Can control where the fallout will occur...
"Consequently, I would like to give a very considerable hand to this
group of meteorologists who we have out there who may make us mad because
they make us postpone, but they keep us out of trouble.
They tell us the
weather with great accuracy, and permit us to be sure that the weather will
not give us a fallout situation that we would not like,"
Unfortunately for the people affected by the Bravo Test, the meteorologists
of the Pacific Proving Ground were not so adept at predicting things so that they
could "control where the fallout will occur."
This statement is particularly
ironic in the face of meteorological evidence from the Mike and Bravo shots, as
previously mentioned,
For the Mike shot, nearly all wind direction above
Enewetok was known, with gaps only at 55,000 feet and from 95,000 to 105,000
feet,
Included in the known winds were the majority up to 90,000 feet which almost
totally were heading toward the west.
Only a freak strata at 50,000 feet and winds
above 105,000 feet were heading east,
For the Bravo shot, however, the winds in
the space above Bikini were blowing in a northeasterly or easterly direction,
For 35 percent of the space above that, winds were heading westward, away from
Rongelap,
The top remaining 30 percent of space above this up to 120,000 feet, the
expected height limit of the cloud, there was no data.
While it may be granted
that such weather reports are of necessity minutes or hours old, it seems somehow
incredible that the decision to have the event could be made on the assumption that
either the unknown winds were not blowing in an easterly direction (as they were
at Enewetok) or that if they were blowing in a westerly direction, they would ehange
by the time the device was exploded.
What adds to the incredibility of this
decision is that if the JTF-7 fleet was arrayed 30 miles due east of Bikini, then
firing of the device when the first 55,000 feet of winds were heading in that
direction can only be judged as an act of foolishness or a serious error in
judgment which only the fleet's mobility prevented from becoming a disaster.
These events combined to produce a situation noted in "The Effects of Nuclear
Weapons,” a Defense Department publication which noted that:
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