 zero-tower, poised for the world's sickest sandstone, all branches of the armed services and all civilian components of just low-lying islands strung like beads on a necklace. Anyway talk, Marshall Islands, surfwashed, coral reef, studded with the regular pattern of coconut groves laid out long ago, the stately palm trees cleared away as the tangled ticket of tropical growth. Out of this isolated wilderness the army engineers are gouging a permanent proving ground for the Atomic Energy Commission. This early phase and later phases required great quantities of supplies. Who delivered them? The Navy, better than 57,000 measurement tons. At Port Waimimi and at many other ports of the naval establishment the preparation resembles loading of an invasion fleet. And the details are as fully masked behind the curtain of security as if there were to be a military invasion. At this juncture Operation Sandstone is top secret that the coordination of civilian and military groups is excellent. Helping to preserve this coordination is a plotilla of Navy and engineers small craft, performing essential, though not a virtual water taxi system for supplies, equipment and personnel has been recognized from the experience of earlier atomic tests. Operation Crossroads, the rude of small craft, is the comm stock. A landing ship dock which serves as the headquarters of the boat pool and as a self-contained flexible repair facility. Established ashore, operations have become an important air base serving as a sea drone for far-ranging sea planes assigned to many security missions. Tanks are filled with high octane but this is only one of the thousands of logistics problems that had to be met. Dominating the proving ground and its many installations are the 200 foot zero towers and the 75 foot photo towers. Disposed at various distances from the zero towers, experimental blast structures of the Navy's Bureau of Yards and to beach itself during loading procedures, an LSM has been chosen for the task of laying a submarine cable, another Navy function. The armored cable is to link the islands of the proving ground into a timing and instrumentation network. The network is to be of great dimension and yet must satisfy demands for precision rarely ever before attempted or achieved in experiments of such scope. Under the supervision of a Coast Guard officer experienced in cable work, the job of laying nearly a million feet of cable is accomplished despite many obstacles. Splicing the cable even with personnel expressly trained is the crucial factor in meeting the operational deadline. Many hands make light work although the cable weighs almost a ton for a thousand feet. While these advanced echelons are fizzily engaged, back in the United States the main body of Joint Task Force 7 gets underway. Stowed in the hold new quantities of supplies, aboard are large groups of scientists, military units participating in atomic weapon development and the command staff organized on war-tested principles of joint operation. Lashed to the death on the 4,500 mile voyage. Military precautions. Atomic secrets. Atomic weapons. Atomic know-how. All are precious freight that give ominous meaning to sleek destroyers keeping vigil on the flanks of the Task Force. Ships are for logistics, but ships are for security too. Provides definite facilities needed on her present mission. Routine tasks going on top side belie the secret work being performed in the shops and laboratories below. The skipper doesn't say much, but he knows. You might draw additional significance from these loose marines chosen for special security tasks of float in the shore. And the gun crews hold a practice exercise. Exercise? Yes, but this is another version of exercise for all hands and by creation and relaxation as the ships move closer and closer to the truck. Serving as the principal laboratory ship and as home and headquarters of the scientific staff is the Alba Marl, sister ship of the Curtis. Like other ships of the force, she is a weather station gathering data for daily forecasts. Later she'll be integrated into an extensive weather network. Now this is the way a deck is scrubbed and this is the way a deck is decorated. But while the work of the deck force sometimes coincides with leisure for the passengers sunning themselves in the balmy seer, the ship is taut and happy. Below the scientific staff spends long hours consulting on technical and operational problems. With the armed services and supporting roles, it is the civilian scientific group drawn from many laboratories but directed by the Atomic Energy Commission that is at the heart of the experiments. These men will determine the relative merits of three new weapons. Many tasks of the scientists demand air conditioned laboratories. Temperature and humidity control and dust free conditions are essential, particularly while delicate instrument assemblies are being made. Thousands of spare parts are stored by the scientists but skilled machinists of the ship's force often manufacture spares in emergency. Almost equally as many tasks are being performed aboard the carrier by Roco. Radiological safety classes conducted underway afford an example of the excellence of the operation from the standpoint of national preparedness and security. Officers drawn from all the armed services are briefed on radiological dangers and trained in the techniques and problems of radiological safety. Various projects also provide opportunities for testing under field conditions, many new instruments, operational procedures and decontamination and safety techniques. The laboratories on the by Roco, hence, are important at all stages of the operation. General Hull, the ins and his deputies, rear Admiral Parsons, the Navy's director of a general Kepner, the commander of Air Forces, both Admiral Blandy's deputies in Operation Crossroads. As a command ship, the McKinley has earned her title the Mighty Mac. She again proves her