FAIRFIELD TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Creating the deadliest bomb in the world and having humans fly through the radioactive cloud and debris moments after the detonation was the focus of a 1956 experiment called Operation Redwing.
“My job was to take my airplane into the cloud after the explosion, and bring home some radioactive material, so they could decide how efficient the bomb had been,” said Barry Landry.
The Fairfield Township resident and joined the Air Force after graduating West Point because of his love to fly. At the time he had no idea that he would be part of a handful of pilots charged to take on the classified missions.
“We were wearing a lead vest and, and we didn't breathe any of it. We knew it was not good for you. So, we do whatever we knew how to, to avoid any more contamination,” Landry said.
Testing by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission conducted 235 atmospheric nuclear weapon tests between 1945 and 1962. During that time roughly 220,000 Department of Defense personnel with both civilian and military members took part in the tests. Barry Landry was one among approximately 142,000 who took part in the testing in the Pacific.
“I was in four different atomic bombs and one H bomb cloud,” Landry said.
The idea of the flights was to help hone in on the perfect weapon design.
“Because in those days, the explosion was not very efficient. Only a fraction of the material actually exploded, the rest of it got scattered by the explosion. That's why the bombs were considered to be so dirty. And the idea was to develop them to the point where they, the reaction lasted almost to completion before the thing actually let go. And the only way they could do that was to learn how to design the bombs themselves, and also the way they put them together when they exploded them,” Landry said.
He said the process was laborious and took several crew members to help in between flights.
“We had to then decontaminate the airplanes a certain amount, so we could fly them again, it required change in engines, because it couldn't clean the engine well enough to permit you to be able to fly on that airplane anymore,” he said.
As for the reason behind sending pilots through the radioactive plumes moments after the explosion. Landry says it comes to the quality of the sample and them being the best means to do it at the time.
“The cleanest way to get a sample was to take it out of the air before it got contaminated by falling on the ground or anything like that, or into the water. So they we had these specially equipped airplanes to go into the clouds,” he said.
The four different flights Landy flew were enough. At that point, he had received the maximum level of radiation exposure and was pulled from Operation Redwing.
You can read unclassified reports on Operation Redwing by following this link.
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