From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: A Bad Time to Fall Asleep
Date: 31 Aug 92 07:53:00 GMT
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 674, Message 1 of 10

Our Moderator writes:

> My thanks to Mark Brader (msb@sq.com) for suggesting this be reprinted.  

You're welcome, Patrick, but I now wish I hadn't.  You see, a couple
of hours after I sent that suggestion, I looked at the applicable
section of Richard Rhodes's superb book "The Making of the Atomic
Bomb" (Simon & Schuster, 1986, ISBN 0-671-44133-7).  It implies, on
pretty good evidence, that there is something wrong with Mrs. Fermi's
story.

Let me summarize the timetable:

>  "The test was set for 4:30 AM the next morning, so we returned to the
>  hotel and went to bed early. We got up at 3 the next morning and drove
>  out to the location ...

The chronology that she gives after that is:

4:45... they return to town to telephone, but can't get the operator.
5:00 or just after... Fermi finds and wakes up the operator.
They are back at their observation point 5 minutes before the explosion.

>  .... later, we got together with the others who had
>  been assigned there and found out that it wasn't the rain that delayed
>  things; it was that woman asleep; you see, the main people responsible
>  were linked by phones through Alamogordo; they had to coordinate what
>  they were doing and sychronize their work. All of them got the same
>  thing on the phone we got: no answer from the operator for 45 minutes!

So this would imply that the operator's nap started at about 4:15, if
not earlier.

Okay, now to Rhodes.  On page 664 of my copy:

#  [Robert] Oppenheimer, [Gen. Leslie] Groves, [Kenneth] Bainbridge,
#  [Gen. Thomas] Farrell, [Richard] Tolman and an Army meteorologist met
#  with [the meteorologist for the test, Jack] Hubbard at McDonald Ranch
#  at four that afternoon [the day before the test] to consider the
#  weather.  ...  They decided to wait and see.  They had scheduled
#  a last weather conference for the next morning at 0200 hours;
#  they would make up their minds then.  The shot was set for 0400
#  and they let that time stand.

As a source for at least part of this paragraph, Rhodes cites "The Day
the Sun Rose Twice" by Ferenc Morton Szasz (Univ. of N.M. Press, 1984).

Now on page 666:

#  Thunderstorms began lashing the Jornada [del Muerto] at about 0200
#  hours ...  Winds gusted to thirty miles an hour.  Hubbard hung
#  on at Zero for last-minute readings--only misting drizzle had yet
#  reached the tower area--and arrived eight minutes late for the
#  0200 weather conference at Base Camp, to find Oppenheimer waiting
#  for him outside the weather center there.  Hubbard told him they
#  would have to scrub 0400 but should be able to shoot between
#  0500 and 0600.  Oppenheimer looked relieved.
#
#  Inside they found an agitated Groves waiting with his advisors.
#  "What the hell is wrong with the weather?" the general greeted
#  his forecaster.  ...  Groves demanded to know when the storm would
#  pass.  Hubbard explained its dynamics: a tropical air mass, night
#  rain.  Afternoon thunderstorms took their energy from the heating of
#  the earth and collapsed at sunset; this one, contrariwise, would
#  collapse at dawn.  Groves growled that he wanted a specific time,
#  not an explanation.  I'm giving you both, Hubbard rejoined.  ...
#
#  Oppenheimer applied himself to soothe his bulky comrade.  Hubbard
#  was the best man around, he insisted, and they ought to trust his
#  forecast.  The others at the meeting--Tolman and two army meteor-
#  ologists, one more than before--agreed.  Groves relented.  "You'd
#  better be right on this", he threatened Hubbard, "or I will hang
#  you."  He ordered the meteorologist to sign his forecast and set
#  the shot for 0530.  Then he went off to roust the governor of New
#  Mexico out of bed to the telephone to warn him he might have to
#  declare martial law.

For all of this material, Rhodes again cites Szasz, but he notes that
Szasz in turn cites Hubbard's *contemporary* personal journal.  This
is pretty solid evidence, unless Hubbard had some reason to falsify
it.  The signed forecast would be even better evidence: has anyone
seen it or seen it reproduced somewhere?  According to Rhodes, Hubbard
gave it to Bainbridge at "about 0508", following which the master
switches were unlocked and the bomb fired with a 20-minute delay.

There is further evidence that the telephones were not all down during
the period that Mrs. Fermi mentions.  From page 667 of Rhodes:

#  The meteorologist prepared his final forecast at S-10000 [the command
#  center, 10000 yards south of Zero].  He called Bainbridge at 0440.
#  "Hubbard gave me a complete weather report", the Trinity director
#  recalls, "and a prediction that at 5:30 am the weather would be
#  possible but not ideal.  ...  I called Oppenheimer and General
#  Farrell to get their agreement that 5:30 would be T = 0."  Hubbard,
#  Bainbridge, Oppenheimer and Farrell each had veto power over the shot.
#  They all agreed.

Rhodes cites a different source for this: "All in our Time" by Jane
Wilson (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1975).

There is a further problem with Mrs. Fermi's story, which is this: the
Trinity test site is 60 miles from Alamogordo!  From her account it
seems to be at most a 25-minute drive from the telephone exchange to
the observing point, which she says is 15 miles from the site.
(Unfortunately, while Rhodes mentions something about what Fermi did
during the test, he doesn't mention where he did it.)

I am left with three possible interpretations.  One is that Mrs.
Fermi's story simply never happened.  A second is that it happened
exactly as she said, except that after 20 years she got some of the
times wrong, while Hubbard participated in a cover-up, and Wilson's
source was also misleading.

And the third, which I think most likely, is that Fermi's drive into
town did happen, but the operator's nap did not really affect the
timing of the test.  In this interpretation, not all the telephones
for everyone went through that operator; perhaps it was only the lines
between the test site and the hotels where the scientists were
staying, say.  (Also, maybe the operator was not in Alamogordo but in
a smaller town closer to the site, such as Tularosa or Carrizozo.)
Maybe what someone really said was that they had been afraid that the
test would have to be cancelled because certain people couldn't be
telephoned, and then it was all right.

I dunno.  I'd like to believe the original story.  But the evidence ...


Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com


[Moderator's Note: Well, my observation back then (1965) was that she
was, to put it kindly, starting to get forgetful, particularly after a
large pasta dinner and a couple drinks. The Windermere Hotel's dining
room ('The Anchorage') did not serve skimpy meals or drinks ... PAT]