Interview with Raymond Chester Harbert, July 14, 2005

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Raymond Harbert July 14, 2005 Las Vegas, Nevada Interview Conducted By Mary Palevsky © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Raymond Harbert July 14, 2005 Conducted by Mary Palevsky Table of Contents Introduction: Wife and family, life in Mercury, NV ( NTS), work on Operation Plumbbob ( NTS) and in the Pacific. 1 Talks about radiation effects, secrecy of work, and “ closed society” of patriotic World War II and Cold War veterans. 4 Family background and attitudes of “ the greatest generation”. 5 Concern about genetic effects of radiation. 6 Returns to life at Mercury, NV, describes construction work on Operation Plumbbob, Rainier tunnel, safety shots, fallacies of the government procurement system. 7 Details preparation for and observation of an atmospheric test. 13 U. S. Navy tests with blimps at the NTS. 17 Popularity of atomic tests at NTS with the public. 19 Work with OCRWM ( Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program) and CAB ( radioactive waste management). 20 Observation of John ( warhead on missile) and Rainier ( first tunnel shot). 21 Describes reentry at ground zero after a test. 22 Moves to Los Angeles, CA as chief project engineer for Holmes and Narver, works on Operation Hardtack. 25 Return to Rongelap ( Marshall Islands) after Bravo. 26 Talks about Vela Uniform testing during Priscilla at NTS. 27 Becomes chief project engineer and program manager for Plowshare. 29 Protesters at the NTS. 30 Conclusion: surveying, road construction and setting up preliminary test site for nuclear rocket development at Jackass Flats ( originally Area 400, later Area 25, NTS). 31 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Raymond Harbert July 14, 2005 in Las Vegas, NV Conducted by Mary Palevsky [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 1. Mary Palevsky: Let’s go ahead and pick up there. Would you like to start with talking about life at Mercury? Raymond Harbert: Yes. I was assigned there in September of 1956. Holmes and Narver had taken over the contract from Black and Veatch. I left my family behind and lived at Mercury for a period of a year during the [ Operation] Plumbbob tests. The whole activity began with setting up an office there. Mercury was interesting because it was a self- sustained city. We had theaters, we had a small hospital, medical supplies, we had mechanical sheds there for automotive repair, almost everything you could think about. There were theaters, there was a steakhouse, there was a bar. And you didn’t really have any wants. Most of the people, if they could, would take off and go down to Las Vegas on the weekends: get your paycheck and go down there. And some of them would go down there and blow the whole week’s paycheck and they’d have to hitchhike back to Mercury. That was the way of life out there. We got, I believe it was, $ 7.00 a day per diem for living out there, and as I told you, I’d left my family in Burbank, California. What did your family consist of at that point? Your wife. You had children. How many children and how old were they? At that time, they ranged in age from fourteen to a baby. OK. How many? I had a total of seven. You had seven kids; I didn’t realize that. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 There’s only five alive today. My daughter was murdered in San Diego and one of my sons, on the anniversary of her death, committed suicide. You told me that last time, yes. I’m sorry. I would try to get home about once a month for a weekend and that was about it. I made sure my paycheck went home so she could pay the mortgage and all of the things that went along with that. But life at Mercury; we lived in a barracks. I had a room; there were two cots in it and I had it by myself until the test series started. Mercury was pretty much just construction people up until just prior to the series beginning, when the scientists and technicians came in on test support. While we were doing this, [ Operation] Redwing was being conducted in the Pacific, so all the scientists were out there. But we were getting everything prepared for the next series. That was one of the reasons they brought Holmes and Narver in, so that the learning curve would be minimal between the Pacific and Nevada; that was the transition there. Holmes and Narver got the original contract at Enewetak and Bikini as a result of their postwar activity on Okinawa. Really. Yes. We had built bases there on Okinawa and we were considered probably at that time the biggest contractor in the Pacific, so AEC [ Atomic Energy Commission] hired us on that premise. We also had an extensive background in the design and construction of towers and that’s one of the engineering expertises we brought to Nevada Test Site [ NTS]. My office was in a separate building. We had to staff it; we brought some experienced people from the Pacific as part of our tests. Our construction inspector had worked in the Pacific, [ 00: 05: 00] because we were responsible to supervise, as engineers, the