Reading Room

MINUTES OF TECHNICAL REVIEW

FACILITY

FIRST FIELD TRIAL, OPERATION BRAVO-CHARLIE

27 MAY 1955, COMMENCING 0930 HOURS

A technical review of the First Field Trial of Operation BRAVO-CHARLIE was conducted at the facility on Friday, 27 May 1955, four days after the conduct of the trial. Present were Dr. , principal technical officer, presiding; Dr. , instrumentation; Dr. , materials; , senior technical assistant; W. Seaton, Division Chief, Western Europe; of the Western Europe Division; of the Office of Scientific Intelligence; and the undersigned, recording.

Dr. opened the review with the observation that the purpose of the meeting was to establish, so far as the technical group was able, the cause of the non-return of the principal vessel, and to advise the Division upon such further measures as the technical group considered necessary.

Dr. reported upon the instrumental record. The apparatus had operated within the predicted parameters throughout the displacement sequence. The field had formed at the vessel as predicted. The displacement had been initiated as commanded. The four seconds had elapsed. No anomaly had been recorded by the instrumentation at the apparatus or, in the period prior to the cessation of the radio link, at the vessel. The plates, as he had noted at the time, showed no shadow such as had been observed at the third exposure of Trial Seven. He had, in the days since the trial, examined the plates further and had found no anomaly within his competence to identify. He observed, however, that the absence of anomaly was not, in his judgment, the same thing as evidence of the trial’s success or failure. The instrumentation had been designed to record the displacement. It had recorded the displacement. It had not been designed to record the further history of the vessel after the displacement, for reason that the further history of the article in the bench trials had not been a matter requiring instrumentation.

Dr. reported upon the question of the coupling and the apparatus. had, in the days since the trial, conducted a thorough examination of the coupling. The coupling had not failed. The apparatus was, so far as could determine, in the same condition after the trial as before. He saw no mechanical cause for the non-return.

A discussion followed concerning the possible causes of the non-return. Mr. of the Division advanced the hypothesis that the displacement had been more profound than the apparatus had been designed to produce, and that the vessel had been displaced to a point from which return was not practicable. Dr. acknowledged the hypothesis as possible but observed that the apparatus did not, upon his understanding, possess a mechanism by which the depth of the displacement was determined; the depth was determined by the setting of the controls, and the controls had been set to the values agreed in advance. If the displacement had been more profound than the setting had specified, that would represent a failure of the apparatus to operate as expected, and no such failure was visible in the instrumental record.

Mr. of the Office advanced the hypothesis that the vessel had returned, but had returned at a position so distant from the point of initiation that the recovery vessel had not located it. Dr. observed that the lateral positional drift at the magnitudes employed in the bench trials, extrapolated to the magnitude of the present trial, would predict a drift of perhaps a thousand yards, which was within the recovery pattern as briefed. A drift of sufficient magnitude to defeat the recovery would represent a departure from the pattern observed in the bench trials by orders of magnitude. He acknowledged the hypothesis as possible but considered it improbable.

Mr. Seaton put a question to Dr. . He asked whether, in the principal technical officer’s judgment, the vessel had returned at all. Dr. replied that he was not in a position to answer the question with any confidence, and that the question was perhaps not best formulated in the form Mr. Seaton had put it.

Mr. Seaton asked Dr. to state the question as he would prefer to put it.

Dr. was silent for some time. The recording officer notes the interval at approximately fifteen seconds.

Dr. then said that he would prefer to put the question as follows. Whether the principal vessel had returned, or had not returned, was a question that presupposed an understanding of the operation of the apparatus that the technical group had hitherto held but that he was, at the present moment, no longer confident the technical group was entitled to hold. The bench trials had shown that small articles were displaced and returned. The technical group had extrapolated from that observation to the conclusion that the apparatus effected the displacement of matter rearward in time and the subsequent return of the same matter to the moment of initiation. The bench trials, however, were not the only evidence available to the technical group. There was the further evidence of the deterioration of organic materials, which the technical group had characterized as a phenomenon of the displacement but for which it had no satisfactory mechanism. There was the further evidence of the lateral positional drift, which the technical group had characterized as a phenomenon of the displacement but for which it likewise had no satisfactory mechanism. There was the further evidence of the shadow upon the plates of Trial Seven, which the technical group had recorded but had not, in the official report, characterized at all. The non-return of the principal vessel was a further piece of evidence of the same kind. The technical group had hitherto treated each such piece of evidence as a peripheral matter to be reconciled with the working hypothesis. He was at the present moment no longer confident that the working hypothesis was the correct framework within which to seek the reconciliation. He would prefer, accordingly, not to formulate the question in terms of return or non-return. He would prefer to formulate it as a question of what the apparatus was doing.

A silence followed Dr. ‘s remarks. The recording officer notes the interval at approximately thirty seconds.

Mr. Seaton observed that the remarks were of a character that he had not heard from Dr. previously, and asked whether the principal technical officer had a hypothesis to offer in place of the working hypothesis.

Dr. replied that he did not, at the present moment, have a hypothesis that he was prepared to advance, and that the work of formulating one would require a considerable interval and might not yield a result. He asked that the question of the further conduct of the program be deferred pending the work.

Mr. Seaton acknowledged the request and undertook to address it in his report to the Chief of Operations.

The meeting then turned to the practical questions arising from the loss of the vessel and her complement, including the cover arrangements to be applied to the loss, the disposition of the recovery vessel, and the communications to be made to the families of the personnel aboard. These matters were addressed at some length and the disposition arrived at is set forth in the inclosed schedule. The undersigned notes that the cover arrangements had been agreed in advance of the trial and were activated upon the discontinuation of the recovery pattern. The principal vessel and her complement are at the present moment reported as lost in a training exercise of routine character. The matter is regarded, for cover purposes, as closed.

Mr. Seaton closed the meeting by observing that the program had sustained a loss of consequence, that the loss would be felt by him personally as the officer responsible for the operational conduct of the trial, and that he would wish the technical group to know that he did not, in the present circumstances, regard the work of the group as having been at fault. He observed further that the program would continue, that the question of how it would continue would be addressed in the days following, and that he would consult with the principal technical officer at the appropriate time upon the further measures to be undertaken.

The meeting adjourned at 1216 hours.

These minutes have been prepared from the contemporaneous notes of the undersigned. They have been reviewed by the principal technical officer prior to circulation. Any correction or addition is to be addressed to the undersigned within ten days of the date of the present document.

Recording Officer

Office of Scientific Intelligence

Inclosure: Schedule of Cover and Administrative Dispositions (under separate cover, )