In the summer of 1942, we moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where my father attended the Army Air Force Intelligence School. After graduating from the Intelligence School, my father was invited inasmuch as anyone is invited to do anything in the military-to join the school's faculty. Many years passed before I realized what an honor it was to be so invited, an honor bestowed upon only the brightest and most talented students. That realization later became especially poignant to me, given the questions some have raised regarding my father's level of expertise and ability.
After completing his Intelligence School assignment, Dad was designated as an S-2 Intelligence Officer (his unit's principal staff officer, responsible for all military intelligence matters, including security operations, counterintelligence, training, and managing security clearance issues for personnel in his unit). His specific duties involved assessing and reporting enemy activity in the Philippines. Before he left, my parents sold the house in Houston, and my mother and I moved back to Louisiana and stayed with my grandmother at her house in Baton Rouge.
When the Japanese captured the Philippines, my father was evacuated, first to Australia, then finally back to the United States, where he was granted a short leave. One day early in 1944, I walked in the front door of our house and saw a military jacket lying on the couch. My mother was still outside unloading groceries from the car, and I ran back outside shouting, "He's here! He's here!" She dropped the bag she was holding and ran back into the house ahead of me, moving faster than I had ever seen her move before. We both plowed into the kitchen and saw him sitting there at the table, calm as you please, drinking a glass of mills and grinning from ear to ear.
The leave was brief, however, and all too soon he was assigned to the 509th Composite Bomb Group in Nevada as their S-2 intelligence officer. His pride was obvious as he told us that he was to be part of a special, hand-picked group, but he wouldn't tell us anything about what he would be doing, saying that his orders-and the work he would be doing-were classified Top Secret. Once he was settled in his new duty station, he wrote curious-sounding letters to my mother, obviously avoiding any discussion of his work in Nevada. In later years, he unformed us that while he was in Nevada with the 509th, he helped to work out the details of dropping the atomic bomb on Japan.
As the day when the bombs were to be dropped approached, the 509th was reassigned to the island of Tinian, where he participated in briefing and supplying intelligence to the flight crews before the missions to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The bomb on the left side of the following picture is "Little Boy," the uranium bomb that contained about 50 kilograms of U235 divided in separate portions. This bomb was not tested before deployment, because there was a virtual certainty that the design would work. This was the bomb carried by the Enola Gay that destroyed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The bomb on the right was "Fat Man," a plutonium bomb containing only about 10 or 12 kilograms of plutonium. The nuclear component in this bomb was only about the size of a grapefruit. Because it was not known for sure whether the implosion design would work, a test was necessary. A working device of this design was detonated in the New Mexico desert on the morning of July 16, 1945. This was the bomb carried by Bock's Car, which destroyed Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
After the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on September 2, 1945, on the battleship Missouri, my father returned home to Louisiana. Upon his return stateside just after Victory Over Japan day, my dad enrolled in radar school at Langley, Virginia, where he studied advanced radar technology, becoming an expert on the state-of-the-art radar devices of that time. While there, he studied all varieties of Rawin radar targets, including the ML-307 reflector used on the Mogul device later alleged to be the source of the material found at the Roswell site.
Given his extensive training and familiarity with the technology of the day, the later assertion made by some that my father confused UFO debris with a radar target is ludicrous. Had he not known what a radar target (such as the Rawin reflector used on the Mogul array) looked like, he would never have been allowed to graduate from the school.
Early in 1946, we moved to Roswell, New Mexico. Dad was stationed at Roswell Army Air Field, and we lived in base housing for a while before buying a house at 1300 West Seventh Street. On one of his tours in the summer of that year, Dad participated in "Operation Crossroads," the Able and Baker tests of the atomic bombs to be detonated at Bikini Atoll. In the Able test, a 21-kiloton bomb was detonated at an altitude of 520 feet over a fleet of target ships. In the Baker test, a similar device was detonated 90 feet under water. Of the two tests, the Able test-an air burst over the test fleet-caused comparatively little damage, while the Baker (sub-surface detonation) test sank many of the ships in the test fleet.
Dad met with a gentleman by the name of Jeff Holter, who was working for the Department of Defense as a civilian scientist charged with determining wave heights and surges produced by the detonation of the atomic bombs. As it turns out, purely by coincidence, I was to become good friends with Jeff, who lived in my current home town of Helena, Montana. On one early visit to Jeff's laboratory, I noticed a picture of the Baker tests, and mentioned that my father had been there. I was quite surprised when Jeff responded, "I know. I met with him there. We even tossed back a few drinks in the Officers' Club."
My parents spent many evenings playing bridge with Major Don Yeager and his wife Helen, along with Colonel William Blanchard. They would play all night long, consuming copious amounts of their favorite beverages and chain-smoking cigarettes. They also enjoyed going to the 0 (Officers') Club and playing bingo on the weekends. All in all, life was normal for the times-that, of course, was destined to change dramatically in the summer of 1947.
As noted earlier, I do not claim that this chapter is a comprehensive story of my father's life. That would fill an entire book by itself. My main purpose here is to give you a little background information, and to document my dad's journey into government service. Perhaps this will help answer some questions that have, on occasion, been raised about his qualifications for and participation in the events surrounding the Roswell Incident. In a later chapter I'll dig a little deeper into Roswell's lasting effects on my dad, and on our family.
What I primarily wish to convey here is that there was so much more to my father than his place as a mere footnote in history. Perhaps one day I will sit down and tell his whole story; he was a man whom I think the world needs to know. When I started looking through all of my parents' old photos and documents, I learned many things about my father that I had never known. One thing that stands out is that he was an adept wordsmith, who regularly committed his thoughts and feelings-in both poetry and prose-to his personal diary. Perhaps, if he had not been such an honorable officer, he might even have told this story himself. His dedication to the Army and his country ran deep, however, and he never wrote anything that would have run contrary to his orders to keep silent about the events that were about to transpire. Thus, he has left with me the task of seeing that the truth is told. It is a task I feel both honored and humbled to have undertaken.