Did we blow up Port Chicago with a nuke?

On the night of 17th July 1944, two transport vessels loading ammunition at the Port Chicago (California) naval base on the Sacramento River were suddenly engulfed in a gigantic explosion. The incredible blast wrecked the naval base and heavily damaged the small town of Port Chicago, located 1.5 miles away. Some 320 American naval personnel were killed instantly. The two ships and the large loading pier were totally annihilated. Several hundred people were injured, and millions of dollars in property damage was caused by the huge blast. Windows were shattered in towns 20 miles away, and the glare of the explosion could be seen in San Francisco, some 35 miles away. It was the worst home-front disaster of World War II. Officially, the world's first atomic test explosion occurred on 16th July 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico; but the Port Chicago blast may well have been the world's first atomic detonation, whether accidental or not.

www.nexusmagazine.com...

Discussion? I think it could be a good debate topic.

Now THATS how you coverup a story.

...No...

There are dozens of films out there, from the WW2 era, that show ships literally disintegrating after they've been hit by something or after a boiler has exploded... Beyond that, most high energy explosions create a mushroom cloud of sorts.

I can't think of the name of the steamer, but, at the end of the civil war, a paddlewheeler carrying freed POWs back up the missippi suffered a catstrophic boiler failure. The thing vaporized, killing something like 1000 people. According to this guy's logic, the Union possesed atomic weapons in 1865.

My grandpa was in the navy during WW2. He's described the destruction of several vessels to me. These two ships were not taken out by a nuclear blast...

Also, I can't imagine that the military would ship its first a bomb in a fully assembled state. None of the facts, in this theory, line up.

IMHO, no.

Lets add this up.....

You had approx. 4600 tons of munitions in addition to 1780 tons of High Explosives on one ship or combined between the two. Then you had approx. 430 tons of bombs, in railcars, along the piers, waiting to be loaded.

Thats roughly 6800+ tons of 'pure exploding Hell'.

When this stuff went of the discription say "12000 (?)" feet into the air.........I'm am quite sure that someone or everyone thought the world was coming to an end if not a nuke going off.

I have read other info on this that 'some' thought it was a cover up of a actual atomic explosion but I personally think that 6800 +TONS would siffice enough for one to speculate that indeed a atomic bomb went off.....6800 +TONS is one hell of a, sorry for the pun, "Big Bang".

regards
seekerof

[Edited on 22-6-2003 by Seekerof]

And add also the radiation issue. I don't know what the prevailing wind is in Port Chicago, but I would like to point out that such a low altitude explosion produces a lot of fall-out that would probably kill off way more people then the 400( Hiroshima's initial kill was well over 10000, Nagasakhi probably the same??) that were killed all in all. Plus that there is no description of typical effects such as black rain and high wind velocities.

Based on the information presented by the author, I conclude that we are dealing with a conspiracy theory, and a very bad one at it. The explosion of a fireworks storage facility in the Netherlands levelled a whole block as well, but as said, it didn't take an atomic bomb.

6800 tons would be 6.8 KT in yield for a nuke, thats a nice battlefield style mini-nuke.
Probably would incinerate everything within 500m

So?? What is your point? I mean the comparison stops at comparing explosive power. There is no comparison between lethality effects of a 6.8 kt nuke and a 6.8 kt tnt explosion.

I am still trying to figure where their was 'any' a "radiation issue"....... Devils Advocate?


regards
seekerof

if there was,
with the development of bombs at the time, it would have been a real dirty one.

Lot's of radiation issues.
there is no way.

just a huge pile of explosives.

The radiation issue, if nothing else, is certainly a deciding factor. Otherwise, you are saying that nuclear weapons are not with lingering effects.

It is not conceivable that such a weapon, one that they weren't totally sure would be without global effects and one on which they were still woking and designing, would be transported such a distance, and be vulnerable to seizure by the enemy along the way.

THE FILM
The Navy has a film record of the disaster at its Concord Naval Weapons Station. After being challenged, the Navy claimed this was a Hollywood simulation of a miniature explosion. The film shows a typical nuclear explosion, which would have been hard to simulate. According the the Navy, the film was created to support their argument to the US Congress sometime in the 1960s that the remains of the the town of Port Chicago be purchased by the Navy and incorporated into the Concord Naval Weapons Station as a buffer zone in the event of another large explosion.

Significantly, the Navy did not claim the film was a re-creation until after it was suggested that the film could be the record of a nuclear detonation. However, Dan Tikalsky, public affairs chief at Concord, told Peter Vogel, writing for The Black Scholar magazine, that the film was a nitrate-base film, which would require the film to have been produced prior to 1950 when nitrate-base film was replaced with non-explosive cellulose-base film.

Peter Vogel wrote in the Spring 1982 edition of The Black Scholar:

"Based on viewing an edited video copy of that film which was made available to me, I have concluded that the film records, in every detail, the progression of the actual explosion of July 17, 1944 at Port Chicago. For example, early frames of the film suggest a record of the expansion of the Wilson condensation cloud during which the formation of the ball of fire is obscured. Furthermore, the movements exhibited by several large, independent fragments of the explosion over time compared to the speed of the explosion itself are evidence of the very large distances those fragments travelled during the course of the film sequence.

"It is obvious, of course, that only an intentional film record of the blast could have been made since the probability of having, by chance, a motion picture camera rolling and pointed in the right direction at the right time at night is exceedingly remote.

Could anyone care to dig it up?

And did anyone see the video (i'd be glad if anyone has it) of the explosion of a rocket fuel factory in the US?
It looks very much like a nuke.

Here is the explosion of the PEPCON rocket fuel factory in GIF.

Dosen't that look like a nuke?
www.reviewjournal.com...


Another explosion.

www.lrb.co.uk...

Its real simple to answer if it was a nuke or not. Start looking for residual radiation, at the site.

Here is the explosion of the PEPCON rocket fuel factory in GIF. Dosen't that look like a nuke?

no not really. it's just a big explosion. it is a rocket fuel factory after all. what would a nuclear bomb be doing at such a place?

I think the way that the standerd way to measure the power of a nuke is to compare it to tnt. If you have a 5kt nuke then it is equal to 5000 tons of explosive.

I think necro99 was just saying that the explosion looks like a nuclear explosion, not that it was. The truth is that it does look like a small nuclear explosion. the nuke does not really create a different visual experience than traditional explosives. I have seen the detonation of tradition explosive and it does create a mushroom cloud and the look of a small nuclear detonation. You can do it all home by throwing some gasoline on a bondfire.

ok my bad.. thought maybe he was saying that he thought it was a nuke that exploded there.

The statment was necro99 posted could be inturpeted in many ways

LOL!!!
I was saying it looked like a nuclear explosion to the untrained eye.

I think it does not look like a nuke although it requires probably more intense study then just a quick glance.

Differences from nuclear blasts:

-Double initial intense flash(full spectrum including deep UV, way brighter then the sun)
-More gradual formation of the dust cloud, first a somewhat domelike firestorm.

These are some features that are definitely not observed, but maybe a more direct comparison between the two is warranted.

No, it really doesn't look like a nuclear detonation to me.
Had there been a nuclear (Sorry, Republicans, I mean nukular ) detonation it would be known since it'd be difficult to clean up the nuclear afterglow and elevated cases of cancer in the area.