Operation Fishbowl by Jerry Emanuelson, B.S.E.E. Futurescience, LLC. Note: This is an article about Operation Fishbowl that I originally wrote in 2009 for Wikipedia. Although the article in Wikipedia is substantially unchanged after several months, it is out of my control once it is posted to Wikipedia, so I thought that it would be wise to post my own version on this site. A short video of the Bluegill Prime has been added. Operation Fishbowl was a series of high altitude nuclear tests in 1962 that were carried out by the United States as a part of the larger Operation Dominic nuclear test program. The Operation Fishbowl nuclear tests were originally planned to be completed during the first half of 1962 with three tests named Bluegill, Starfish and Urraca.(1) The first test attempt was actually delayed until June. Planning for Operation Fishbowl, as well as many other nuclear tests in the region, was begun rapidly in response to the sudden Soviet announcement on 30 August 1961 that they were ending a three year moratorium on nuclear testing.(2) The rapid planning of very complex operations necessitated many changes as the project progressed. Urraca was to be a low yield test at very high altitude. The proposed Urraca test was always controversial, especially after the damage caused to satellites by the Starfish Prime detonation, as described below. Urraca was finally canceled, and an extensive re-evaluation of the Operation Fishbowl plan was made during an 82-day operations pause after the Bluegill Prime disaster of 25 July 1962, as described below. The photo at the right shows an array of rockets with instruments for making scientific measurements of high-altitude nuclear tests during liftoff preparations on Johnston Island. All of the tests were to be launched on missiles from Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean north of the equator. Johnston Island had already been established as a launch site for United States high-altitude nuclear tests, rather than the other locations in the Pacific Proving Grounds. In 1958, Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, opposed doing any high-altitude tests at locations that had been used for earlier Pacific nuclear tests. His opposition was because of fears that the flash from the nighttime high-altitude detonations might blind civilians who were living on nearby islands. Johnston Island was a remote location, more distant from populated areas than other potential test locations.(3) In order to protect residents of the Hawaiian Islands from flash blindness or permanent retinal injury from the bright nuclear flash, the nuclear missiles of Operation Fishbowl were launched generally toward the southwest of Johnston Island so that the detonations would be farther from Hawaii. A test named Kingfish was added during the early stages of Operation Fishbowl planning. Two low-yield tests, Checkmate and Tightrope, were also added during the project, so the final number of tests in Operation Fishbowl were 5: Successful High-Altitude Nuclear Tests of Operation Fishbowl Test Name Date Time Nuclear Weapon Yield (approx.) Altitude (km) Longitude, �N Latitude, �W Starfish Prime 09 July 1962 (UTC) 09:00:09 UTC 1.4 megatons 400.1 16� 28' 6.32" 169� 37' 48.27" Checkmate 20 October 1962 (UTC) 08:30:00 UTC Low kiloton 147.3 16� 4' 20.57" 169� 36' 35.95" Bluegill Triple Prime 26 October 1962 (UTC) 09:59:48 UTC Submegaton 48.32 16� 24' 57.03" 169� 36' 11.15" Kingfish 1 November 1962 (UTC) 12:10:06 UTC Submegaton 97.24 16� 6' 48.61" 169� 40' 56.02" Tightrope 4 November 1962 (UTC) 07:30:00 UTC Low kiloton 21.03 16� 42' 26.71" 169� 32' 32.66" According to the United States government reporting system, in the above table: "Submegaton" means a nuclear weapon yield of less than one megaton and greater than 200 kilotons. "Low kiloton" means a nuclear weapon yield of less than 20 kilotons.(4) Probable weapon yields are discussed further in the text below describing the particular test. Detonation times are Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in the format hours:minutes:secondsThe most precise detonation locations can be found in a Defense Nuclear Agency updated report released in 1979.(27) Research Directions: The United States completed six high-altitude nuclear tests in 1958, but the high-altitude tests of that year raised a number of questions. According to U.S. Government Report ADA955694 on the first successful test of the Fishbowl series, "Previous high-altitude nuclear tests: TEAK, ORANGE, and YUCCA, plus the three ARGUS shots were poorly instrumented and hastily executed. Despite thorough studies of the meager data, present models of these bursts are sketchy and tentative. These models are too uncertain to permit extrapolation to other altitudes and yields with any confidence. Thus there is a strong need, not only for better instrumentation, but for further tests covering a range of altitudes and yields."(6) There were three phenomena in particular that required...