construction on the test site and make sure it was done according to plans and specs; his name was Johnny Clark. We UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 had Accounting and their accountant came from the Pacific. We had Procurement people and they had government experience in procurement. Oh, and we also had Surveying; I had a chief surveyor and about four survey crews that were working there. My office was a room probably about eight- by- eight [ feet] with a steel desk and chair and one side chair and a telephone, and that was about it. We worked very closely with REECo [ Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company] on scheduling and all of this activity. Let me ask you one question here. Did Holmes and Narver at this point have the contract for the Plumbbob series, or was it for a longer—? It was for longer. The idea was that because the tests were occurring in the Pacific, the next year they were occurring in Nevada, then back to the Pacific, then back to Nevada, that we would provide the engineering continuity and the know- how based on our experience; our analysis of structural failures, the effects of wind blast, and all the other things, precursory waves, what happens to structures. So that engineering expertise was part of what the Atomic Energy Commission bought. OK. Thank you. In the Pacific, we did not only the engineering, but we did the construction; there were no subcontractors out there. We did the construction; we did the camp management, camp support. We had our own fleet out there of LCMs for transportation, both at Enewetak and Bikini. But here in Nevada, we were primarily engineering and construction managers where we subcontracted or supervised and inspected work done by REECo. OK. Thank you. OK. I hope that explains the relationship. It does indeed.. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 One of the first things when I got there after the office, I was assigned a car and that car was a Buick, but it was a car that had gone through nuclear tests. It had been part of one of the early programs out there. The engine was still running and everything. It was out there to see how it withstood blasts and it was in good shape. Ultimately, we got a rental fleet and we used those, but I drove that for about two to three months before the cars came in. Were you worried about contamination in that car? No. One of the things that has always bothered me, in retrospect, is [ that] radiation was played down. They knew radiation had effects; as an example, when I had to leave the Pacific, the limits were 3.9 Roentgens per thirteen- week period. Now it’s down— I don’t know the levels— much lower. The scientists were saying, well, because we’re exposed to sun radiation all the time, atmospheric radiation, your system would naturally kick it off and there’d be no mutation. But there were some of us that were concerned about children at a later date and those sorts of things and probably with some just cause. But it was played down. Secrecy was a major issue. We had to get what are called Q- clearances before we could work on any project. We were not allowed to discuss anything with our family other than where [ 00: 10: 00] we were and broad general terms of what we were doing. It was a closed society. One thing that I think people have to look at is [ that] those of us who participated early on in the test programs, both at Nevada and the Pacific, were veterans of World War II. We were extremely patriotic; we had come home, the Cold War was on, and we looked at ourselves as warriors of the Cold War and we were doing something extremely important to protect our country and working for the president. That was a big part of our motivation. And I’ll always carry that feeling with me and did for the rest of my career. But I think it’s something that was engendered in the sixteen million veterans that went out there. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 We’re getting fewer and far between nowadays, because we’re getting like the whiskey ad, [ in] old age we may mellow a little bit, but we also get a little more decrepit. So you’re saying that sense was engendered in that whole generation. Yes, in that generation. We’d come out of the Depression where things were bad: parents couldn’t even afford to resole the shoes on kids, you put cardboard in your shoes to keep from wearing your soles out. That was the nature of it. You ate everything on your plate. Everything that was cooked was made for minimum cost, maximum size, and might not have been the best nutritional meals, but it kept us going and kept us mentally alert. But that was the environment. And as I told you earlier, I got out of high school, I went directly into the military in February of 1941, before World War II, because we knew the rising threat. But I also wanted to get my military service over; I volunteered for the draft, which was a one- year period at that time, hoping that I could get it over with and get on with my life. Four years, seven months, thirteen days, and seven hours later, I finally got out and