Word: lagoons
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...Nagasaki-type bombs (which forward-looking scientists and the Air Forces now call primitive "Model Ts") would be exploded at Bikini: one in the air, the other on the surface of the lagoon. So far, the plans concerned chiefly the first bomb, scheduled to be dropped about May 15. No one knew what changes of plans would seem prudent before the second bomb exploded. In any case, promised Vice Admiral W. H. P. Blandy, boss of Operation Crossroads, the test would not be rigged to favor the Army, the Navy or the bomb...
...finish their work, Seabees will build six 75-ft. steel towers on the little islands around Bikini to support 'batteries of cameras, radio-controlled and sheathed in lead against radiation. A legion of instruments will be exposed on the sand, built into concrete bunkers, or sunk in the lagoon. They will measure radiation, heat, shock and blast. Twenty sunken instruments will measure the waves, which might rise to a height of several hundred feet...
Rats on the Bridge. On that day, the ships in Bikini Lagoon will be manned by "guinea pig" crews: 200 goats, 200 pigs, 4,000 white rats. They will wait their fate in the same positions which a human crew would occupy in battle stations: rats in the turrets, on deck, in engine rooms, gun-tubs and bridges. The goats will be tethered among them. Some of the pigs, whose skin approximates human skin, will be dressed in standard Navy anti-flash suits and smeared with anti-flash lotion. A few will have new and secret protection. There will...
...Zero hour, when the bomb is dropped, a blast like a hundred hurricanes will whip the still lagoon. A pressure wave will strike across the Pacific, perhaps to be felt by sensitive instruments in San Francisco and Washington. An earth wave will shoot through the sea floor toward distant seismographs. What will happen to the ships in Bikini Lagoon, no one knows...
...Zero plus 30 minutes, if Admiral Blandy gives the order, two Mariner flying boats, equipped with Geiger counters to measure radioactivity, will roar across the lagoon, 40 feet above the water. If they report and if their report is favorable, a pair of helicopters will flutter down to take samples of the atom-stirred water. Then six small gunboats, also with Geiger counters, will approach the dread lagoon, sampling the water and reporting by radio. Next, a swarm of 20 launches, manned by raincoated scientists, will scoot like water bugs among the stricken ships. Finally, if all pioneers report that...