Was Port Chicago a nuclear disaster?

[Dennis Toy]

If some of you didn't know, port chicago was one of the deadliest naval disasters in US history and a symbol of racial segregation. On july 17, 1944, a group of Black men has hastily loaded ammunition aboard 2 ships. One of them exploded with so much force that it was felt as far away as nevada. 320 men died, 220 of them were black. This lead to controversy about racial segregation because the black sailors had been ordered to load ammunition even though there was no safety measures taken.

There is this question whether the explosion really was nuclear?


http://www.sonic.net/sentinel/usa4.html


Port Chicago - 50 Years:
was it an atomic blast?
By David Caul and Susan Todd





(EDITOR'S NOTE: In January 1990, the Napa Sentinel commenced a series of articles concerning the explosion at Port Chicago in San Francisco Bay on July 17, 1944. Several other articles were produced to support the theory that the explosion was nuclear. Over the years, the Sentinel has been challenged on one point of the articles: If it was a nuclear explosion what about the radiation? For several years our research team has devoted itself to searching for records of other atomic explosions of the era to determine the levels of radiation association with those tests. This four part article addresses the question of radiation at Port Chicago.)
DESCRIPTION OF THE BLAST
On the night of July 17, 1944, a huge explosion occurred aboard one of the two merchant ships docked at the Port Chicago Magazine located on the Suisun Bay, 11 miles upstream from Vallejo. Clocks in the town of Port Chicago, over a mile away, were stopped by the shock waves at 10:19 p.m. The enormity of the blast was shown by the 3.5 magnitude earthquake registered as far away as Bonner's Ferry, Nevada. The explosion's fire ball, as observed by pilots flying over the area, towered in the night sky to an altitude of 8000 or 9,000 feet before being extinguished.
Observers reported a blinding flash "...that literally filled the sky with flame." It was followed "...by other flashes of less intensity, and then a dull, very odd orangish glow that seemed to hang in the sky for as long as ten or fifteen minutes, then it all went black". Two ships, thousands of feet from surface zero, navigating the narrow Roe Island Channel, were reported by their crews as being lifted up from the surface of the water by the underwater shockwaves bouncing off the river bottom. Their first impressions were that they had run aground. One of these ships, the 210-foot Redline tanker had the top of its superstructure completely ripped off by the air blast. Part of the deck was lifted. All doors were blown in. All tanks were ruptured. All of the ships bulkheads were blown in, one being forced completely out of the ship through the opposite side. All of this was the result of air shockwaves.
The ship turned around and sank in shallow water, riddled with shrapnel. Two 450 cargo ships were berthed facing opposite directions on the finger pier at Port Chicago: The Quinault Victory, newly arrived and as yet not loaded, and the E. A. Bryan, squatting low in the water with her cargo of munitions. The main explosion had occurred aboard the E. A. Bryan, which was completely vaporized. No identifiable part of it was ever found,.
Different eyewitness reports from the crews of the ships in the channel later litanized the 450 foot, 7,000 ton Quinault Victory's final ordeal:
Her bow end, from the foremost mast forward, was lifted high up into the air.
Pieces of docking were seen in the air with pilings attached.
A funnel-shaped area was observed 200 feet in the air, on top of which was the bow of one of the ships with mast attached.
All that remained of the Quinault was sixty feet of keel with propeller attached, pushed 1,000 feet out into the channel.
Parts of the bodies of the Navy work battalion and their officers, as well as those of the ships’ Merchant Marine crews and Navy Armed Guards were found on Roe Island, across the channel, almost a mile away, many blown there as human missiles by the force of the explosion. In addition there were many heavy pieces of railroad cars and thick ship plating found on the island.
The crater on the river bottom was, at its deepest, 27 feet. At least 10 feet of this was mud, which is more difficult to cavitate than soft rock. The crater was approximately 700 feet long and three hundred feet wide. The explosion, which took place below the water line of the E.A. Bryan, occurred at an average depth of 15 feet below the surface. With the flooding tide, the water was over 33 feet deep. Thus, the force of the blast had to remove an enormous amount of water before it could even get to the bottom, and once it did, it still removed 27 feet of soft rock and mud.
In culling over the various newspaper accounts and eyewitness reports of the Port Chicago explosion, no phenomena seems more ubiquitous than the white flash. The Napa Journal description of July 21, 1944, is typical, though from the perspective of 23 miles away: "Plainly visible here was the towering pillar of flame that flared into the southern sky. The hills of the Napa Valley were momentarily illuminated as by sunlight." Scores of persons, convinced that an earthquake was imminent, ran from their homes in their night clothes. On land, to the south of the disaster, the buildings of the Naval Base suffered damage beyond repair. All buildings in the town of Port Chicago, which 1was a mile to a mile and a half from the explosion, were damaged seriously. Ten per cent were damaged beyond repair. Fifty percent were uninhabitable due to being knocked off their foundations. The bridge crossing the Carquinez Straights was rocked violently as described by passengers crossing the bridge on a bus. All the downtown store windows were shattered in Vallejo, 22 miles away.1 Mare Island suffered considerable damage from the explosion, with some streets being littered with as much as two inches of glass.
