 of atomic weapons at NEWeTalk at all. This test took place in the spring of 1951. It was carried out by the 8,500 members of Joint Task Force Three, men drawn from the Atomic Energy Commission, its contractors, military, industrial, and educational laboratories, and from the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Wood Casada, United States Air Force. Dr. Alvin C. Braves, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, deputy commander of Joint Task Force Three, and Scientific Directors Program. In the days of World War II, an entire American city of men, women, and children was hidden behind a seemingly unimportant postal number, box 1663. Today, such secrecy is no longer possible. Today, the city boldly and proudly parades the normal pattern of American living. This now appears to be an average city of schools and playgrounds, of houses and apartments, a place to live where men and women can feel at home. But for all of these things, this city is not an ordinary city. This is the mile-high city of Los Alamos, the atomic city. This is a modern Pueblo created by the people of the United States as a research and development center for atomic weapons. This is still a city where citizens take for granted security fences, guards, passes, caution. The proof testing of weapons, a routine practice by now, is the job of a busy section of the Los Alamos laboratory called J Division. With such a specialized division carrying on tests, the other parts of the laboratory, operated for the atomic energy commission by the University of California, can continue undisturbed in vital research and development work. One of the proving grounds is an outdoor laboratory, an Iuitoc atoll in the Central Pacific. This trust territory of the United States has been used before as a testing ground for Operation Sandstone in 1948. But three years have passed since Sandstone, three years to bring new and improved atomic weapons to this secluded equatorial land. This land of spaced islands arranged like individual beads of a necklace. And the new test operation will be called by its code, greenhouse. But greenhouse means more than just a proving ground, more than a group of scientists from Los Alamos. Operation greenhouse is big, big in logistics, big in the scope of its aims and purposes. To meet this problem, a self-contained unit, a task force, is organized. This is a four-part organization, Atomic Energy Commission, Army, Navy, and Air Force, working together under a unified command. As for the larger scope of greenhouse, it is a real challenge to include in a test all of the valuable experimentation that can come out of the detonation of atomic weapons. The armed services, for instance, have a continuing need for information on the offensive and defensive effects of atomic blasts. In these days of international tension, they need to know the physical results of atomic warfare, even though Los Alamos is the parent laboratory, so to speak, scientists and technicians from other government agencies, from American industry, colleges, universities, and other organizations throughout the country, men working in related fields are asked to participate to help in instrumenting the operation. Since any we talk is a distant and primitive area, men have to leave their stateside laboratories and homes for a period running into months. Since 1943, when Los Alamos was established, men from this Mesa have left the continental limits of the United States twice before to test the weapons they have created. Now the proving ground comes alive like a university campus when students return from the summer holidays. Perry Island is home for task force headquarters and for the scientific group. Any we talk island is home base for the Army and Air Force. The Navy stays aboard its ships anchored in the lagoon. These are the dormitories of any we talk university. Spread out and separated from the dorms by a safe distance are the laboratories. The individual test islands, seemingly like so many science buildings on college grounds. The long awaited forward area work begins. Even in a world of tension, atomic energy is more than thunderous test detonations and calculated planned devastation. We still have much to learn of our nuclear fuels, uranium and plutonium. This is the precious stuff so valuable it makes sort after goals seem like common scouring powder. Whatever can be done to conserve it is to our national advantage. To prove test weapons scientifically and accurately, it is necessary to know the behavior inside the weapon and also to know the outside behavior of the forces let loose, the effects of the weapon, the facts and figures on blast, heat, light, radiation. Weapon designers go to great lengths to get this kind of information. For example, to measure blast, instruments are suspended from these plastic balloons. This gives a pressure reading in free air. High speed cameras capable of taking several million separate pictures per second are placed close to zero point. They will record the story of nuclear forces from a vantage point where man himself dares not stand. Radiation will be measured by devices on whose photographic emulsion will be indulably imprinted the record of swift moving invisible nuclear particles. Men of greenhouse tackle air anyway talk problems with the same kind of scientific approach they use in their own home laboratories. Attention to detail, elimination of variables, a check and double check of key apparatus. This is actual on the spot experimentation. There is no running back home for a forgotten test tube. And then the time comes for which all. And the men of greenhouse move back like a crowd at a beach aware of the incoming tide. They pick up their belongings and retreat to safety. A test shot is ready. From the wealth of diversified crafts and skills that go into the making of a great industrial country are drawn those men with the specialized skills necessary to understand and measure atomic detonations. But to maintain these men, to carry on a weapons test on the specific outpost, support is necessary. Not alone technical support, but the kind of support concerned with just plain everyday living. There's a detail like food, for instance. It takes more than a picnic lunch to keep 8,500 hardworking men happy. And it's no trick at all to get hot and dirty and dusty. If you don't believe it, try a coral atoll sometime. Water is the answer, but water is a crucial commodity. It has to be pumped from the coral beds, then distilled to remove the brackish salt. And then there's the problem of getting to and from work. Most of the time walking is out of the question, unless you have a natural tendency to be amphibious. Small boats fly between the very solace of this giant lab in the middle of an ocean. And light planes are in constant demand for shuttle service between the islands. Although the armed forces perform the unheralded but necessary job of supporting Operation Greenhouse, it is not their principal role. Like the Atomic Energy Commission, the Army, Navy and Air Force are here to learn. This is a chance for them to study a weapon still new to warfare. The more the services know about the effects of atomic weapons, the better able they will be to use them