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Show 1 EYE WITNESS ACCOUNT I OF ATOMIC BOMB BLAST r ,n the atom.c bomb test blast is shown here as the I "rrier USS Independence is pictured burning shortly alter plosion. I By WALTER A. SHEAD WNU Washington Correspondent WARD IJ.S.S. APPALACH-I n OPERATIONS CROSS-: nril From a military "aPomt the explosion of the! n atomic bomb was a huge ? b"t as a spectacle worth ng 8.000 miles to see it did ,'7 up to its advance billing j' iru' sta,,point of efficiency r. Precision the plutonium j , was dropped squarely in Jfget area. The advance, , Predictions held true. It; I JiPPed on time to the sec-! iueh(uair drones were sent the , loud area and shep- Th a- by their mother d , ne boat drones were sent j j kJ; rea of radio activity il'Tuugi' t back via radio con- j . "e cameras clicked and CI .TLnls built especially to tit t!" results of the blast 1 Ann !hr,3e of us here aboard ' eribt,r'ciu'rn- who had been '4frra?id k'cturcd day af"! La tht' Past two weeks, i scip, -'"tm-iewed scientists, tp" writers, the bomb Wrw . 0 atomic cloud were PPointment. i The recapitulation oi uie age showed the troop Mor s SSom and Carlisle Bunk, fte destroyer Lampson C1Z heavy damage was done to ine submarine Skate, the light cniu , S Pensacola, the carrier Inde-1 nendence. the Jap cruiser Sak awa, and the German pocket bat tteshiP Prinz Eugen. Light to Sn and Faun nd toj Because 0 alonm ievrf not reach the lu e m nrevious drops ft.. 8-SXtaued on pas eM) ; haze over the lagoon, but it soon Kami away and as I look to-.. to-.. ard the lagoon now there is lit-!h lit-!h indication of a fire anywhere. We are changing course now, I following the Mt. McKinley, Ad-mirul Ad-mirul Blandy's flagship, appar-ently appar-ently with the intention of en-tcring en-tcring the lagoon. Television re- I ceiving sets in the ward room of the Appalachian registered the blast from cameras installed on the island, then they went out I of commission, The carrier Independence like- I ly suffered more damage than any other capital .ship to its superstructure su-perstructure and all planes which were .ittp its flight deck were carried away. There was super' ficial or superstructure damage to other ships of the 73 in the target fleet hut to me the pathos of the thing was emphasized when I saw the sturdy HIMtl of the old Nevada, brilliant in its orange paint, standing there still staunch and true despite the atomic bomb, AN EYE WITNESS ACCOUNT ATOMIC BOMB BLAST (Continued from pace one) sidered is reflection upon the efficiency of the bomb. Reasons fur the relatively low cloud given giv-en were that water absorbed much of the heat energy and the difference in atmospheric structure struc-ture caused a slower rise. It may he that those of us who stood along the starboard rail of the Appalachian were expecting too much. We had been led to believe from many sources to expect drama and adventure and excitement. Let me assure you there was no drama and certainly certain-ly no excitement. I confess that as 1 pulled the polarized plastic goggles over my eyes a.s we heard the signal "bomb away" I did feel excited and tense as I a-waited a-waited the blast. It came as I saw it, well above the horizon, a huge orange ball. It might have been a fireworks fire-works display on the Fourth of Jltly, although not near so dal ing. I watched the cloud appear ing like nothing more than a huge cherry ice cream soda-Cream soda-Cream white on the surface but deep inside the hues were pink age was in six square miles or an area of about a mile and a half radius, while the distance of the Nevada from the shore of Bikini lagoon was about three miles. And the, lagoon itself is 10 miles across and 25 miles long. It must also be remembered that as this story is written for trans mission in time to get it to you ! there has been no actual assess-ment assess-ment of the real damage. There 1 may be more as we enter the la-goon la-goon and can visually assay the damage There was no wind, no waves and no thunderstorm. No trees j were damaged on the island, j There was no tidal wave and no earthquake. In fairness there was no prediction from the navy ! or army officials that any of these things might happen. The! navy frankly said they didn't! know what would happen. These' wild predictions were made by 1 scientists or scientific writers. Also, in all fairness to the offic- j en of joint task force No. 1. the bomb, which looked too small to 1 the lay writers, may actually have been big. Scientifically of course there can be no adequate judgement of the results until the iastriunents i have been read, the damage on 1 the various ships actually determined deter-mined and measured. In the light of the objectives, the navy and the army had m mind the actual effect oi the bomb on naval con-i struction, navy and army ma- j terial, armament, ordnance and 1 other equipment. Admiral Blandy, commander of the task force, issued a state ment in which he said he was highly pleased with the whole1 operation; with the bomb drop I and with the efficiency of the bomb. There are several aboard j the ship who saw the Nagasaki and rose, and it boiled and seethed seeth-ed up through a cumulous na-ral na-ral cloud which hid it from our view, I felt a slight "pft" in my ears but felt no heat blast. Seconds Sec-onds later the sound of detonation detona-tion came like a distant peal or roll of thunder that's all, but then we were 18 miles away. Ten minutes after the blast the cloud had mushroomed up to a height of 2H,()()0 feet and was approximately ap-proximately 12,000 feet across the top. The trade winds soon broke it up and it was pushed westward where it gradually leveled le-veled off and dispersed as our j hip steamed slowly along the seaward side of Bikini island. We could see the ghost fleet in the lagoon through our hinocu- j hUS, Fire amidship showed on the Saratoga. The Salt Lake City ; was tiblaze. There appeared to be a small fire aboard the Ne-vada. Ne-vada. These fires made a smoke bomb drop and the drop at Los Alamos, N. M. They declared this bomb appeared to be small-1 er, judging from the flash and j the atomic cloud which in the case of Nagasaki soared to a height of about 55,000 feet. There is no doubt that the force of this terrible energy is like nothing ever known on earth before be-fore but the distances out here are so great that the energy was dispersed and dissipated over a vast area. For instance, at Nagasaki Naga-saki the area of total bomb darn- 1 |