When it came time to detonate the world’s first full-scale thermonuclear device, Annie Jacobsen explains (in Area 51), it was decided that six human pilots, all volunteers, would fly straight into the center of the radioactive stem and mushroom cloud:
Another group of pilots was assigned to fly along the outer edges of the predicted fallout zones. That group included Hervey Stockman, who, four years later, would become the first CIA pilot to fly over the Soviet Union in a U-2.
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Given the extraordinary magnitude of the thermonuclear bomb, it is utterly remarkable to consider that shortly after Robinson flew his F-84G straight through its mushroom stem, he was able to radio back clear thoughts to his commanding officer, who was located twenty-five miles to the south, on Eniwetok. “The glow was red, like the inside of a red hot furnace,” the record states Robinson said. He then described how his radio instrument meters were spinning around in circles, “like the sweep second hand on a watch.” After going inside the cloud a second time, Robinson reported that his “airplane stalled out and gone [sic] into a spin.” His autopilot disengaged and his radio cut out, but the courageous pilot flew on as instructed. He flew around in circles and finally he flew back into and out of the mushroom stem and the lower part of its cloud—for nearly four more hours. Only when it was time for Robinson to refuel did he realize that the electromagnetic pulse from the thermonuclear bomb had ruined his control beacon. This meant that it was impossible for him to locate the fuel tanker.
Robinson radioed the control tower on Eniwetok for help. He was told to head back to the island immediately. “Approximately ninety-six miles north of the island, [Robinson] reported that he’d picked up a signal on Eniwetok,” according to the official record, declassified in 1986 but with Robinson’s name redacted. At that point, he was down to six hundred pounds of fuel. Bad weather kicked in; “rain squalls obstructed his views.” Robinson’s fuel gauge registered empty and then his engine flamed out. “When he was at 10,000 feet, Eniwetok tower thought he would make the runway, he had the island in sight,” wrote an Air Force investigator assigned to the case. But he couldn’t glide in because his aircraft was lined with lead to shield him from radiation. At five thousand feet and falling fast, Robinson reported he wasn’t going to make it and that he would have to bail out. Now Robinson faced the ultimate challenge. Atomic-sampling pilots wore lead-lined vests. How to land safely and get out fast? Fewer than three and a half miles from the tarmac at Eniwetok, at an altitude of between five hundred and eight hundred feet, Robinson’s aircraft flipped over and crashed into the sea. “Approximately one minute later [a] helicopter was over the spot,” the Air Force investigator wrote. But it was too late. All the helicopter pilot could find was “an oil slick, one glove, and several maps.” Robinson’s body and his airplane sank to the bottom of the sea like a stone. His body was never recovered, and his family would learn of his fate only in 2008, after repeated Freedom of Information Act requests were finally granted by the Air Force.
Robinson radioed the control tower on Eniwetok for help. He was told to head back to the island immediately. “Approximately ninety-six miles north of the island, [Robinson] reported that he’d picked up a signal on Eniwetok,” according to the official record, declassified in 1986 but with Robinson’s name redacted. At that point, he was down to six hundred pounds of fuel. Bad weather kicked in; “rain squalls obstructed his views.” Robinson’s fuel gauge registered empty and then his engine flamed out. “When he was at 10,000 feet, Eniwetok tower thought he would make the runway, he had the island in sight,” wrote an Air Force investigator assigned to the case. But he couldn’t glide in because his aircraft was lined with lead to shield him from radiation. At five thousand feet and falling fast, Robinson reported he wasn’t going to make it and that he would have to bail out. Now Robinson faced the ultimate challenge. Atomic-sampling pilots wore lead-lined vests. How to land safely and get out fast? Fewer than three and a half miles from the tarmac at Eniwetok, at an altitude of between five hundred and eight hundred feet, Robinson’s aircraft flipped over and crashed into the sea. “Approximately one minute later [a] helicopter was over the spot,” the Air Force investigator wrote. But it was too late. All the helicopter pilot could find was “an oil slick, one glove, and several maps.” Robinson’s body and his airplane sank to the bottom of the sea like a stone. His body was never recovered, and his family would learn of his fate only in 2008, after repeated Freedom of Information Act requests were finally granted by the Air Force.
Back on Elugelab Island, the dust was settling after the airplane-hangar-size Mike bomb had exploded with an unfathomable yield of 10.4 megatons—nearly twice that of its predicted size. Elugelab was not an island anymore. The thermonuclear bomb had vaporized the entire landmass, sending eighty million tons of pulverized coral into the upper atmosphere to float around and rain down. One man observing the bomb with high-density goggles was EG& G weapons test engineer Al O’Donnell. He’d wired, armed, and fired the Ivy bomb from the control room on the USS Estes, which was parked forty miles out at sea. O’Donnell says that watching the Mike bomb explode was a terrifying experience. “It was one of the ones that was too big,” says the man who colleagues called the Triggerman for having wired 186 nuclear bombs. The nuclear fireball of the Ivy Mike bomb was three miles wide. In contrast, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a fireball that was a tenth of a mile wide. When the manned airplanes flew over ground zero after the Ivy Mike bomb went off, they were horrified to see the island was gone. Satellite photographs in 2011 show a black crater filled with lagoon water where the island of Elugelab once existed.
“Fewer than three and a half miles from the tarmac at Eniwetok, at an altitude of between five hundred and eight hundred feet, Robinson’s aircraft flipped over and crashed into the sea.”
That was the kind of gallantry that produced pilots capable of putting Americans on the moon. Are there any men of the current generation who could equal it? NASA would have colonies on Mars right now if America could produce even one hundred such pilots.