nuclear explosions from 1945 - 1998

[panthersix]

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[RangerX]

It's amazing that we're still here. It's also amazing that we felt we had to test so many.

They weren't tests. They were messages.

[Flesh Thorn]

Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie is a good documentary to watch.

[panthersix]

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My father was US Army permanent party at Camp Desert Rock, NV for the Operation Teapot Shots. He was a tow truck driver. After the shots, he'd drive into ground zero and haul out tanks and other vehicles for the "scientists" to examine in a safe area.

Because he was permanent party he was given a doseage badge. He was reassigned after his badge indicated he'd had a maximum dose. He died of lung cancer at age 63.

He told me about how the Army would dig trenches and have troops get in the trenches with the explicit instructions "do not lay down on the bottom of the trench, just squat down" unlike current NBC training. They did that because if the walls of the trench collapsed, an individual could power squat their way out of the dirt and extricate yourself. Of course, the Marines often laid down and had to be dug out.

[rgrokelley]

Back in the 1987 Reagan ordered the Pershing II missiles to be deployed to West Germany. This really pissed off the Soviets. There were a lot of protesters at all the Pershing sites and this was the time period of the constant "no nuke" marches in the cities.

I was with F/51 LRSU at the time, and the commander of one of the Pershing batteries, a Colonel, wanted to check their security. He came to our company and asked us to try to find his missiles. We had zero information about them at all, where they would be, what routes they were on, etc. These were live missiles and they most likely would have civilian protesters near them. Our search area was all of Germany. We had four days to find them. We weren't allowed to take any weapons, because we may come across armed guards and we didn't want to have a shoot out. If we were caught we were to surrender peacefully.

We had a CUCV truck (sort of a Chevy Blazer looking thing) and off we went. We had no idea where to go, but we knew what type of vehicle transported the missiles and we knew their post the vehicles came out of. We stalked the post, waiting for anything leaving that looked like it might be Persian missile related. I documented this mission with a lot of photographs, so that we could show the colonel our evidence.


Stalking a nuke site near Krautheim

We finally found a vehicle and then followed it. It wasn't a missile truck, but it was one like it. We followed that dang large mover for about an hour, until we were way in the northern part of Germany. We figured that it was no luck, so we returned. On the return trip on the autobahn we saw a convoy, with the unit ID of the Pershing unit. We followed them. We didn't even try to hide, we just joined the convoy in our military vehicle. They eventually got off the autobahn and moved into the countryside. We followed, but we left the convoy so we wouldn't be discovered. That night we got close to the site, but we couldn't get into it. Too many guards and they were all being pretty observant.

Since we knew where the site was, and they wouldn't be able to move out without us noticing it, we didn't put out any guard on our CUCV hide site. We weren't being hunted, they were. The next morning we got up, and we noticed they had left. Well, shit! We lost them. I had the Team go over the area they had spent the night and we found bags of trash everywhere. We then went through the bags of trash and found a handful of maps, and information, telling us where the command headquarters were. I decided to see how close I could get into their headquarters.

Prior to doing this mission I had bought some Pershing patches and some lieutenant rank. We drove to where the headquarters was, and I quickly sewed on the patches of their unit. I pinned on the rank, and voila! I was now 1LT O'Kelley! I drove up to the gate, bluffed my way through the guards by telling them I was LT O'Kelley, and I needed to talk to the commander. They let me in and we parked the CUCV. I told the Team, only five of us, to stay there. Some of them were wearing some oddball uniforms, such as tiger stripes.

I got into the headquarters building and started looking at this huge map on the wall, of most of Germany, and there were locations of all the nuke sites there. I whipped out my notebook and started writing down coordinates. While I was doing that another officer came up and started shooting the breeze. I did small talk, and he asked where I had got my commission. I didn't want to go for something well known, so I told him Norwich University, ROTC. I must have been able to pull it off, because I got out of there without anyone detecting anything.

My Team wasn't almost caught though. The guards noticed the weird uniforms and started asking them questions. They mainly wanted to know if they were Special Forces. Evidently 10th Group had been handed this mission too, so they were looking for SF types. My guys told them they weren't SF, so the guards asked them to prove it. They wanted to see their military driver's license. The driver's license lists the unit you are assigned to. Our license was issued by the 511th Military Intelligence Battalion, so there was no indication of us being LRRPs or SF on there. It worked and the guards figured we were legit. We got out of there with a whole bunch of coordinates to recon.


"Lieutenant" O'Kelley, with hastily sewn on Pershing patch, showing nuke location

We found a prime site, but we had a slight problem. There were about a dozen protesters around the entrance (we should have their intelligence network!). So our job was to sneak past the protesters, through the armed guards, and then get as close as we could to a nuke vehicle. No problem.

The first part was easy. All the attention was focused on the protesters, so we were able to low crawl into the other side. As we got closer there was a ring of guards there, some were stationary, some were moving. We waited. After about an hour of watching them, one of the guards came near us, sat down with his back to a tree, and then smoked a cigarette. As he was sitting there, he began to doze off. I figured here was our opening.

I told the rest of the Team to stay there, pull security, and I would go in alone. I figured five guys sneaking by Rip Van Winkle might wake him, but one of us could make it in. It took me awhile, but I was able to slowly get past the sleeping guard. I continued crawling until I could see a nuke missile, about 50 meters away.


50 meters from the Pershing missile. Picture taken by propping the camera on a log beside me.

The vehicle had all sorts of activity around it. Soldiers walking around, eating lunch, doing maintenance. I crawled up to a vehicle near the nuke vehicle, and then crawled underneath it, using it as cover from the soldiers walking around it. When I got to the nuke vehicle I crawled under it, and then crawled to the front part where the cab of the truck was. I waited there for a few minutes, until no one was looking, then I slipped out from underneath the truck and hopped into the cab. I was hoping no one would be in there, and no one was. I then had to figure out, what could I take that would prove that I was there. I took a photograph of the ID plate in the truck, but then I found the driver's boots, and jacket on the floor. His jacket had his wallet. The wallet had his ID. I took it too. I then slipped out of the door and crawled back the way I came.

This whole stalk took about a half an hour. When I got to the sleeping guard, he was still sleeping. I tried to get by him, but as I did, he woke up. We were about 20 meters from each other and he looked right at me. When he began to go for his M16, my Team rushed out and dog piled on him. One grabbed the M16 and took it apart, throwing the pieces in two different directions. It didn't have live rounds, but they thought it might have. As we sat on the guy, I told the Team to run like hell. We all took off. The guard began screaming and hollering, but we were way past the perimeter by then. We hopped in the CUCV and took off.

We tried to find more nuke sites, but had no luck. At the end of the operation the Colonel came to us so we could get a briefing. He was sure of himself, and knew that no one had been able to crack his perimeter. When he came in he commented, "no luck this week" and I then began to show him all the evidence. The photographs, the maps from the garbage, the boots and the wallet. I told him that I had been inside the cab of his missile truck, and showed him the photo of the ID plate. I also briefed him about his lack of security at his headquarters and at the nuke site, with the guard who was sleeping (that we had a photo of also). At first he was speechless, then he got pissed. He told me that he was going to make sure that I would recieve punishment for stealing that soldier's wallet, and that what we did was a huge breach of security. I told him that he said to see how close we could get. He told me yes, but not inside the vehicle. Didn't I know that it was a live nuke! In the end my company commander told him that he didn't have a leg to stand on, and quit complaining. We proved that the security was lax. He didn't like it, swore there would be punishment, but nothing ever came of it.