The explosion which vaporized the Liberty Ship E. A. Bryan and blew to bits all but a small section of the keel of the other ship, the Quinault Victory. It also killed 320 men and destroyed the Port Chicago base, a critical munitions facility supplying the Pacific War. Today, we know Port Chicago as the Concord Naval Weapons Station, a sprawling 5500 acre Navy complex extending over the hills from the Suisun Bay into Clayton Valley, near Concord.
The official theory of the explosion maintains that 1.5 kilotons of war munitions containing TNT and Torpex, placed on the pier and in the holds of the Liberty ship E.A. Bryan, were accidentally detonated all at once -"highorder". There is disagreement between the government damage reports on the size of the blast. The U.S. Army/Navy Safety Board Report, Technical Paper #6 reports the yield of the Port Chicago explosion as 2.13 kilotons, which is in excess of the conventional explosives inventoried aboard the E.A. Bryan. The Naval Court of Inquiry came to the conclusion that the accidental detonation was caused by several factors, including:
War-induced oversized work load and pressure on the men.
Incompetency of the officers at the base.
The Base Commandant's promotion of competition among loading officers.
Gross violation of safety precautions.
Various articles reported in the Sentinel by researcher Peter Vogel and David Caul, have outlined the entire history of the explosion, of the dawn of the nuclear age, of the prototype atomic bombs that existed and of correspondence and official reports concerning atomic testing, Los Alamos and Port Chicago. We would refer readers to those various articles for background as well as Mr. Vogel’s 1982 Black Scholar article, "The Las Wave From Port Chicago," and will not repeat that material in this series.
The first concept of an atomic bomb was that it would be necessary to place it on a naval vessel and send it into the port of the enemy. In 1944, no strategic aircraft or airfield was available that could be used for delivery of an atomic bomb. At the time of the Port Chicago explosion the United States involvement in the Pacific war was largely focused on maritime battles and the need for a "port buster" was of the highest importance. Scientists at Los Alamos had an exquisite interest in determining the lethal or sinking ranges of all types of surface vessels and submerged submarines for nuclear bombs detonated under water. This concern is very prominent in the first edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1950. There were two striking advantages in detonating atomic bombs in the water as port-busters:
A bomb which was detonated under water could be a ton lighter because it would not require a heavy tamper. This lightness would enable it to be carried by lighter, more maneuverable aircraft
A water detonation would not subject the crew of the drop plane to radiation and heat because the water would act as a shield.
Accordingly, the bomb would not have to be dropped from 30,000 feet, a technology which was not available in the summer of 1944. The Enola Gay, by Thomas and Witts documents the timetable of the development of high altitude bombing techniques. As far back as 1943, the High Military Policy Committee, the board of directors of the Manhattan Project, had chosen the Japanese fleet concentrations in the harbor at Truk in Micronesia, as the first target for the atomic bomb. Declassified documents from the Manhattan District History, Project Y, from the U.S. Department of Commerce, have been uncovered. The National Technical Information Service, LAMS-2532, Vol. I, December 1961, page 8:13, refers to the "...results of certain underwater tests (performed in 1944)...which had been directed toward achieving the goal of using a nuclear weapon against the Japanese fleet concentration at Truk, in Micronesia." Port Chicago would have been a perfect "blast gauge" for a port-buster type atomic bomb.
The height of the fireball, the Wilson condensation ring, and the damage to 14 counties of California, all point to something more insidious than incompetence causing 1.5 kilotons of ammunition to go off all at once. Evidence for the theory includes:
declassified letters and memoranda with incriminating wording,
scientists from the Los Alamos Laboratory arriving at the site miraculously early,
the hidden facts about the test of a bomb called Mark II,
the white flash and other circumstantial evidence. Some of the counter evidence against the nuclear theory is:
lack of radiation reports at Port Chicago, and
the alleged impossibility of supply of enough fuel for even a small bomb in July 1944.
The possibility that the explosion was nuclear but accidentally detonated while being transshipped through Port Chicago on one of the cargo vessels has also been put forward.

