IF ADMIRAL MUSTIN AND THE FOUR THOUSAND OFFICERS, SAILORS, TECHNICIANS, and assorted support personnel of Task Force 88 had any hopes of wrapping up their mission quickly and setting sail for home and the warmer climes of the northern hemisphere, they were soon disappointed. The grand finale of Argus—at least, the part involving rockets and atomic explosions—was going to take longer than planned, and for a reason that surprised absolutely no one: the South Atlantic weather.
The third Argus shot was set for two days after the second, on September 1st, just in time to fulfill the deadline set months before. That deadline had been mostly arbitrary, even though President Eisenhower had announced the successful conclusion of negotiations with the Soviet Union for a nuclear test moratorium just over a week earlier. Officially, however, that moratorium wouldn’t go into effect until midnight on October 31st.
Technically speaking, then, the United States could go on detonating nuclear weapons until then, and in fact, the second phase of the HARDTACK test series was set to begin at the Nevada Test Site in only a couple of weeks. But even had Task Force 88 brought along enough X-17a rockets and atomic warheads to continue piercing the upper atmosphere and lighting up the sky, nobody wanted to hang around in the frigid, squally South Atlantic that long.
So everyone was quite anxious to see off Norton Sound’s final nuclear-tipped rocket as August ended and September began. Even the Pentagon couldn’t help nudging Mustin along. “It is a real pleasure to observe how well all of you are doing a tough job,” noted a cable to Mustin from AFSWP chief Admiral Parker back home in Washington. “A final good one to start September off would be wonderful.”1
The South Atlantic had other ideas. The winds refused to let up, and launch preparations had to be scrubbed and the missile returned to the hangar. In search of better weather and also to perhaps move the magnetic conjugate point closer to the Albemarle up north, Mustin moved the task force farther southward, with the destroyer escort USS Hammerberg on weather picket duty about 250 miles west of the main force.
The Lockheed technicians again wheeled out the Argus 3 missile onto the Norton Sound’s fantail on September 5. The seas were rougher than ever, but still deemed within launch parameters, so the countdown proceeded. Finally, at around 10:30 that evening, Captain Gralla gave the order, the “intent to launch” button was pressed, and …
Nothing happened.
The Argus 3 missile sat calmly on its launcher, unmoving, unconcerned, as the South Atlantic winds blew and the Norton Sound pitched and rolled in the waves. By now, everyone was more or less used to the disconcerting experience of a slight delay after the launch was ordered, but this was taking too long.
“It was like 4, 5, 6 minutes gone by,” Dick Culp recalled. “We were all sitting there thinking, okay, we’ve got a 2 kiloton nuclear warhead sitting on top of a three-stage rocket in the South Atlantic in a storm.”2 What was the best way to get the damn thing off the fantail without obliterating everyone within five miles?
Fortunately, that wasn’t going to be necessary. Technicians quickly determined that the missile had simply failed to ignite—a common phenomenon in the rocket business, and something that was relatively easy to correct. The September 5 launch was officially scrubbed, the missile taken down, and corrective measures quickly applied. “One of the destroyers sent us a book of matches with a comment that maybe these would help,” Keith Mayfield remembered. “That gave us all a good laugh.”3
Twenty-four hours later, everyone was again in place, the sea conditions were unsurprisingly lousy, and the X-17a missile was ready. This time, no book of matches or any other extraordinary measures were required. At shortly after 10 PM, the button was pressed, the ship rolled, and the rocket launched.
Everything went precisely as planned. There were no trajectory problems, no glitches with the rocket staging, no other unforeseen difficulties. Even the skies cooperated, the cloud cover opening up in time for the Norton Sound and the other vessels of Task Force 88 to be rewarded with the sight of the Argus 3 warhead detonating at almost five hundred miles altitude. Following the explosion, they also watched as an artificial aurora formed, shimmering and coruscating in the night. Far to the north in the Azores, the Albemarle also reported seeing a brilliant auroral display, as well as detecting the predicted radio and radar effects. They had hit the magnetic conjugate point more or less dead on at last.
