Posted: 11/6/2009 8:14:08 PM EDT
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Watching Trinity and Beyond again. It's been a while since I've seen it and I'd forgotten the magnitude of the damage from Shot Baker. Absolutely incredible.
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I've got that footage on a DVD `sam. Neat stuff! What I find the most incredible about shot Baker is the view of the US battleship AKANSAS completely lifted up out of the water and turned on end. Not all view angles of the shot show it, but when you come across one that does –––– it's one of those wide-eyed OMG! moments. 
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My father saw the Able and Baker tests live and in person.  lol a lil redundant tonight? Not necessarily . . . I watched the Ares I-X shot live but it wasn't in person. 
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Tag for nuclear goodness. 
A former roomie stole my copy of Trinity And Beyond.  With that in mind, here's what prompted me to start the thread: Baker Shot 
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Quoted: Quoted: My father saw the Able and Baker tests live and in person. lol a lil redundant tonight? I was previously employed by the Department of Redundancy Department.  My dad enlisted in the Navy in 1945 at 17 years old. His first ship was the USS Turner, DDR-834, which was there for Operation Crossroads. What's funny about the whole thing is that he never said anything at all about having been there for the nuclear tests. A few years ago we bought mom and dad a computer for Christmas. Probably a year or so later, one afternoon when I'm over at the house, he calls me in and starts showing me a webpage about Crossroads and I said that I thought it was pretty cool. Then he says, "I was there y'know". My jaw hit the friggin floor. I looked at him and said "Are you serious? You actually saw them light off a nuke?!" He grinned at me and says "Yeah, we saw it alright". My mom was standing there too, and he'd never said anything to her about it either after almost 50 years of marriage. Of course, not missing a beat, mom looks at me and says, "well now I know what's wrong with him". He said that they made the crew come up on deck, issued them goggles and such for the detonation. They were told to not look at the blast (I can't remember exactly how far away they were from the it, I think 20-30 miles). He said that somewhere along the way a rumor got started that the blast could produce a 100' tidal wave, and that they were all pretty well scared shitless. In dad's words, "I'd like to know who the son of a bitch was that started that one". Well, they weren't sunk by a 100' tidal wave, after the detonation and after the mushroom cloud disappated, the Turner sailed into the blast area to take various readings and such. He hasn't suffered any ill health affects from the experience, so I reckon he's a lucky man and we're lucky to have him. If you guys have any questions I'll be seeing him on Veterans Day to go get free chow at Applebee's. I don't think he'd have any issues answering them, so ask away.  After he was discharged from the Navy in 1949, he enlisted in the Army and went to Basic Training at Ft. Knox (36 years later, I would too) and then served in Italy and Austria. |
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I have it and watch it annually. One of the best documentaries of all time. When I wasn't a starving student and had money for a membership, I had an animated clip of Chinese Army guys in NBC gear firing an AK and an RPK as my avatar.  Yeah, I remember that! I THOUGHT that's where your old avatar came from!
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