[Darth Wong]

Why would one need to postulate a nuclear explosion when a cargo vessel can carry thousands of tons of conventional explosive, hence producing a kiloton-scale blast?

[Dennis Toy]

i just caught this conspiracy theory while reading up on Port Chicago disaster.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The Halifax explosion was even larger, IIRC, and I don't see anyone yelling nuclear bomb there (probably because they didn't exist then, but that's beside the point).

[Dennis Toy]

any calcs on the force of the Port Chicago blast?

[tharkûn]

Think about this from a military perspective. This is WWII. The government has carte blanche to cordon off coastline, kick out the inhabitants, and conduct extensive testing. Likewise the Manhattan project has almost unlimited funding. Can you think of all that many WORSE places to test a nuclear device? I mean seriously Chicago has got to be an easy and likely place to put a spy. If you are going to test an A-bomb in the water then you aught to get the frik away for human population, places like northern Michigan, northern Wisconsin, or maybe somewhere in Lake Ontario. But Chicago? You don't think the largest rail hub in the country and a major port on the great lakes wouldn't be prime spy country?

[Deathstalker]

With the prevailing racism and sterotyping at the time, would the Navy trust blacks to load an atomic weapon? The same thin happened at Halifax. It is certainly a disaster for the loss of life, but I doubt very much an atomic weapon was involved.

[Sea Skimmer]

Its complete bullshit. Even if a nuclear weapon were present, it would not have been assembled with the components physical separate. A initiation would be quite physically impossible. These early bombs had assembled lifespan of mere hours, loading one onto a ship in that form, besides being absurdly unsafe which the military knew (no risking the bomb that cost its weight in gold) would also result in it being useabul by the time it actually reached a forward base. The bombs dropped on Japan where shipped disassembled to Tinian, and on warships of the cruiser type, a far step up in security from a slow merchant man, which is what blew up at Port Chicago.

Port Chicago was around a two-kiloton explosion as I recall, and thus quite insignificant as several such conventional explosions have occurred with ammunition ships and stockpiles, and one or two which where even greater.

[Sea Skimmer]

Think about this from a military perspective. This is WWII. The government has carte blanche to cordon off coastline, kick out the inhabitants, and conduct extensive testing. Likewise the Manhattan project has almost unlimited funding. Can you think of all that many WORSE places to test a nuclear device? I mean seriously Chicago has got to be an easy and likely place to put a spy. If you are going to test an A-bomb in the water then you aught to get the frik away for human population, places like northern Michigan, northern Wisconsin, or maybe somewhere in Lake Ontario. But Chicago? You don't think the largest rail hub in the country and a major port on the great lakes wouldn't be prime spy country?

Port Chicago, not Chicago. It's a small place located on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay in California.

[El Moose Monstero]

On a similar note, there's a US Liberty ship sunk in the thames estuary at Canvey with somewhere between 3500 - 14000 tons of explosives on board which is currently teetering on the edge of going up - it's basically dependent on the fuses and disturbane in the esturay, and I seem to recall a new scientist article predicting the explosion that would result as being the largest non-nuclear explosion in the world.

[darthdavid]

On a similar note, there's a US Liberty ship sunk in the thames estuary at Canvey with somewhere between 3500 - 14000 tons of explosives on board which is currently teetering on the edge of going up - it's basically dependent on the fuses and disturbane in the esturay, and I seem to recall a new scientist article predicting the explosion that would result as being the largest non-nuclear explosion in the world.