An observer watching from the fantail of the Albemarle vividly described the sight:
The effect began as a blue-green ‘spear’ starting close to the horizon, climbing in back of a cloud, and reappearing above the cloud. The effect first appeared about a half a minute after detonation … a short time after the onset of the effect, a red crown developed at the head of the bluish spear. The red was distinct but not as bright as the green. For the next minute the red spread out while the blue-green lost intensity. The red aurora deepened in color, began to fade, and after 4 minutes was no longer visible. The blue-green spread out and became an indistinct luminous glow covering about 45 degrees of horizon up to about 30 degrees high. This glow slowly faded and was gone about 32 minutes after the aurora began. The brightest part of the initial display was extremely intense as the edges of the cloud which obscured the center of the display were outlined clearly, as if the moon were behind the cloud.4
The display witnessed by the Task Force 88 contingent down south was even more spectacular. The various observation aircraft reported “a bright diffused white light which lit up the sky,” followed by “a long streak in the sky … with a fish-tail or ‘X’ of electric-blue … extending southward with a brilliant magenta,” “pastel lines of blue, green, and rose,” and brilliant streamers of colored light against a background of stars, followed by auroras. Though no equally picturesque eyewitness descriptions seem to have survived from the shipboard audience, the light show they witnessed was undoubtedly no less spectacular.5
From its orbital vantage point, Explorer 4 was also suitably dazzled by Argus 3, observing the electron shell forming and spreading around the planet. It would provide the only space-based observations this time, as the sounding rockets of Project Jason remained grounded for the Argus finale.
“This one went completely as planned, in all respects,” Admiral Mustin later noted with satisfaction. “This was the beginnings of a whole new realm of nuclear effects knowledge.”6
Not to mention vindication for a “crazy” Greek-American physicist, who had just witnessed his nutty idea evolve from scorn and ridicule to a massively ambitious operation of the US military and scientific establishment, all in less than a year.
CONSIDERING THAT HE WAS THE MAN WHO HAD STARTED IT ALL, WHOSE RATHER outlandish idea had grown in less than a year from an off-the-cuff discussion in a Livermore office between himself and his bemused supervisor into a massive, globe-girdling operation involving thousands of people working in utmost secrecy, Nicholas Christofilos is curiously absent from almost all contemporaneous accounts of the Argus tests. Aside from AFSWP scientist Frank Shelton’s meeting with Christofilos at the Pentagon at the end of July 1958, Christofilos is unmentioned in the available records as a participant in any of the frantic activity that ensued over the following weeks. If he was indeed the man of the hour, the person who had posed the questions that so many people were now striving and risking their lives to answer, then just what had he been doing all this time?
Argus’s extreme secrecy, combined with the highly accelerated planning, scheduling, and execution of the entire operation, were not only unique for US nuclear test series but posed a frustrating problem for historians: the project didn’t generate the usual mountains of documentation typical of a huge joint governmental and military undertaking. Even the most comprehensive official history of Argus, the Defense Nuclear Agency report performed as part of the United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests/Nuclear Test Personnel Review in 1982, noted this difficulty: “… a larger than normal amount of the planning and coordination was done in person, without the usual amount of formal preplanning, agenda preparation, and position papers being written.”7As if that weren’t enough, many of the records that did exist have been destroyed in routine housekeeping in subsequent years, while some, such as the small number of radiological film badges used by Task Force 88, have simply been lost. Still other records remain classified.
Which nevertheless does not preclude informed speculation on some matters, such as Nicholas Christofilos’s activities during the Argus shots and their immediate aftermath. He was certainly being consulted on occasion, as in his Pentagon meeting with Shelton, but undoubtedly spent most of the rest of August and September 1958 back at Livermore, concentrating mostly on the Astron project but keeping an ear to the ground for word from the South Atlantic. When the news finally came that his theories had been confirmed and a “Christofilos effect” had indeed been observed, one imagines him nodding in satisfaction, enormously pleased with himself—and not at all surprised. He had, after all, known all along.
