TEST A: EXPLOSION IN AIR 



to fifteen miles away were : APPLING, ARTEMIS, 

 AVERY ISLAND, BARTON, BEGOR, BURLE- 

 SON, CUMBERLAND SOUND, HAVEN, HEN- 

 RICO, LAFFEY, MT. McKINLEY, O'BRIEN, 

 WALKE, WHARTON, WHITING. Other ships 

 were fifteen to twenty-five miles away. 



Waiting aloft were airplanes, manned and un- 

 manned. Nearest manned planes were Dave's Dream 

 and the F-13 photographic plane, Eggleston Eight. 

 Nearest drone planes were three Navy F6F drone 

 planes and one Army B-17 drone plane, all at twenty 

 miles. There were three more Army B-17 drone planes 

 at thirty miles. 



The bomb never reached sea level. When still sev- 

 eral hundred feet in the air, its special fuze came into 

 action and set the uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction 

 in motion. Generation after generation of fast neu- 

 trons sprang to life, born out of the atoms undergoing 

 fission. Each generation was much larger than its 

 predecessor. The last few generations, born only a few 

 millionths of a second after their remote ancestors, 

 were prodigious. The number of neutrons at work ex- 

 ceeded the population of the earth. 



An amount of matter no heavier than a dime was 

 annihilated. But the energy release was enormous, 

 being roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ergs. This 

 was equivalent to the detonation of approximately 

 20,000 tons of TNT, a weight too great to be carried 

 even by the world's largest fleets of giant bombers. 



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