II
The Air Force Special Weapons Center launched a bomb-carrying
bombardment aircraft from Kirtland to drop the first shot, ABLE, of
TUMBLER/SNAPPER on the morning of 1 April 1952.
went off without a hitch,
The sampling missions
The B-29 controller called up the B-29
sampler, then the four T-33 samplers and each made several passes into
the cloud.
After their removal by radiological crews, the samples were
pot into a courier aircraft operated by the 90lst Support Wing (Atomic)
and flown back to Kirtland for transfer from there to the Los Alamos
Scientific Laboratory.°?
The BAXER Shot occurred of 15 April 1952. This time the B-29
control aircraft penetrated the cloud because the regular B-29 sampler
had returned to base.
The cloud scattered in several directions, but
good samples were obtained by the control and four T-33 aircraft,°
CHARLIE Shot was dropped on 22 April 1952, and sampling progressed
as scheduled,
One of the T-33 samplers aborted while another T-33
sampler returned to Indian Springs where the papers were removed, new
sampling paper installed in the filter tanks, with a new crew it sampled
the cloud the second time.
During this shot the first of the missions
occurred with the Strategic Air Command F-8)G pilots,
After the T-33
Samplers performed their missions, the control aircraft called five
F-8),G airplanés, one-by-one, up to the cloud for sampling runs on
The last airdropped device, DOG, was detonated on 1 May 1952,
Except for some mechanical difficulties encountered by the B~29 sampler,
_ the T-33 and F-8)G aircraft operated very well,
Su
ArenJWo
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“Wan