if necessary. To get the answers they need, samples of the type of tools a military man uses are arranged at various distances from zero point. An armored tank. This powerful land weapon of the Army has instruments mounted inside, which will record the amount of heat an atomic bomb creates in the interior of a steel hull. How much radioactivity, how much pressure? A bomb proof roof, capable of withstanding an atomic blast directly under the detonation point. Just how thick should it be? How much concrete? How much reinforcement? By studying this building, representative of structures in industrial areas, the Air Force will gather data on the effect of atomic bombs on potential industrial targets. What will happen to this airplane wing when blast and heat hit it? What will be the effect on this fuselage? To be more realistic, these aircraft will actually fly into the blast area and record the results. They will find out how close an aircraft can come to the heart of the explosion without suffering serious damage. All of these things to learn more about the tools of atomic warfare. At Joint Task Force III Headquarters on Perry Island, the commander and his staff make their final decisions for another zero hour. Weather information from the scattered outline meteorological stations from the reconnaissance squadrons comes funneling into headquarters. Precipitation, Winsiloft, cloud cover, the weather situation is good, the decision is made. Now in dramatic pre-dawn darkness, the drone aircraft are ready to take off on their missions. Giant planes without a living man on board and with all their tons of weight and thousands of horsepower, flown by a remote control officer on the ground through an incredible gadget in his hands. On signal, the first safety crew abandons its drone. Comes now the fantastic achievement of a four-motor bomber taken safely off into the air by those distant magic fingers, which then, with even mightier magic, switch the manless controls of the drone aircraft to a mother plane along. Each mother hovering impatiently to take its cruelest baby on through the darkness guiding it into the unknown. To top the fantasy of the cruelest bombers, come the fighters. For the first time in airplane history, drone jets, pilotless, cruelest, at super speed, blown up into the night sky, controlled only by a driver and overdriver and other jet aircraft who electronically guide the destinies of their jet drones. As in previous atomic tests, the drones are flying laboratories for the scientists. High above the test islands, they are in a strategic position to collect important information on the still not so familiar event, an atomic blast. Watch. The men of science are thinking beyond the current weapons. They are exploring new horizons, looking for data basic to the science of nuclear physics. Atomic investigators cannot tell whether their calculations were right or wrong merely by watching a weapon go off. They must find out what goes on inside. They must attempt to look into, to understand further the invisible world of the atom. It is difficult work, complex, thought-provoking, calling for mental courage and physical stamina. Without delicate instruments, they would be lost. For what they're searching for is in a world so small that the average human mind box are trying to conceive of it. We speak so glibly of time, yet do we have any idea of a millionth of a second? Instruments such as these oscilloscopes have the ability to measure events that occurred during the subfractional span of a heartbeat of the one millionth part of a second. But atomic energy is not being channelized to weaponaring alone. To learn more about the effects on human life, medical experiments are being run. Test animals will be used to enable men of medicine to learn what pressure, heat, and radiation does to living tissue. A nation gearing up to an effective civilian defense program must have all the answers, facts about radiological medicine, detection devices, protective materials. As an illustration, these mice will be exposed to varying doses of atomic radiation and medical men will study the results. Information gained from buildings will help determine the vulnerability of United States buildings to atomic attack so that adequate civil defense planning may be carried on. Materials are to be exposed which are considered as potential fire hazards in atomic warfare. Such information will influence defensive thinking. It will aid in the selection of materials, design of equipment and structures, disaster planning. And so while tests which can affect the security of a nation, wait. While naval vessels make their ceaseless security patrols, while radar scans the skies, while military police guard the beaches. In the master control station, a door is closed, padlocked. The single key put in the pocket of one man head of the firing party. No one will enter here until the party returns from its final round of checking circuits, closing switches, making ready for the release of nuclear forces. The party returns to its home island and all is put in readiness. Before the break of day, another momentous blast will light the pre-dawn sky over any we talk. Set into being by a mechanical gadget called a sequence timer. Measure and understand the nuclear forces of the atom is over. Any we talk at the proving ground shrinks again to garrison size. But preparations must be made for another series of experiments. The need for continuing tests of atomic weapons is self-evident. We need now, as never before, to expand our knowledge in the field of atomic weapon airing. If any one group of people recognizes the urgency of time, it is the people living and working on this isolated mesa in New Mexico. The men of Los Alamos return to their mile-high, security-guarded laboratories to continue with the development of nuclear weapons and important research in many other aspects of the atomic energy program. The people of this mesa well know the important responsibility placed on them for what answers are found within a seemingly insignificant building, what happens behind the wire fences, what a man carries home with him and for security's sake will not speak of. These things are vital to Americans everywhere. The city once secretly hidden behind post office box 1663. Today is so actively and openly engaged in the atomic energy program that it can no longer be cloaked behind a postal number. For this is the city designed and dedicated to the study of nuclear forces in the atomic age. A study which concretely means to the American people that new, improved atomic weapons have been developed and proof-tested. The nation's stockpile position has been bettered. We have added another stone to our small pile of knowledge about the complex nucleus of the atom. We have gained important offensive and defensive knowledge on the effects of atomic blasts on military equipment. We have also learned necessary realistic lessons for our own protection. We have studied defense for the individual, defense for the nation. As a result of atomic tests such as Operation Greenhouse, we are gathering the know-how, the strength to defend that which we prize so highly. The land that is our heritage, this land that is our home.