Image / Operation Wigwam Underwater Atomic Explosion. The photograph shows the explosion plume from …

Operation Wigwam Underwater Atomic Explosion. The photograph shows the explosion plume from a 20-kiloton atomic device detonated one-half mile beneath the ocean surface 700 miles southwest of San Diego in May 1955. The device was suspended from a raft fabricated from empty oil drums, and which was towed upwind behind a navy fleet tug by a seven mile cable buoyed by floats at 200-ft intervals. More than 150 instruments for recording various phenomena were deployed along the cable, including two balloons at 1500 feet above the surface and two scale model submarines 300 feet beneath the surface. SIO participation in this exercise, under the direction of Gifford Ewing, Associate Research Professor, included the M/V HORIZON, which tracked surface radiation and temperature, and to drop the original Van Dorn water samplers that were to be picked up by helicopters for early-time energy analysis. Both aircraft and helicopters operated from the light carrier WRIGHT (CVL49). The plume height is about 1600 feet and diameter one mile. I was aboard the lead aircraft flying directly over the plume at an altitude of four thousand feet when this photo was taken

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Title: Operation Wigwam Underwater Atomic Explosion. The photograph shows the explosion plume from a 20-kiloton atomic device detonated one-half mile beneath the ocean surface 700 miles southwest of San Diego in May 1955. The device was suspended from a raft fabricated from empty oil drums, and which was towed upwind behind a navy fleet tug by a seven mile cable buoyed by floats at 200-ft intervals. More than 150 instruments for recording various phenomena were deployed along the cable, including two balloons at 1500 feet above the surface and two scale model submarines 300 feet beneath the surface. SIO participation in this exercise, under the direction of Gifford Ewing, Associate Research Professor, included the M/V HORIZON, which tracked surface radiation and temperature, and to drop the original Van Dorn water samplers that were to be picked up by helicopters for early-time energy analysis. Both aircraft and helicopters operated from the light carrier WRIGHT (CVL49). The plume height is about 1600 feet and diameter one mile. I was aboard the lead aircraft flying directly over the plume at an altitude of four thousand feet when this photo was taken
Creator: United States. Defense Nuclear Agency
Date Created and/or Issued: 1955-05
Contributing Institution: UC San Diego, Special Collections and Archives
Collection: SIO Photographs Collection
Rights Information: Under copyright
Constraint(s) on Use: This work is protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Use of this work beyond that allowed by "fair use" requires written permission of the copyright holder(s). Responsibility for obtaining permissions and any use and distribution of this work rests exclusively with the user and not the UC San Diego Library. Inquiries can be made to the UC San Diego Library program having custody of the work.
Use: This work is available from the UC San Diego Library. This digital copy of the work is intended to support research, teaching, and private study.
Rights Holder and Contact: Unknown
Description: Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego, La Jolla, 92093-0175 (https://lib.ucsd.edu/sca)
This digital image is a surrogate of an item in the SIO Photographs Collection (SMC 59).
[Title, Date]. SIO Photographs Collection. SMC 59. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.
Type: image
Subject: Nuclear weapons--Testing
Atomic bomb

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