No one was supposed to look directly at the flash. Once it had passed, you could watch, but only through the special welder's-style glasses supplied...Then, at 5:10 AM the countdown began.
The Project was using the same frequency as radio station KCBA out of Delano, California. At that moment, the station was broadcasting melodious strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner," which intermingled with the voice of physicist Sam Allison as he counted down the final moments to the test.
The General Groves got in position and waited. What would he do, he wondered, if once the countdown ended, nothing happened?
"...by the dawn's early light..."
The years of preparation. The money. The manpower.
"...at the twilight's last gleaming.."
Then, at 5:29:45, Mountain War Time, it happened.
"...And the rockets' red glare...the bombs bursting in air..."
Up on the hill 25 miles away, physicist Joan Hinton felt the heat first. She would later say the it "looked like a sea of light" that was "gradually sucked up into an awful purple glow that went up and up into a mushroom cloud. It looked beautiful as it lit up the morning sun." Then came the rumbling...
More than 100 miles away, the Socorro Chieftain newspaper reported:
"The flash was intensely white and seemed to fill the entire world. It was followed by a large crimson glow..."
The Test Gadget vaporized the steel tower and carved a crater six feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter. The temperature at the center of the mass of fire was four times the temperature at the center of the sun. The resulting pressure, more than 100 billion atmospheres, was the greatest ever to exist on the surface of the earth. It knocked men down who were standing 10,000 yards away and the resulting flash was visible for more than 200 miles and audible for at least 40. And 150 miles away, a drowsy-eyed woman in Arizona told the local paper she wondered why she "saw the sun come up and go down again."
The Girls of Atomic City
The Untold Story Of The Women Who Helped Win World War Two
Denise Kiernan, pp 436-438