then reassumed my career. So that was that sort of background; that was the mental attitude. We were warriors of the Cold War; it was just a continuation of where we left off. And it gave you a good feeling. Well, one other little thing before you go on, which was— and thank you for that, because that helps— I’m very interested in that generation, in your generation, of coming through World War II into the Cold War. I think it’s a very important part of the story. Well the precursor to that was the Depression where everybody had to help everybody. My father was a veteran of World War I and he was involved in the American Legion and there were a lot of injured veterans at Sawtelle [ Veterans Hospital, Los Angeles]. We used to, at Thanksgiving and Christmas, put together food packages for the families of those veterans that were in the hospital because they had no other source. There wasn’t enough food to go around. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 My dad’s post sold fireworks [ for] the fourth of July, sold Christmas trees at Christmas in order to earn money so that they could do this type of work in support of the veterans out of World War I. So that whole feeling was engendered in me, for one, but most of us. In the whole generation. Yes, it was generational. Tom Brokaw called us “ the greatest generation.” The situations made us the greatest generation. It wasn’t that we had different genes than anyone else, it was the life story that made us what we were. There were those of us that came back that couldn’t hack it. [ 00: 15: 00] I know my best buddy in high school, we were at UCLA [ University of California, Los Angeles] during a homecoming, and they’d built a bonfire there and they put some dynamite in the base of it to start it. When that dynamite went off, he went berserk because it brought back the memories. He was in an A- 20 aircraft and they had been bombed several times by the Germans in North Africa, and he just couldn’t hack it. But that was what each of us brought home, our memories of it. Background. Yes, it’s important background. The other thing that you had said when we started this question of the understanding of the era and the car, my question about the radiation, you made a remark about genetic concerns, concerns about children with genetic causes. Do you mind my asking, did you see any of that in your family, are you talking about? No. No, I did not. But colleagues you were concerned about? Yes, some of the colleagues did. The early RADSAFE [ Radiological Safety] out in the Pacific when I was there, and even at Nevada Test Site, was not that disciplined. We had film badges, but we went into areas that were heavily contaminated without good protective clothing, without respiratory masks. And of course it’s not only just the gamma rays; it’s the alpha rays. Alpha UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 contamination was heavy up at Nevada Test Site, that was always a concern. There was an area called 400 up there that was badly contaminated by alpha contamination. Well, back to life at Mercury. Yes. Let’s go back. OK. We had the Steakhouse and all the amenities anyone could ask for, and the price was right. And we just lived there. Early on, there were primarily construction people. A lot of the construction people drove out. Not many of them drove in from Nevada; not many of them from Las Vegas. Not many of them, really construction people, lived on the test site. It was primarily people that were supervising it and deeply involved in it. All of my surveyors lived in Henderson or Las Vegas and so they had to drive out every morning. The early activities at the test site in 1956 was to make asbuilt drawings, so the engineers— and these were going into a structure that had undergone the previous tests— bringing their drawings up to date so that those structures could be modified for the next test series. And that we did. Those drawings were sent back to Los Angeles and they in turn used those in preparing new drawings for modifications or upgrading of facilities, plus all the new facilities. For the Plumbbob series, there were towers, there were balloon locations. The balloons were tethered balloons moored about 1,500 feet above the ground surface from three different directions and a vertical cable. The winches were located at 120 degrees apart so we could position them in a precise location and keep them there. The cable that went up from ground zero was there to maintain the height. The decision to use balloons, what was that about and what did you think of that? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 When you have a shot, you have a heated column and that column becomes a draft and a vacuum and it sucks up all of the debris at the base of the tower. Now, they wanted to [ 00: 20: 00] achieve two things. The towers on this test series were 500 feet high and one at 700 feet. That would limit the amount of yield, so they were looking at upping the yield. In upping the yield they came up with the concept of balloon tethering where you had essentially no material directly below the device. OK. So we had the balloons. We [ also] had tunnels. Rainier Tunnel was the first one of that nature. We also had vertical drill holes. And I made a list here; there were a total of twenty- nine tests. There were thirteen balloon shots, nine towers, one rocket, two tunnels, and two safety shots which made up that grouping. What’s a safety shot? They’re one point. What they did is an atomic bomb at that time had a series of igniters around them, like spark plugs. They were referred to as “ points.” And part of the safety test was to ignite one of them and see whether that would trigger the chain reaction. Both [ of these] safety tests did not. OK. So that was part of the safety. They also had another safety test, which was not recorded here, which was a vertical drop of a nuclear device and seeing whether the impact would set off the device. And that did not happen. OK. So you don’t want either of those things to happen. No. You want it not to set off the chain reaction if just one point is ignited. That’s right. And you want it not to set off the chain reaction if it drops. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 Right. There was also one other experiment out there, and it was called Gravel Gertie; it was on the edge of Frenchman Flat, closer to Mercury. It was designed to see if they could house an explosion, without letting it basically leak, and the shock wave. What it was, was a concrete cylinder with cables strung across the top and a mesh put across that and then gravel put on top of that so that when the explosion occurred, the energy was absorbed by throwing off the crushed rock. And that was that type of experiment. The rocket shot was from, I think it was a P- 51, but I’m not sure. It flew out of Nellis [ Air Force Base] and fired over the test site. The towers, as I said, ranged in size from 500 to 700 feet. One of the interesting things about the balloon shots, or about the construction— we’re talking about the construction period— one of the things the government insisted on in the federal procurement regulations was that you take the low bidder. And of course today I would say I would hate to make a trip to the moon on a ship built by the low bidder. But the low bidder for the transformers was Central Transformer Company out of Little Rock, Arkansas, I believe. And so we had to buy them. We had asked for GE [ General Electric] or Westinghouse, but at that time you couldn’t specify a name, you had to specify design parameters. So we got this company and we got them in there and we set them up and started running tests. And as you know today it’s, what, 120 [ degrees] here maybe today or 115. Out there those transformers, [ 00: 25: 00] when turned on, could not stand the heat. They would vibrate because of the inadequate way they were made and they would blow up. So we had to ultimately go back and procure on a name basis GE transformers and replace every transformer in there. But it was again the low bidder. In the missile business, I saw the same thing. So it’s one of the fallacies of our procurement system: you always don’t get what you think you’ve asked for. All they had to do was give you a UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 certificate to say it’s comparable, and you couldn’t question it, you couldn’t make them prove that it was; their certificate was OK. So in fact the GE ones had no problem? No, we had no problems with them because they were properly made, and we used them throughout. You can see the number of tests that we made. We were able to reuse those sites. The drill holes were vertical holes, forty- two- inches in diameter, for LASL [ Los Alamos Scientific, later National, Laboratory] and I believe it was in Area 4. What we did to get these vertical holes drilled, you drilled with a small diameter and then you reamed it and reamed it and reamed, then we put a casing down. Well, on the first hole [ when] we put the casing down, it was sealed off at the bottom, and we tried to push it down through the drilling mud that was still contained in the hole and the bottom ruptured, broke through the steel casing. I offered to go down and take pictures of it. I said, Put me in a parachute harness with an aqua pack for oxygen and I’ll go down and take some pictures so we can at least make some analysis. Well, they wouldn’t buy that. They didn’t want to risk this engineer’s life, but at least I tried, I made the offer. And we finally got it fixed; it’s a simple fix. What you do is fill the casing full of water so it equals the pressure on the outside, then once you get it in place and you begin to set, the mud begins to solidify, then you pump the water out and you can put your device down in there. OK. So technically, let me understand this a little better. What happened at the bottom? What broke? At the bottom, it’s sealed off, and it was sealed off in like a cone or an orange peel, so that it came together on the bottom. And it’s sealed with what? Welded. It was welded shut. But the pressure became so great that it ruptured those welds. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 OK. I understand now. That’s interesting. And see, when I talked earlier about the learning curve, this is the sort of thing you learn. It’s extremely important that not only it be passed on from generation to generation but test to test, so you’re not repeating the same error. And that’s when in the previous [ interview] I told you I was disappointed in Holmes and Narver because they didn’t get debriefings from the people in the Pacific to improve the operation. But that’s my only complaint against Holmes and Narver. We did a lot of surveying out there and we had a lot of landmarks, like Rainier Mesa. Rainier Mesa was named for the event that was going to occur in the Rainier Mesa which was a tunnel 1,700 feet long, shaped like a hook with a cab on the end of it. But out there, there were two hills in Area 12. And those two hills were rounded off; they looked like a woman’s bosom and they picked up the name Dagmar. Television was in its infancy at that time and [ 00: 30: 00] Milton Berle had a big- breasted woman on there, no talent, whose name was Dagmar. So everybody started referring to that landmark as Dagmar. Just a bit of trivia. I assume that’s what you want. Yes. Details make a good story. OK. I told you the total number of tests in Plumbbob. We had some interesting construction problems as we went on. Holmes and Narver had built a lot of towers, so [ they] were experienced. The tallest tower was the Smoky tower and that was out in Area 12, out near— I think it’s Area 8, actually, is what it’s referred to. It’s at the north end of the test site and it was 700 feet high. The base legs were eight- inch- solid rounds and it built up from there and went into a block column as it got higher. It had guy wires attached to it. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 I made a trip out there one day when they were capping off at the top, [ at] the 700- foot level. What they had done there was take a beam and put it across the top. I think the dimensions of the tower were twenty feet by twenty feet; they were either twenty by twenty or twenty- five by twenty- five, but it was basically a square. And across the top of that, they put a steel I- beam. They hooked a shiv, which is a pulley, onto that and they took and ran a rope up through there and it went down to a cage at the base of the tower. The way you got up, because there’s no elevators there, you could go up a ladder that was put on the side of it, but a 700- foot tower is a long way up. That’s like crawling up a seventy- foot building. You had to get up to the top, so what they did, and you talk about innovation, this rope came from the top of this cage. It was a wooden cage, probably about three feet by six feet, and it had a brace on each end of it and a single hook over the top of it. The rope went from that hook up over through the shiv and out to the back of a truck. The truck was on the hill out about 1,000 feet or so, maybe 2,000 feet, I don’t know how far. So there was a man at the base of the tower, you would get into the cab and the man at the base of the tower would wave his hands and the truck would start up the hill, and as the truck started up, you would go up the side of this tower. But as you went up, you had to kick off the side because there were no guide rails and this thing would swing, sway in the wind and everything. So you’re going up [ and] when you got to the top, the step across was about eighteen inches. And believe me, that was the longest step I ever took in my life. It was a huge step because that’s a long ways down. But it was interesting. A beautiful view from up there; [ you could] see all of the test site. Let me ask you a question: I’ve been curious about, not just with yours, you refer to the “ cab” which contains the device? Usually, yes. Can you shut it off for a minute? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 Sure, and it’s a good time to shut it off anyway. OK. Great. [ 00: 34: 12] End Track 2, Disc 1. [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 2. What I wanted to understand was the derivation of the word “ cab,” why it’s called “ cab.” I can’t answer why it was called a cab. I can tell you the connotation that it was used [ in]. The cab is where the nuclear device is housed, and whether it’s on the bottom of a balloon or it’s on the end of the island, it was where— maybe “ ab” came from “ atomic bomb.” It could be. I don’t know. But we referred to them continuously as a “ cab,” whether it’s on top of a tower, under a balloon, or whatever. Great. That helps. Or mounted on the ground. Great. OK. OK. I thought one of the things that you ought to record is, what is it like in preparation for a shot? What occurs at Nevada Test Site? I’ll take you through it step by step and I’ll discuss at least one pertivation to it, or two pertivations to it. We start in the afternoon at four o’clock. It was fixed. The key people involved in the test would assemble in a meeting room at Mercury. The meeting was chaired by the AEC representative. It was either Jim Reeves or Max Smith or