ability to tackle a difficult job and get it done. No not one job, but hundreds of different jobs. She is the command post, the Information Center, the Weather Central, the Naval Task Group headquarters and the station of the Air Commander. In and out of her communications rooms flow thousands of messages coordinating the task force because of the nature of the operation. Encrypted traffic is heavy. But busy as are her communications channels, there is stress on all measures of security too. And radar operators alert at their posts. We speak caution and preparedness. As the main body of the task force heads for the forward areas, there is now an increased emphasis on airlift, particularly to Quadjolin. Busy hive of air and considerable rehabilitation has been conducted of facilities little used since World War II or Operation Crossroads. Air lift is important in the logistics plan for a telescope's time and abbreviates distance, linking the continental United States to the Marshall Islands. High-priority personnel are sped to many destinations by aircraft of the Military Air Transitions Plan, Airsea Rescue Units, whose amphibians are equipped with small boats that can be parachuted to the surface of the sea. Navy converted B-17s are used for anti-submarine patrol, 356 miles away. The air strips at Anyway Talk Island, certain areas of the proving ground are level. But at other points, Earth barricades are formed to absorb or deflect the expected blast pressures. Activity reaches high pitch. Anyway Talk, Hoasy site of the Zero Tower, 10,000, requires various elements of sea power. Tankers, destroyers and destroyer escorts, transports, tenders, mission ships, and a host of specialized craft. In this tropical lagoon, a virtual community afloat. The ships compose of versatile and powerful force, capable of many tasks. Doing all the tasks assigned, doing them well. Drinking water, manufactured for units not self-sustaining, 22 million gallons. Diesel fuel delivered, better than a million and a half gallons. Motor gasoline delivered, more than five gasoline delivered, more than six hundredths and a third. Plantation projects must still be carried out. Scientific groups reach their outdoor laboratory, being transformed into a virtual table top for the experiments. Work-goat tropical climate make each new project a challenge. Each day's work a true operate on difficult hurricane of sand, making windscreens a necessity for many projects. In a dual experiment by Los Alamos scientists to detect the presence of neutrons at various distances from the Zero Tower, cables are set out. One cable to which flotation planks have been attached for the sake of buoyancy is hauled out to the lagoon. These balsa rafts lowered from the albarmol serve as platforms for sample containers that are to be moored to the cable like a string of tiny islands. Also oriented from the foot of the Zero Tower, a second cable experiment is set up with sample containers mounted on tripods and variously shielded. Like a gigantic clothes line, the cables with neutron detecting samples attached will be reeled in after the detonation. Thousands of man hours are consumed by jobs that are sheer physical labor. Soil stabilization is necessary to minimize dust and to solidify earth mounds that will absorb or deflect blasts. Coaxial cables and the hundreds of instruments must be dust free if they're to render the precise results demanded by the operation. To avoid dust, many instruments are installed a minimum interval before abandonment of the Zero Island. Since data must be precise, each wall of these blockhouses gets an identifying number. This structure is a reference to tower cameras aimed at the fireball stage of the explosion will include it as a known measurement. Important to the architects of an atomic age is the study of blast effects and blast deflection in relation to various surfaces, angles, and structural techniques. These strange objects preformed in the United States and shipped to Winnery talk for installation by the Army engineers comprise a test conducted by the Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks. The structures are of different shape and size set in different footings and disposed differently to the zero tower. Hence a great variety of data will result. To make certain that atomic secrets are safeguarded is the job of the security force a combined civilian military group who have charge of segregated areas and who make certain that access to these areas is granted only to authorized personnel. Many jobs remain to be done in the short interval remaining as preparation for future tests animal chambers of the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery are being given a limited trial ashore and in the lagoon. Thermal plaques of the Bureau of Gips contain colored and glossed material plastics and fabrics. Gamma stations have columnating tubes correctly aimed to channel radiation from the fireball and the rising clouds to which ionization chambers within the shelter must be aligned. This is another experiment of the atomic energy commission that requires precision and infinite care. Access ports of the gamma stations are shielded with cans of boric acid to absorb stray neutrons. Military personnel whose tasks for the present are completed are being evacuated to a safe distance at sea and shipboard procedures to guard against all emergencies. Security measures are even more painstaking as events go ahead with slow crescendo. Radiopac Simile brings weather information that is added to the great flow of communications traffic aboard the Mount McKinnon. Such a flow of information can General Hull and his staff coordinate the great undertaking. Disposition of the Navy units is reported by rear Admiral Dennebrink the Naval Task Group Commander while Major General Kepner gives the air status. With the staff so readily assembled for discussion of interrelated problems flexibility is important to a