And then he surely went right back to work, waiting for the data from Van Allen’s Explorer 4 and the various other scientific observations, his mind already churning with the possibilities of their application to Astron and ever more outlandish ideas. As always with an intellect such as Christofilos’s, answering one question only led to many more.
THEIR MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, THE MEN OF TASK FORCE 88 PREPARED TO SAIL for home, hearth, and family, with the crew of the Norton Sound perhaps especially relieved by the fact that they were no longer carrying live nuclear warheads along as part of their cargo. Though she had followed a solitary course on her outward bound journey from Port Hueneme, the Sound remained with her six other task force companion vessels for now, steaming northward toward the equator and the summer. Deciding that the men under his command had earned a break, Admiral Mustin requested and was granted permission to take his ships to Rio de Janeiro, from which the civilians from Lockheed and Sandia could leave the Norton Sound and fly home. Meanwhile, on the way, his aircraft carrier flagship USS Tarawa continued routine daily flight operations.
The mission may have been over, but not the secrecy. Except for official communications back home, radio contact with the outside world was still prohibited. “There was no noticeable effect on the morale of ship’s personnel,” said Mayfield. “We were sailors doing our job.” Still, noted Norton Sound petty officer Bobby Terrell, “We were told not to say anything to anybody about where we had been and what we did.”8
Which, of course, did not preclude speculation, especially once the sailors of Task Force 88 were set forth on liberty in Rio and began mixing with the civilian population. Even if the crew kept their mouths shut, such restrictions didn’t apply to non–US Navy personnel. Some of the wilder theories about the doings of the Norton Sound and Task Force 88 involved, predictably, the Russians. Although Sputnik 1 had long since fallen back to Earth in January, as had Sputnik 2 in April with its unfortunate canine passenger, Sputnik 3 was still beeping away happily as the Soviets’ 1958 representative in Earth orbit. “Many people said that our mission was to target this satellite and shoot it down,” recalled Quincy Owens. “Of course, this wasn’t true.” Still, not an unreasonable assumption to make concerning a guided missile ship operating in remote waters, far from established sealanes. But the only involvement of the Norton Sound with Sputnik 3 was an occasional sighting of the transiting satellite by ship’s lookouts during those nights that were free of clouds and storm squalls.
As Dick Culp recalled, however, the Norton Sound did have an encounter with Sputnik 1 the previous year. “We were off of Central America, off of Panama basically, looking for some weather to test missiles in, and that was when Sputnik was launched. In the telemetry shack, we played around and we finally picked up the signal. We must have sat there for two hours, just listening to that damn thing go ping, ping, ping.”9
Admiral Mustin took immediate steps to preserve the secrecy of Argus upon arrival of the task force in Rio on September 15. “As soon as I got in, I approached the local US security types in the embassy, who would have been CIA people, of course,” he recounted. “We had in Brazil a rather numerous military mission, commanded by a rear admiral. And we had naval communications security, and so on. I told them what the problem was and alerted them. At the conclusion of our visit of about a week, more or less, there had been no talk in the bars or anywhere. Of the 4,500 men in the task force, the few who knew kept their mouths shut, and those who didn’t know had been successfully diverted off to some other explanation of what was going on.”10
Presumably, that explanation did not involve taking potshots at Sputnik 3. “We were told that it had something to do with the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts,” said Bobby Terrell.11 (Which of course was technically true, if in an oblique manner.) As Mustin explained, “You never can get away with just telling people, ‘Oh, we’re doing something that’s so secret we can’t tell you.’ That just gives rise to all kinds of speculations; you’ve got to give them some other explanation that’s plausible.” The missile firing drills and weather preoccupations of the task force suggested a reasonable cover: “some sort of high-altitude weather observations or something.” It seemed to work, as Mustin recalled. “There was no leak from that task force picked up by security agents who were deliberately alerted to look for it.”12 Although, as the final official Argus report noted, “the press displayed keen interest,” the official line that TF 88 had been “testing new antisubmarine-warfare and long-range communications equipment, taking upper-air soundings, and generally conducting operations normal to such a force” was readily accepted.13 Operation Argus remained comfortably classified—for now.14
In any case, the sailors of Task Force 88 were far more interested in blowing off steam, meeting girls, and enjoying the back pay they had just received than in revealing secrets. They enjoyed their liberty blissfully unaware of being shadowed by security men ever vigilant for indiscretions. “Rio was a blast,” said Ken McMaster. “We had lots of liberty and two months’ pay in our pockets. The people were extremely friendly and helpful.” Without going into detail, Bobby Terrell simply said, “I will always remember Rio.”
