Roscoe Bartlett: “the subject that I want to spend a few moments talking about this afternoon really began for our country in 1962. We…”

“the subject that I want to spend a few moments talking about this afternoon really began for our country in 1962. We were still testing nuclear weapons then, and for the first time the United States tested a weapon above the atmosphere. This weapon was detonated over Johnston Island in the Pacific. This was a part of a series of tests called the Fishbowl Series, and this was Operation Starfish in 1962. We had no prior experience with the detonation of a weapon above the atmosphere. We prepared for this test with airplanes and ships using radar and theodelites and instrumentation to measure the effects on the ground from a blast that was some 400 kilometers in altitude. In conversations just today with Dr. Lowell Wood from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, I learned more of the details of the results of that test. They had not anticipated the magnitude of the effects at the ground under the blast; so many of their instruments simply pegged and they were not able to get a clear indication of the effects. I might note that the Soviets had extensive testing experience with EMP over their own territory. They had a much larger territory than we and some of it quite remote; so they were able to instrument more extensively and had a lot more experience than we have had. This was our first and only experience with a superatmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon.…”