PREFACE
On Saturday, 1 November 1952, at 0715 hours local
time, and three days before General Dwight D. Eisenhower
was elected President, the United States detonated the
world’s first “Super Bomb” at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall
Islands. This is an accurate historical account of the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s participation in
that test, an unpublicized event that changed for all time
the lives of every person on earth.
The first half of the book treats the conception
and design of the Super at the Los Alamos Scientific
Laboratory, during which Scripps’s assistance is sought
when a late development indicates that the Mike’s energy
release might substantially exceed design expectations,
thus mandating a drastic expansion of the Test Operation.
The latter half describes the frantic efforts of 12,000
military and scientific personnel, living on a small Pacific
atoll, to prepare for and conduct a test of Mike, the first
thermonuclear device, to measure its effects, and to escape
radioactive fallout from a mushroom cloud three times as
large as the Atoll.
The account is narrated by a fictitious participant
who was in a position to know everything. But from this
and future events, I came to know all of the players in
this drama and the details of their experiences. I have
preserved the names and titles of principal Task Force
officers and scientists, and employed fictitious names for
other participants. The entrapment of Jack Clark in the
firing bunker actually occurred two years later during the
BRAVO shot of Operation CASTLE.
W. G. Van Dorn
La Jolla, California
Book Review
“IVY-MIKE is a remarkable book. William Van Dorn has managed to combine a comprehensive description of the major historical activities associated with the Mike test with enough fictional narrative to make it appealing to the non-scientist:”
-----Harold M. Agnew, Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1970-1979.
Ivy-Mike offers a scientific slice of history and glimpse into the post World War-II philosophy regarding nuclear arms. The 1952 test at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands was not only a feat of science but also a feat of logistics. While an army of scientists and military scurried to secure the area prior to the test, late calculations suggested that the bomb’s power was significantly larger than expected. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography was asked to advise the team on alerting vulnerable areas without exposing the top-secret project. Author William Van Dorn, an oceanographer and tsunami expert who worked for the institution during this time, narrates the story as a fictional protagonist named Bob Ward. The author’s conversational writing style makes his complicated subject accessible, even to non-scientists. The account is thorough and historically significant, even as to day-to-day details. Threaded through the history lesson is a romance between Bob and his new love, “Suzy.” The relationship warms the story and, given the setting, this stylistic choice has the ring of verisimilitude. Altogether, Ivy-Mike is an illuminating historical tale.
---Kirkus Discoveries