Even Admiral Mustin called it “an absolutely delightful stay.” Not only were there no security problems, there were none of the usual incidents routinely expected whenever a group of young sailors hits port after months at sea. Mustin noted, “When we left, the local provost marshal told me, ‘Oh no, we didn’t expect any trouble, because trouble always comes when sailors start to fight over a girl in a bar somewhere. But in Rio, there are so many more girls than there are sailors that they never have to fight over them. If there’s any fighting, it’s the girls fighting over the sailors.’”15
Finally the Rio excursion ended and the ships of Task Force 88 set sail for home. After crossing the Equator once more, the force began to break up, its individual vessels heading for their own home ports along the East Coast. The California-based Norton Sound was on her own again, stopping in Trinidad for a two-day visit before heading for the Panama Canal, the Pacific Ocean, and the final leg of her long trip home to Port Hueneme.
Mustin began to collect messages of congratulations from higher echelons. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke cabled,
YOUR TASK FORCE HAS ESTABLISHED AN UNQUESTIONED RIGHT TO A PROMINENT PLACE AMONG THOSE WHO HAVE DEMONSTRATED TO THE FREE WORLD THAT IT MAY BE THANKFUL FOR THE CALIBER OF OFFICERS AND ENLISTED MEN IN OUR NAVY X TO ALL HANDS IN TASK FORCE EIGHTY-EIGHT A MOST HEARTY WELL DONE.16
Now that the sailors, pilots, missilemen, radar operators, and all the other practical, nuts and bolts, hands-on participants of Operation Argus had essentially completed their work, the focus shifted back to the place where it had all began: the laboratories, the blackboards, and the restless minds of the scientists. There was a prodigious amount of Argus data to be reduced, examined, collated, interpreted, and analyzed. Much of it came from Explorer 4, and it went to the physics building in Iowa City, to be processed and parsed by James Van Allen and his stalwart graduate students. As expected, the satellite finally went dark in mid-September, its batteries exhausted, but it left reams of data as its legacy.
The pervasive secrecy of Argus proved inescapable. “As in the case of the earlier Explorers, paper strip-charts were produced as a first data reduction step for Explorer IV,” explained George Ludwig. “But for Explorer IV, the process was a bit more complicated because of the highly classified nature of the Argus Project.” Before the Argus tests, nothing was classified, but that changed quickly. “During the month following the first nuclear burst, i.e. during the times that portions of the data showed the effects of the tests, Carl McIlwain served as a data screener,” Ludwig noted. “He diverted the charts containing indications of the Argus tests for special handling, where he served as the primary data reader.”17
Those initial results were shared only with a highly select group of individuals within government and scientific circles. The intent was not merely to hide that the United States had just conducted three nuclear tests without the knowledge of the rest of the world. There was also the fact that those tests had been worldwide in their effects—and that the “Christofilos effect,” now also known as the “Argus effect,” had graduated from an intriguing hypothesis to scientific reality, with implications that ranged far beyond the scientific and academic into the military realm.
