were dropped when empty.
On two occasions the single place jets
encountered minor trouble and landed on an emergency runway on Bikini
Atoll,
"The B-36 featherweight sampling," Colonel Houghton reported,
“exceeded all expectations in terms of altitude attained and the usable
in-cloud portion of their flight profile."
The giant bombers took off
with a weight of 230,000 pounds, climbed to a "reasonable altitude"
and leveled off whilethe crew put on their S-l partial pressure suits,
then climbed to maximum altitude.
hours and ten minutes.
feet,
This procedure usually required two
Orimanyof the flights the bombers reached 55,000
The crew encountered problems of keeping their jet engines running
at the maximum altitude and on each mission lost one or two jet engines
and started a gradual descent.
They were able to remain at altitude for
sampling approximately one hour and 0 minutes, and sampling equipment
operated satisfactorily,
"As usual, the personnel exposures were lower
than anticipated prior to the operation," Colonel Houghton wrote.
The
reason for this was that fuel limitations did not allow the sampling
aircraft to remain in the cloud as long as the scientific personnel
from Los Alamos thought desirable during the planning phases of the
operation,
Sample quality was found to vary in the cloud with altitude
and also with horizontal direction,
Sample removal operations went off
without trouble, pressurization system filters worked well,and the
lead vests worn by the sampler pilots and crews reduced exposureto
radiation by at least hO per cent.
No pilot complained about the vests
oe
being uncomfortable. 38
114
APALG HL
SWEH-2-003),
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