complex operations plan. Weather information is vital for weather is the crux of the time schedule. Upon the forecasters depend many of the command decisions now to be made. Long-range weather planes row great areas of the Pacific to study wind structures, cloud formations, and temperatures. Weather information has high priority as communications traffic but knowing the burdens that would be placed on communications particularly on radio teletype and radio telephone circuits engineers of the armed services have planned their networks well. Units of float and ashore are bound together by networks that demonstrate daily and ingenious efficiency. At Quadjalan Air Force photo planes are fueled and camera installations completed for full-scale dress rehearsal. Of the photo towers at the proving ground most interesting is that built on a coral shoal in the middle of the lagoon. Here batteries of motion picture cameras running at various speeds to record the phenomena of atomic explosion will all be remotely triggered. Augmenting them are banks of still cameras are now being accomplished by scientific groups still on the zero island. Blast harps strung with soft wire are set out to give direct readings of blast pressure. Blast cans called penny gauges another economical method of obtaining direct readings of the blast are put in place. Film sensitive to gamma rays is being distributed at hundreds of places some exposed and some concealed in the blast structures. Navy experiments are many. This channel device called a film howitzer will provide data on gamma penetration when angles are involved. Nearby snugly tied in glass cloth is a packet of medical samples. Between steel plates representing various hull thicknesses film will measure radiation penetration in relation to shielding. The Bureau of Ships also wants to study thermal effects and determine decontamination procedures in relation to these racks of paints, varnishes, enamels, woods, and plastics all to be exposed to atomic explosion. As a guide in the design of modern ships the Bureau of Ships needs an abundance of information and the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery searching for a simple inexpensive but accurate index of exposure to gamma radiation is testing these crystals that will change color according to the amount of irradiation. Such tests may have far reaching effects in the exploration of many phases of an atomic era. Shielding afforded by cement is being studied too. Biological assay material exposed for Navy medical studies is guarded from tropic heat and humidity by wrappings of glass wool. Inside the timing station the last brick is fitted into the massive lead coffin that shields the delicate recording cameras from unwanted radiation. Elsewhere on the zero island structures are sealed is the giant laboratory. Mute. The detonation party races from zero island to zero island to close and lock the switches that knit the zero tower to the distant control panel. By radio telephone frequent reports go to the scientific director, new assortment of tasks each one important. The never sleeping eyes of radar reach out lest there be intruders into the deserted restricted areas. Communications has a heavy responsibility. The entire task force has been stirred to intense activity. Let me we talk in eerie darkness. The Air Force drones take off with a perfection born of dilative cloud on sampling nearby at the control island. A telemeter tower looms up. It's antenna ready to receive signals from the blast footings that scientists within the telemetering station can record and interpret. The detonation party arrives and mounts to the control station. Ready for x-ray day and the world's sixth atomic explosion. What secrets will be plucked from the darkness and the unknown? At what new frontiers does man stand? Stand by for final time signal. Stand by for final time signal. At the sound of the gong it will be minus 20 seconds. Stand by sound of the gong it will be minus 10 seconds. Minus 10 seconds. Radioactive samples from the cloud in special filter traps samples that will give an index to weapon efficiency. Whether that exposure was in the sky or on the ground must be carefully monitored. Copters, swift recovery of samples from the water and land cables proves the versatility of these craft. The samples are dropped to neutron measurement crews on the deck of the albarmal and rushed to the ship's laboratories for counting procedures. Copter shuttle service was a great boon to the scientific projects. Small groups go ashore for recovery of instruments and inspection of installation. They are clad in disposable clothing and wear masks to prevent the ingestion of radioactive dust. Copters guide them, restrict their movements and limit their stay. The station has weathered the fuel vital records of the experiments are safe within. The explosion. Some tell a vivid story and need no further explanation. Others require careful scrutiny. Assembly of data begin swiftly although there must be no lingering in radioactive areas. Navy medical men gather up sample packets that will provide diversified material for careful laboratory analysis. As data is computed aboard the albarmal even a simple beer can renders an account of its adventure on the zero island. Weight of water in the crumpled can will give the scientists a direct reading of blast pressures from pre-computed tables. Other data has been recorded on negatives which may be examined like this one. As busy as the scientists have been before they still lose no time now in analyzing the results and compiling figures needed by the test director and the atomic energy commission. But the proof testing of two additional new weapons remains. Commission's new proving grounds and these new tests were made possible by teamwork. While this accounts best the story of the Navy's contribution it was a contribution to a joint task force and to a united effort in Operation Sandstone.