For a while now I have been interested in trying to find out who all might
have been abord the observation aircraft planes that were in place over
Hiroshima and perhaps Nagasaki during the runs.

Reason being is that part of the research work was done at Texas A&M
College back then in a little known effort headed by a man named  C. J.
Kirkbride. As far as I can determine, some five Texas A&M people were
involved in the issue.  My Dad, Dr, H. A. Luther, of the Math Department,
was loaned by Texas A&M to Westinghouse Research in Pittsburgh for a
year.  Per family history notes, he took the place of a Westinghouse
gentleman who went direct to the Manhattan Project in White Sands.  Or at
least he served on a collection of folks who did, or supported this
gentleman.  Dad's work was specifically, as told to the family, to do math
calculations, ostensibly,for oil drilling operations in the Southwest.

What was told him, at the time, was that they had found some very special
oil deposits out in the Southwest that were very deep, about five miles.
They were critical to the War effort.  In tiny pockets, they needed to know
what would happen to the drill stem on the way down if it had to pass by
boulders, go through strata that would tend to bend it.  His job was to do
the math to calculate the bending moment on the drill stem, decide on how
accurately they might hit this tiny depostit of oil.  Then he was to
estimate how much oil they would recover on a direct hit, or a glancing
blow from the drill bit.  That included how much might be lost if it leaked
out into the surrounding medium from a glancing blow.

Then ... he was told to verify the math on a Geiger tube ...

If you have followed the work of Nedermeyer who went from Westinghouse to
the Manhattan project, I think you will find that he was the yap dog who
sort of pushed them into the process of trying to generate the explosion by
use of shaped charge techniques, instead of, as Army Ordinance had been
doing,trying to contemplate firing slugs of Plutonium from 2-3 inch cannons
at each other to produce critical mass.   It was on the basis of supported
calculations from an Eastern Pennsylvania Army Ordance Lab research site
together with the Westinghouse work, as best I can tell, that the implosion
technique, from the big round steel ball, was decided on for test at White
Sands for the Trinity test.

As far as I can tell, Dad was really involved in doing support calculations
for yield effectiveness of the projected implosion technique which
Nedermeyer was touting.  On a visit to the Roosevelt Museum at Hyde
Park,with my sister, Dad pointed to a picture where Roosevelt was being
told to do things that way with the first explosion test, and remarked,
"That was my boss at Westinghouse..."

C, J. Kirkbride was sent to Texas A&M from Washington to supervise
several other Texas A&M folk who did not leave the College Station site
for their work on the project.  He arrived and they advertised for a
private secretary for the then head of the Chemical Engineering Department,
Dr. James. I Lindsey.  One Helen Snyder, the wife of the Ordinance Officer
for the then Bryan Air Force Base here, answered that ad in the paper.  On
interview, she was asked if she would mind submitting for a security
clearance?  Of couse not, since her husband was who he was!  On passing a
top secret clearance,Helen was then told that the job was not for Dr.
Lindsey at all, but for this mysterious Kirkbride, whose office turned out
to be next door to Dr. Lindsey's office.  One of the key men supervised was
Dr. Lindsey, another was an electrical enginnering professor, another from
the Physics Department,and the final one was from the Chemistry Department.

I have a couple hours of taped interview from Helen Snyder before she
passed away with details.  At the time of the Trinity site test in New
Mexico, C. J. Kirkbride was absent from the Texas A&M site for a week
or so.  It wasn't connected by the crew here that he was there in New
Mexico, until he appeared after the test explosion took place on the 150
foot tower there.

Then when the runs were made over Japan, Kirkbride was gone for about a
month, silently.  Although Helen was hired for stenography and all, she
never would up, per her interviews, be allowed to do anything like that for
Kirkbride.  All she ever did was coordinate package transfers and so on
between the other A&M people and Kirkbride.  Kirkbride dialed all his
own phone calls, wrote all his own letters.  She never saw any of the
collection of documents he amassed at all!

On his return from wherever after the runs on Japan, he personally told
Helen, "I have seen the device work.  My work is finished,"  That
was all she told him he would say, just that curt remark.

Immediately he personally cleaned out all his file matter, packed it up,
and silently went back to Washington.  Helen's remark to me was that he
could have never made that statement unless he was aboard an aircraft at
the time of the actual drops!

At first, from the commonly known stories, I had come to accept that there
was no observation aircraft in issue here.

But from other work and posting here, plus elsewhere, it comes to light
that there actually WAS a chase plane in the air at the time of the actual
drop run.  It was not just the issue, as commonly reported, to have been a
weather observation B29 that was earlier reported as an intruder.  As
well,it's been commented on that Australian records detail the entire
observer aircraft flights for the drop runs as well.

I'd dearly love to know if a passenger manifest list for the observation
aircraft involved was ever seen or is of record for the issue.  The entire
incident of the Texas A&M College crew and Kirkbride are totally left
out of the whole puhlished history work on the Chem Engineering Department
that has already been done here.  In fact, the professor who was charged
with writing the history of the department has never even heard any of
this!

If anyone here has any leads as to where to go to possible get that
manifest data, it would be highly important to be able to formally document
Kirkbride's authenticity for his statement to Helen.  Many of the locals
were puzzled why there was such a large article in the obits in the Bryan
Eagle for Kirkbride, when he passed away long ago.  As a child, one of my
high school friends was a close playmate with Kirkbride's son, but they
were four years younger than I was, so I never knew any of this back then.

Comments?


--> Sleep well; OS/2's still awake! ;)

Mike {at} 1:117/3001

--- Maximus/2 3.01