As Van Allen later wrote, “In each of the three cases, a well-defined … shell of artificially injected electrons was produced.” The Argus shell initially formed at the upper atmosphere detonation point, with electrons zipping back and forth from magnetic pole to magnetic pole, then steadily progressed eastward, just as Christofilos had theorized. For those worried about Soviet skullduggery, Argus also provided some welcome reassurance: “Also, we found that the physical nature of the Argus radiation, as characterized by our four Explorer IV detectors, was quite different than that of the pre-Argus radiation, thus dispelling the suspicion that the radiation observed by Explorers I and III had originated from Soviet nuclear bomb bursts.”18
But the good news was also tempered with some bad. Although the Christofilos effect was real, it also proved exceedingly weak. The Argus electron shells persisted no longer than a few weeks, and not very intensely at that. It seemed unlikely that Christofilos’s “radiation shield” would even inconvenience incoming Soviet warheads, much less completely incapacitate them. There might be some effect on satellites that happened to pass through, but even that would be limited and slight.
Initial disappointment in some quarters, however, soon yielded to a renewed enthusiasm. Of course the Argus effects were modest, argued some. It was only a proof-of-concept thing, after all. The warheads were barely firecrackers, not even two kilotons, and aside from the third shot, they hadn’t even really gone off at a properly high altitude. But what would happen if we got serious: detonating a thermonuclear weapon hundreds or even thousands of miles up, pumping megatons, not mere kilotons, into the magnetosphere? Wouldn’t that give us our missile-killing radiation zone? Proponents of the notion even had a code name picked out for a repeat performance of Argus at the megaton scale: Willow-Argus.
Such ideas might have seemed attractive and even sensible to some in the Pentagon, but any serious proposals along such lines were quickly squelched. With the impending nuclear moratorium at midnight on Halloween, there would be no more plans for nuclear tests in the immediate future. The HARDTACK series was wrapping up in Nevada, but it was far too late to make any such grandiose changes in its schedule to sneak any Argus-type experiments under the wire. And megaton-range tests were out of the question anywhere except the distant Pacific test site.
As the Iowa team continued to study Explorer 4 data, the Project Jason and Midas teams performed their own analyses of the information collected from the sounding rockets, aircraft, ships, ground stations, and radar and radio observations. By the beginning of November, even as the analyses and head-scratching over Argus data continued, enough had been pieced together for presidential scientific advisor James Killian to report preliminary results of Argus to President Eisenhower in a detailed memo on November 3.
Significantly, Killian concentrated his emphasis on the military aspects of Argus, not the scientific. “This historic experiment, probably the most spectacular ever conducted, provides the first verification of the existence of several phenomena of military importance when a nuclear explosion takes place in space above the earth’s atmosphere,” he wrote. “The results yielded by the experiment verified and confirmed the earlier predictions. They affect the design requirements for the electronic and warhead components of intercontinental and intermediate range ballistic missiles, the design of ballistic missile and air defense radar equipment, and, especially, military short wave communications equipment.”19 Already, Killian was thinking ahead to the implications for America’s ongoing ICBM programs.
Still, in keeping with his official role, Killian mentioned the scientific value of Argus, even as that was still being determined by Van Allen and the various other researchers involved. “The experiment bore out the theoretical predictions of Christofilos in a beautiful manner,” Killian waxed enthusiastically, “and provided scientific information of great value about conditions surrounding the earth.” Though he didn’t mention it in his memo to Eisenhower, Killian was also quite aware that the new detail provided by Argus on the space environment and radiation conditions was going to be vital for the nascent manned space effort.
Killian also praised the “extraordinary accomplishment” of all involved. “Especially notable was the successful launching of a large solid-fuel rocket carrying a nuclear payload from the heaving deck of a ship in the squally South Atlantic. Scarcely less so is the fact that the whole experiment was planned and carried to a completely successful conclusion in less than five months.”
On top of all that, noted Killian, “Impressive, too, is the fact that no leaks have occurred despite the large number of civilian and military personnel involved.”20
Unfortunately, though neither Killian, Eisenhower, nor most anyone else concerned with Argus knew it at the time, the leak had already occurred, and would soon burst forth into a flood.