could have been really serious was never completely decided.

However,

it was serious enough that there was no further argument on the subject
and the tracking information was brought to the control point from then
on and actually became somewhat of assistance to the bombadier in checking
his tracking orbit.

Once the operation was planned for a land base at

Christmas Island, DASA requested the addition of a number of effects
experiments which were accommodated where operationally feasible.
For
design and
some number of operations
they heme been trying to/provide past optical

)

shutter eye glasses for airplane pilots
warfare.

to prevent flash blindness in

Several stations were set up close to A site to test such

devices and to obtain optical

information for further design.

DASA also

wished to adfan experiment that caused a great deal of mental anguish on
the part of the Task Force safety people, particularly the commander and
the scientific deputy.

This experiment was a continuation of a long series

of measurements that had been made in past operations and was an attempt
to measure the response of aircraft in flight to the thermal burstfrom

large yield nuclear detonations.

The aircraft to be used were B57 C's

instrumented to observe skin temperature and stress.#®To perform the
experiment,

it was necessary to fly a B57 right through the shot point or

immediately below or above just a few seconds before detonation (where a
few seconds,

in one case,

| believe was as ears as 3). The possibility of

miscalculation was a very distrubing one to the Task Force commander.

We

had to take into account the probable bombing accuracy of the B52, The
timing of the B57 and other similar factors.

It is clear that if the timing

were not right, the pilot could get into an even worse situation by trying
to abort.

A variation of the experiment that was somewhat safer than

proposed was eventually agreed upon.

The final data obtained were perhaps

the best data every obtained on this type of experiment but xke largely

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