a (F On 13 October Col. W. M. Shankle, the military assistant to the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy) reported on a meeting of the same date at which the use of Christmas Island was discussed among himself, personnel from DASA and Col. O'Brien of DMA. At this meeting the following actions were decided upon: a survey of Christmas Island, including participation by DoD, AEC and United Kingdom representatives would be conducted; subsequent to the survey determination of the relative merits of the different facilities would be made; and should the Christmas facilities be determined to be desirable, the DoD, AEC and Department of State would then decide on the terms for approaching the United Kingdom and the extent to which we would desire their participation in the tests and the extent to which the information which we would obtain from the tests would be made available to them. The DMA representative at this meeting was Lt. Col. O'Brien, and a copy of the memo from the meeting was sent to General Betts with a request that he proceed with the actions as indicated therein. A 16 October TWX from ALO to Mr. Schwartz of Sandia goes into a great deal of detail on the status and problems of the bomb, missile and balloon systems which have been proposed for the various types of testing. Col. O'Brien of the DMA Test Office in a memo to General Betts on the 13 October meeting with Col. Shankle on the subject of the possible use of Christmas Island makes the following statements "the subsequent discussion indicated the question of using Christmas Island supposedly arose because of Dr. Johnson's strong feeling that the EPG would be unavailable because of UN or political pressure against using part of the trust territory for such purposes. There was no indication, however, that there had been any exploratcry action toward using the EPG but .ather that due to Dr. Jonnson’s position the DoD was going all out to explore the use of Christmas Island. On 18 October a Mr. Mercer of the AEC, at the request of the chairman, sent a report to the President covering among other things US nuclear test accomplishments, probable effects of detonation of a 50 megaton device at various altitudes, time required for US development of a similar 50 megaton device, and a brief reference to possibie military uses of a 50 megaton device. Betts apparently inquired into the possibilities of a 50 megaton shot for on October 19 a TWX from Sewell of LRL to Betts refers to a phone conversation on the subject and goes into more detail with regard to the possibilities for an early 40 to 50 megaton shot. The TWX goes into some detail on the possibilities for such a shot and a couple of alternatives are , . . Further it is pointed out © that there will be problems with any drop aircraft if the tests were desired to be air drop for there would certainly not be sufficient time for a drop aircraft to get to a safe distance based on the range of destruction from this particular yield. It is suggested that drones be looked into as possible carriers for such a device. A handwritten note at the conclusion of this TWX notes that on the 27th of October General Luedecke who was reviewing the TWX wrote "no further action required" on the TWX.