And obviously, if that's the case, they can't risk sending anyone down to defuse it. Ouch.

[darthdavid]

On a similar note, there's a US Liberty ship sunk in the thames estuary at Canvey with somewhere between 3500 - 14000 tons of explosives on board which is currently teetering on the edge of going up - it's basically dependent on the fuses and disturbane in the esturay, and I seem to recall a new scientist article predicting the explosion that would result as being the largest non-nuclear explosion in the world.

And obviously, if that's the case, they can't risk sending anyone down to defuse it. Ouch.

I should cairify, obviously they can't defuse it since they'red be no one fuse and it would be a big clusterfuck. By diffuse I meant more in the general "diffuse the situation" sense of preventing the stuff from going off.

[Sea Skimmer]

And obviously, if that's the case, they can't risk sending anyone down to defuse it. Ouch.

Some crackpots are currently demanding that it be covered over in concrete for safety. This of course ignores the fact that the act of burying a half submerged wreck in concrete would almost certainly run a huge risk of causing a detonation, and that anything less that an totally absurd amount of concrete would simply be demolished and converted into a rain of deadly heavy debris if there was an explosion. The best bet really is to just keep a close eye on it and wait. B this point many of the explosives with already be dangerously unstable but given enough time they'll for the most part all become harmless and the shell and bomb casings and the ships hull will all rust away.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Time will tell in that case. The worst possible scenario sees half the urban area around that shore being flattened if the thing goes up and likely without any warning.

[HemlockGrey]

I imagine property values are rather low in that vicinity.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Well, property prices are high all around the nation at this time, they're just not as high there I'll bet. The local papers and news stations often run a story on the potential catastrophe every now and then when it's a slow news day.

[El Moose Monstero]

Well, property prices are high all around the nation at this time, they're just not as high there I'll bet. The local papers and news stations often run a story on the potential catastrophe every now and then when it's a slow news day.

My friend lives next to Canvey, and they own a yacht - it doesn't say much about house prices, but it does show the sort of society that's around the area.

[Admiral Valdemar]

A yacht can get away from exploding ordnance unlike a house.

[Montcalm]

A yacht can get away from exploding ordnance unlike a house.

Funny i said a similar thing about hurricanes on another board,but i got the reply that if boat owners would take their yacth out of the hurricanes path,they'd pass for selfish assholes who think about themselves.

whats more acceptable taking your boat out of the danger zone or leaving it to be destroyed and cashing on governments money to replace it?

[Elheru Aran]

Whenever a hurricane passes near here, my uncle (professional charter-boat fisherman) always takes his boat out to sea for a few days. Wouldn't call that selfish-- I'd call that protecting his investment and his livelihood. Yachts, likewise, are quite the investment.

[kheegster]

Why don't they evacuate the area and do a controlled detonation?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Why don't they evacuate the area and do a controlled detonation?

Evacuate an entire town and then detonate several THOUSAND tons of high-explosive? Are you insane? I'm somewhat doubting the council would get many letters of congratulations when the townspeople come back to flattened rubble that was once their home.

[Darth Wong]

Why don't they evacuate the area and do a controlled detonation?

Evacuate an entire town and then detonate several THOUSAND tons of high-explosive? Are you insane? I'm somewhat doubting the council would get many letters of congratulations when the townspeople come back to flattened rubble that was once their home.

It would be worse if it goes off while they're occupying those homes.

[Admiral Valdemar]

It would be worse if it goes off while they're occupying those homes.

Of course, loss of life is always far worse than any property. But as with many things, unless there's incentive to really do it now, much like the Avian Flu pandemic that looms over us like the sword of Damocles it is, no one will likely do anything until it's too late.

Rather than be proactive and admit that someone is going to lose their home if they control detonate the explosives, the council would likely leave it and hope that the munitions never go off. It's rather typical from what I see in politics, even an inevitable tragedy isn't countered until absolutely necessary because of the fuss economically or in organising it.

[Slartibartfast]

Why would one need to postulate a nuclear explosion when a cargo vessel can carry thousands of tons of conventional explosive, hence producing a kiloton-scale blast?

Didn't some old ship in the 19th century or so have some big-ass megaton level gunpowder explosion that leveled a whole town?