Trinity Site

[Peter Laidler]

I put MARALINGRA test site into Google and spent a pleasant half hour reading. One photo showed some of the wreckage and stuff picked up by the caretaker of the site. One bit was a British Army registration plate that was clearly from one of the buried vehicles take there in the 60's as it was XX BP XX and that is a number plate issued to a light vehicle in 1956 or 57. Probably a Land Rover or a Bedford RL type. Met up with a couple of the Royal Engineers and REME plant fitters and VM's who were on a bit of leave in Brisbane, staying at Enoggera. Stayed in touch with one of them, Alan Greening a pommy REME Vehicle Mech plus Eric Fitch another VM who eventually emigrated to Oz. Wish I could trace Eric

Talking of Eric. Could someone in Oz have a look through the telephone book or voters list in Oz and find Eric's address? There can't be that many old Colonials in Oz with phones or who vote. (look...., just joking......!)

[emmagee1917]

10-4 on the radiation . I have another friend whose uncle fought in the Pacific from near the beginning till after the end . Early on he captured a Japanese camera and a lot of film , so he made a photo journal(s) of the entire war from the ground pounder's view . He always claimed the camera took excellent pictures , considering , up till the very end , then took a dump . When we saw the "crappy " pictures , they were of post war Nagasaki .
We explained to him that these were the results of the massive radiation he and his camera was taking at the time . He replied that he never was exposed to any radiation because they never left the truck and the protection of their rubber tires ! He lived well into his late nineties and never had any radiological health problems , so maybe there was something to that .
Chris

[Zorba]

lots of radiation. John Wayne made a movie where he played Genghis khan, and the entire film crew spent 2 months down wind of that sight walking in the desert. 80-85 % of EVERYONE who worked on that movie died from the most bizarre tumors and cancers.

I have a good friend whose late father was there - and yea, he died of cancer also. What made it worse, was many loads of dirt were trucked back to the LA area for scenes filmed there - they wanted the dirt to match, and they got their wish...

[limpetmine]

Visited this site on a special event tour during an IPMS convention in Albuquerque a number of years ago. A historic, if not rather boring place, after an hour.

[muffett.2008]

Did you pick up the small black pellets that were all over the ground Pete?
Add flame to them and they burnt like compressed powder.....supposed residue from rocket motors.

[Peter Laidler]

I didn't go to the site Muffer, didn't really know anything about it. Only knew it was being cleared by reading a magazine called (I think...) The Post that we used to get freebee copies of sent to wherever we were based in Oz, Malaya/Butterworth (cushy posting for the RAAF types) or Vung Tau. Got to know about the poms at Enoggera of course. I bet they all glow in the dark now! The irony was that one of my old Uni mentors, Prof Mike Harrison a Harwell nuclear scientist was one of the crew who used to fly through the dust clouds and do the atmospheric isotope testing in RAF (or were they RAAF?) Canberra bombers. Yep, he died in the late 90's of the dreaded.

[enbloc8]

A childhood classmate of mine had a relative who was a guard at the Trinity site during the test. He brought some trinitite from the blast site to chemistry class...in person it's pretty unexciting, coarse greenish "glass" with lots of additional sand and crud embedded in it.