During the Bikini shots, one ship always provided the carri br, Bairoko,
with a plane guard; another escorted the Curtiss; and two ships were always
assigned to Enewetak to provide security for the atoll.
One of these ships
sortied from Enewetak on shot day at Bikini to a station halfwa yr between
the atolls, where
it served as an aircraft control station.
Th
ship car-
ried an Air Force officer from TG 7.4, who acted as an air cont roller.
The
Renshaw served in this capacity for the first two shots and the Nicholas
for the last four.
The Surface Security Unit, in conjunction with the Patrol P
also provided postshot support to the sea-phase portion of Proj
which consisted of assisting in locating fallout collector buoy
lane Unit,
ct 2.5a,
equipped
with radio transmitters.
In addition to these planned activities, elements of the Su face Security Unit searched on two occasions for downed RAF Canberra b mbers that
were incoming to Kwajalein from the Admiralty Islands
(the firs
was lost
at sea; the second was forced to land on the beach at Ailinglapdlap Atoll),
provided interatoll transportation following the temporary closfre of the
Bikini airstrip after BRAVO, supported weather station activitids on Rongerik for UNION and YANKEE, and were scheduled to act as a falldut detection unit and evacuation ship at Ujelang during shot NECTAR if
uch activ-
ities had been required.
After shot BRAVO, the Philip was heavily contaminated by fa! lout while
serving as plane guard for the Bairoko.
Eighty-three of the shjp's crew
received exposures of more than 3.9 R, with a maximum exposure f 10.5 R
recorded.
Consequently, the CTG 7.3 recommended that the Phili
's entire
crew receive a waiver of the MPE, and that the ship be assigned duties unlikely to expose the crew to further contamination.
Neverthele
ship received additional slight contamination after ROMEO while
from Enewetak to Bikini on 28 March.
The heavy contamination of the atolls to the east of Bikini
required evacuation of the Marshall Islander populations, which
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