Letter: Hatters handled massive bomb
By Letter to the Editor on July 23, 2024.
Dear editor, RE: “Operation Snowball test era was like ‘science fiction'” July 18. Large detonation research that took place in 1964 was an awesome time to be involved in the Suffield Experimental Station research program pertaining to explosive science and engineering as all aspects of the research were in the development stage. There were no cellphones or individual computers, and photography had just become photo instrumentation. After months of onsite preparation, it was D-Day. Following final instrumentation installations and checks, power was shut down for safety reasons. A colleague and I returned to Ground Zero. Standing beside 500 tons of TNT under a blue sky, no wind and with an ominous quiet we connected the detonation probes that were buried within the charge to the recording system. Once again undercover, the munitions arming team completed the final part of the preparations. Perhaps fittingly my last large-scale trial was in 1976 on the Stallion Range, White Sands, Nev., near where Robert Oppenheimer detonated the first atomic bomb on the Trinity Range. Bryan Laidlaw, Medicine Hat (The author is a former director of the Program Support Division at the Suffield Experimental Station. He retired in 1995.) 12-11
