upon the uplifted calcium oxide (coral) and water vapor. By 06:55 a.m., "Bravo's" giant nuclear cloud stood 21.6 miles tall. Half of "Bravo" extended through the troposphere, and the upper half rose nearly 60,000 feet into the stratosphere. Within a few minutes tne winds began tearing the giant form apart; heavier particles of uplifted material began falling back into the sea; lighter particles, however, would be carried along with the dismembered cloud by the winds. It was at this point that the first itndications became apparent that something was horribly, irrevocably wrong. JTF-7 By design, the human beings nearest the bomb's detonation were the inter-service, inter-agency personnel of Joint Task Force Seven. Wo known "accidents" had ever occurred in the course of America's previous 43 tests involving nuclear weapons. Ships of the Task Force were arrayed at what was expected to be an upwind position some 30 miles from the blast. "Bravo," as explained earlier, was the first hydrogen device to use the fission-~fusion-fission process in order to make maximum use of neutron emission and was the reason for the addition of several thousand pounds of u238 to the mechanism. This would produce an exceptionally powerful explosion, and one which would be exceptionally dirty in terms of radioactive fission products. While meticulous safety precautions had sufficed before, what can only be regarded as an underestimate of the unknown potential strength of this bomb, resulted in placing the JIF fleet perilously close to ground zero. 76 [O14b82 The officers,