J3+H-29

16 January 1957

GIBBINS

You think the firing frequency at Bikini is the same with the natives

back int
I think: so.

Do you have a figure for that?

I don't, know what 4t is exactly, but it ia probebly something like five.
let me ask this question, Walt.

If you can prove, or back up, a five day

firing interval at Taongi, can you prove the thing to be economical.

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GIBBINS: Yes.
Develorment and ewerything -- do you think ve can?
GIBBINS: Yes.

Eecause if you fire large shots at Eniwetok and don't fire any large

shots et Bikini because of the restriction which was mentioned her in assumption two.

Under assumption three, Bikini is campletely inactive because of

Commiseion restrictions.
The way these thimgs are greded, the advantage of Taongi increases as you go
from om to three in here.
Yes, tkat's right. Under condition three. I think the advantage is quite obvious.

Under condition

three, what that amounts to is simply shutting down Bikini entirely and then

its clear that firing the whole series at Enivetok is almost impossible.

Under

condition two. where you use Bikini for small shots, here again the advantage
of using Taongi is pretty easy to demonstrate.

Suppose you take eight wegaton

range shots or something like that, you can split them in part betveen Enivetok
and Taongi, so there is a distinctive advantage there.

If you were still using

Bikini for some large shots, then the advantage is really quite preferable on

the basis of time versus the cost of development.

Then it was on the basis of

this kind of argument that I suggested that the approach be divided into these
categories, so we could just see what eachone of them looked like individually

to see what the costs are along side the advantages. In savings of time and

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