move over Rongerik, dousing the 28 men on the island. Over the years I've read about "freaks of nature," and I firmly believe that this was one of those situations. I base this thinking on personally operating the equipment of Rongerik, which was perfectly aligned and calibrated and as a matter of fact, the absolute best set of Rawinsonde equipment I had ever worked with.
The call came down from the Task Force to send some people over to Rongerik to launch a balloon, code it up, send it over the teletype, and, if necessary, repeat the procedure prior to future tests. No one wanted to volunteer for this job. When they assured us we would fly in, land in the lagoon, then fly right back, we were a little more receptive, but still apprehensive. No one knew how hot the island was. None of us had any idea what the safe limits of our exposure would be, nor what the symptoms were if we absorbed too much of the background radiation on this island. Cox and I were"volunteered " by the Captain, I suppose since Cox and I often expressed our feelings about the leadership of some officers, verbal and non-verbal. Our Commanding Officer worked (HA!) at the Weather Station which was located a short distance from our RAWIN shack, and occasionally when Cox and/or myself would glance that way, we'd give the "international sign of discontent " the upraised middle finger, of course. For the life of me, I can't recall what the third guy's name was, who worked up the run with us. I do know it was Cox and I each time, and once Hugh McGroty went over with us.
I think Cox's first name was Harold, but I'm not really sure. I've said this many times before, it's a wonder I remember what happened last week, let alone 45 years ago! We probably could've made an issue out of being forced into a "harms way" situation, but this was back in a period of the military when unpleasant things occurred. It was rationalized by, "Yours is not to reason why, yours is just to do or die. " At this point in my service career. I had hitched rides in an AT-6, BT-11, B-25, B-26, B-24, C-46, C-47, C-54, B-29 and C-121, and now I was going to ride to Rongerik in an SA-16 sea plane! This plane also had a landing gear so it could land on water or on a runway. They had this plane equipped with Jato cylinders on each side of the plane just forward of the tail section, filled with compressed gas to assist in takeoffs from water when there was limited space. The pilot and co-pilot weren't too enthused about ferrying us out and back on this trip. When you hear a curt, "Chute up and board," you know that you have a disgruntled crew, so we didn't say much, just did as told.
There was another passenger carrying a box who didn't identify himself and attempts to draw him into conversation failed, so we left him alone and he left us alone. (Worked for me!) When we got near our destination, he pulled an instrument out of a case and started some sort of calibration procedure. There were three scale positions on a rotary switch, which he calibrated to the zero position of the meter. I remember thinking, if this is a Geiger counter of some sort why weren't we given the instrument? All of us could read the roentgen scale of a Geiger counter. Maybe they thought if we converted the display into gamma rays we wouldn't get off the plane! We approached Rongerik at a level 500 feet above the water, and at that time Mr. Warmth set the instrument on the floor of the aircraft. While none of us wanted to, we witnessed the meter needle peg on the lower scale. I think that must have been the concentration on top of the buildings, however, it was easy to see that we weren't going to mess around on shore any longer than we had to. He then packed up his instrument, and went forward and talked to the pilot and co-pilot. When we set down in the lagoon there was a loud WHAM, like the sound you'd hear slamming an empty pot down on a tub full off water. After the pilot had turned the aircraft around and came back opposite the cut in the beach where there was PSP (Perforated Steel Plating), he dropped a sea anchor. Mr. Warmth, "Geiger man" and the pilot told us we were going to wear special gear onto the island consisting of full fatigue outfits emblazoned with the yellow, tri-flagged radiation symbol, original issue of dosimeters, and special boots. We were to inflate a rubber raft, paddle to shore, do our job, and get our rear-ends back to the aircraft. Then we would be shedding our work clothes on a little portable platform attached to the side of the aircraft, one at a time, followed by a dunking in the ocean. We'd enter the aircraft, towel off, and get back in the clothing we had worn on the plane coming out. There was some sort of a locker inside of the plane where our fatigue outfits/boots were to be stored.
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About this time I'm starting to get scared, and rebellion is starting to come over me. The pilot noticed this and stated, "What you guys are about to do may help provide answers as to what happened before and may avert similar tragedies. Mr. Warmth piped in, "Good luck you guys, and keep those dosimeters dry!" | 
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Now we seemed to have some purpose and our sense of duty came to the fore, so we shoved off but not before the pilot shouted to us, "Don't sight see, go straight to the site, do your job, and I've been told to explain to you not to exceed 65,000 feet, whatever that means! Shut the equipment down after transmitting your data, then get the hell back here!"
