Call it the blasts from the past. The Energy Department next month plans to release films of U.S. nuclear weapons tests — taken by a secret team of filmmakers — that have never publicly been shown.
The announcement came Wednesday at a reunion of a handful of the secret military-film studio's 250 producers, directors and cameramen. The department said it would make public up to 20 films documenting the nuclear test explosions, including footage of Robert F. Kennedy witnessing a low-yield blast code-named Ivy Flats in the Nevada desert in 1962.
The images shown on the faded footage are all too familiar now — a silent flash of brilliant white light that signals detonation, followed by a massive fireball and distinctive mushroom-shaped cloud. Many were taken just before dawn so scientists could study blasts lit up against the night sky.
"I was so amazed at the beautiful colors — the pinks, the oranges, the reds — that I totally forgot that the shock wave was coming. It almost knocked me on my rear," cameraman Pat Bradley, 74, said about the first of dozens of blasts he filmed.
Bradley was one of 20 members of the Air Force 1352nd Motion-Picture Squadron reunited at the American Film Institute to mark the 50th anniversary of what was called Lookout Mountain Laboratory. The military studio produced films of all but the first of the nation's 1,054 nuclear test blasts. The Energy Department plans to eventually release about 100 films a year.
October 24, 1997; James Pierpoint, Reuters
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© Copyright 1999 by David W. Tschanz.
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