The Trinity Shot…Another
interesting event in the life of FS folks
Submitted by Charles Mansfield
One of my early
memories was of a summer morning at Bear Valley Ranger Station on the Malhuer
NF. Dad, H. Robert Mansfield, was the District Ranger at the time.
Dad got me and my oldest sister, Meredith, out of bed while it was still
dark. We never got to get up at that hour and we were playing in the
swings and doing a lot of yelling.. Dad and his District
Assistant were at the weather station and were somewhat irked by all of the
commotion. Over the years I asked him what that was all about and he
would never answer. Then when he an Mom were visiting us just after I joined Los Alamos
Scientific Laboratories I asked him again. He was silent for a moment and
then he said that since he was in
He said:
He and his
assistant were cleared to top secret and had all of the decoding books and
other stuff that went along with that clearance. One day he received a
coded message. He and his assistant got out their code books and finally
were able to decode the message. It said " on (such and such a day)
at (such and such a time) look for unusual atmospheric phenomena. It was
the day of Trinity shot (the first atomic bomb.) Someone was very
perspective in that they knew that the Ranger and his assistant were cleared,
had weather recording equipment, and were trained weather observers. In
addition these observers were spread out over the entire western US.
Dad guessed that
something big was happening and got us up to witness the event. We didn't
see anything at
Shortly before I
retired from the lab I went into the classified library to see if I could find
out who had issued the order and any other details about the event. There
is no reference in the library. That the event was declared by the DOE to
be unclassified since fact that the Trinity shot took place is not classified.
The best
information is that someone in the Army issued the order independently of the
Lab.
Chuck Mansfield