As we started paddling to shore we were not a very happy crew. We were not old hands at trying to paddle a rubber life raft, so we were swinging about, zig-zagging our way to the beach, getting pissed off at the waves, and our inefficiency to keep the raft straight when suddenly there was the beach. Of course we came in sideways! The raft plopped down on the beach and a following wave drenched us! We pulled the raft ashore and turned it upside down to dry out. Cox hollered at us, 'Keep those dosimeter's dry!" Talk about breaking the ice, we all started laughing. Our target was an old weapons carrier we had spotted from the air, since we didn't want to put our feet down on the island sand any more than we had to. We walked up the PSP to the top and stopped and barely breathed, listening intently. There was music playing in a Quonset hut off to our right. I was so angry they must have heard my teeth grinding all the way back to the plane! I said, "Those bastards abandoned some poor guy and left him here to die!!" we kept going, more cautious now because we didn't know what we would see. Then we saw the power unit running, the abandoned barracks, and realized that switches had been left on and what we had heard was an Armed Forces Radio Network transmitting station. You'd think that would calm us down a bit, but it didn't! It was so spooky, we just wanted to get the job done and get the hell out of that place! Did you ever have a friend invite you out to his backyard to see his garden, and he owned four big dogs? That's the way we were walking, very, very carefully. Every darkened area in the sand was suspicious. As we went by the barracks, you could see the bunks were made, clothes hanging in order, and shoes highly polished and lined up under the bunks in military order.
We had heard from the grapevine that the men on Rongerik told the Navy people on Kwajalein that the fallout was like being in a light snow shower, however the "snow was black!" We got in the weapons carrier and looked it over pretty good for any of that "black snow" and didn't see much of anything. Those occasional tropic rains must've washed it clean. There was only one problem with the weapons carrier, it was stuck in low gear but we didn't care, it beat walking. So we started out at a bustling 10 miles per hour, knowing that on either end of our travels we'd have to do a turn around, facing the way we'd come because we couldn't back up. We started toward the back side (south) of the island where we would turn left to go down to the eastern end of the island where the RAWIN site was located. As we went past the barracks an incredible stench assailed our nostrils! On our right were some walk-in reefers (refrigerators) whose doors had been thrown open by the men before they were rescued from the island. They opened the doors because they feared curious locals might enter the island and take contaminated food back to their families. (No one better say to those guys who'd survived, that they didn't care about civilians.) The combined smells of rotting potatoes, onions and meat would gag a maggot! And flies, swarms and swarms of flies! These things crawled all over us while we tried to work. Every time you put your arm down on your work area you squashed a bunch of then.
The team of guys that were based on Rongerik came from Tinker A.F.B., Midwest City, OK. As Rawinsonde personnel go, teams from this base were made up from, the cream of the crop.
We found this out on a quick warm-up and test of the equipment. This was the finest operating RAWIN equipment I had ever seen! It was easy to see how the Tinker Field troops had earned such a lofty reputation
Tinker Field RAWIN crews were the brave guys who each year set up mobile sites in "Tornado Alley,'' the corridor from Texas to Kansas where the most tornados appear, taking runs daily in the face of imminent danger.
We cut the first run we'd taken on Rongerik off at 70,000 feet, coded the information, merged our transmission into the teletype traffic and barreled back to the top of the PSP at the G-Force speed of l0 m.p.h. We launched our raft. Zig-zagged back to the plane and did our change routine. We had all vowed before, that if we ever had to come back to this place, we were going to bring some of those olive drab colored cans of DDT with us. Looking out of the window of the plane at the island, I couldn't help but think about what a tragedy it must've been to those guys who had set up such a neat base of operations and had to abandon it in a rush to save their lives. Everyone was afraid of over exposure to radiation and what it would do to you, especially since there was no manual available to us entitled "How To Spot an overdose of Radiation!" We had been assured (What form of measurement was used was mystery) that we would not be ashore long enough to absorb an unhealthy amount of radiation. Easy for them to say, wasn't it? We had already discussed what we were going to do if we had a premature balloon burst, we were going to code up the data we had, send it out, and come back to Wetok! There would be no relaunch!
Chapters
|| The Assignment || Eniwetok ||
The B-29 Drone Modification ||
|| The Hydrogen Bomb Test] ||
|| Rongerik part 1 || Rongerik part 2 ||
Rongerik part 3 ||
|| Mystery and Reflections ||