one of the others. It was co- chairmaned by the test conductor. Gerry Johnson was the one that did it the most. Chuck [ Charles] Violet was there one time, or maybe more than one time, but he was there for Rainier. We would meet there and a series of briefings would begin. The first briefing would be by people concerning weather, and these were experts from Washington. We got reports from UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 weather stations all over California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, and from that they tried to predict what the weather would be like at zero time when the device went off. The next discussion would be on micro- barograph. And what this was, [ was] one of the things they were concerned about was shock waves bouncing off the atmosphere and doing damage either in Las Vegas or Pahrump or even as far away as Los Angeles, where windows had got shattered. In preparation for that, they had stations around which measured pressure waves and they would shoot off some high explosives prior to the meeting and get their readings and information. The third was a presentation by device people on what they considered the amount of radioactivity that would be released [ would be]. There was a fourth briefing which then coalesced all of that data and they came up with a prediction of the fallout pattern based on the winds, wind direction, the amount of material that would be caught in the cloud and released by the cloud and the time it would stay in the cloud. Once that was over, if it appeared that we were not going to hurt the people in St. George or Salt Lake City [ Utah] or Pahrump [ Nevada] or Las Vegas, the AEC manager would then say, Let’s proceed to the next step. And we would break up and reassemble at eleven o’clock. At eleven o’clock we reassembled at the command post. The command post sits between Yucca Flats and Frenchman Flat, on a ridge there. We would meet there in their conference room and get updated information. Assuming everything looked favorable, they would then [ 00: 05: 00] say, Let’s go ahead and proceed. At that point, it would kick a task off for me, what’s called a “ T- party.” We called them “ T- parties” because it referred to the towers. We’d send UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 crews in and remove all salvageable equipment non- essential to the test so that they could be used at a later date. At three o’clock there’d be a final briefing, and they would get a go- ahead to start the automatic sequence timer. From that point, it could go on. There was one point in the automatic sequence where you could abort it in case of emergency or anything. One thing that had been going on earlier, to back up a little bit, is Security had been sweeping the test site to make sure [ it was clear] because there were protesters and sometimes the protesters would try to wander onto the test site to interfere with the test. All shots were scheduled to go off pre- dawn. And the reason for that was so that you could get the best photo information possible. The heat and everything else would not distort the images. That’s the way the program went. There was one interesting sequence like this that occurred. We began at the four o’clock meeting and they could not predict the wind. With all the information we had, they weren’t sure what was happening in the winds. So the AEC manager said, Let’s go to eleven o’clock. We’ll adjust at eleven o’clock. At eleven o’clock, we met again and they still did not have the answer. And this was a tower shot, so everybody convinced him to go until you had to start the automatic sequence timer. So at three o’clock we had another meeting and the fallout prediction couldn’t be made because of lack of sound weather information. So he gave the go- ahead to start the automatic sequence timer with the understanding that if they didn’t have an answer by the time “ abort” came up, that they would abort. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 About ten minutes before the abort came up, they got a call. Everybody ran back and we got back there. What they found out is that there was a series of hyperbolic winds around the test site. They were coming from all directions. A hyperbolic wind, because of several different lows in the area, were causing that. And as a result, we went ahead with the shot and it was one of the best shots we ever had because everything dropped on the test site. So it was unique. Interesting. Do you remember which shot that was? No, I don’t. But it was during Plumbbob? It was during Plumbbob but that’s all I remember about it. One thing I had left out in the discussion is we had observers for all of the shots, whether they were at Frenchman Flat or whether Yucca Flats. And at three o’clock when the decision was a “ go” decision, they would get these visitors up, whether they’re VIPs or the news media or whatever, and put them in a bus and take them out to an area adjacent to the command post. There are some benches built on the side of the hill, which is calls Newsman’s Nob [ News Nob], and they woul