Nuclear Connection Project
NCP Paper 

NCP-26
The Baker Blast:  Cause For Alarm ?
  South Atlantic, July 25, 1946


Fran Ridge


Date: Saturday, 4 May 2013, updated 21 January 2015

Abstract
After the "foo-fighters" were observed by both Allied and Axis air forces during WWII, during the next two years something happened that was noticed in a one-secret government document.* In 1945 the United States used two nuclear bombs to end the war with Japan. And before the NAZI war machine was also defeated, Germany had contemplated the use of their rocket technology to put up deadly sky platforms in Earth's orbit. The U.S., now in possession of captured German V-2s, was already planning orbital satellites. And if that wasn't  ominous  enough, ramped up nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands the next year illustrated that the friendliest nation on Earth, the only nuclear superpower in the world, was testing effects of nuclear weapons on ships and animals. At the time of these tests, a rash of sightings of "Ghost Rockets" started to show up in  Norway, Sweden & Denmark.  Less than a year later, during  the summer of 1947, there was a major sighting wave in the U.S. which ended with the crash of a flying saucer or possibly the collision of two flying discs at Roswell.

"Someday, not too distant, there can come streaking out of somewhere, we won't be able to hear it, it will come so fast , some kind of gadget with an explosive so powerful that one projectile will be able to wipe out completely this city of Washington." - US Army General Hap Arnold, 1943.

"Such a civilization might observe that on Earth we now have atomic bombs and are fast developing rockets. In view of the past history of mankind, they should be alarmed. We should therefore expect at this time above all to behold such visitations." *
 




The Baker Blast

It has been thoroughly documented that we have been observed for a very long time, especially beginning in the first half of the 20th Century. It had to be obvious to these "observers" that the world had already gone through two destructive world wars. And it had to be disconcerting, to say the least, when the most peaceful nation on the Planet used two nuclear weapons to kill over 200,000 Japanese civilians. And it had to be obvious that things might be about to get worse. The defeated Nazis' had already planned orbiting star wars-type death ray stations. Where was this Planet heading?

Scene from "Space Cowboys" of secret unmanned Soviet missile battle station

As early as 1943, Hap Arnold, the fabled Five Star General of two units of military service, was investigating unidentified flying objects. Found in Box 166 of General Arnold's papers (at AFHRC, Maxwell AFB) is detailed analysis from 1943 that assessed a number of sightings of "small, luminous, silvery discs" reported by B-17 pilots. "Foo fighters" were an anomalous aerial "ball-of-light" phenomena reported and photographed by pilots during combat in Europe in the 1940s. Hap Arnold was intimately involved in the study of the baffling phenomena. General Arnold established the 509th and (like General LeMay) he was closely associated with Colonel William "Butch" Blanchard- the Commanding Officer of that same atomic bomber wing at the time of the 1947 UFO crash.  On July 7, 1947 (just days after the Roswell crash) Arnold is quoted in a UP story that stated, "General H.H. (Hap) Arnold, head of the army air forces during WWII, said today the discs could be a development of United States scientists not yet perfected." Of course during the period immediately following Roswell, U.S. military were obfuscating by giving the public various explanations on the nature of the discs. But Arnold had known many years prior that U.S. scientists could not be the reason for them. He knew that they were seen by his own pilots operating in the European theater, as he had earlier reported.

Three things were going on simultaneously during the summer of 1946, one year after the end of WWII and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and one year before the Wave of 1947 and the Roswell crash. Right in the middle of all this, and on the drawing boards of the United States and the the Soviet Union, (and previously by the defeated Nazi war machine), were plans to construct intercontinental ballistic missiles and terrifying orbital battle stations. With the history of the last 50 years available for all to see, in 1946, newspaper reports of strange  flying objects started coming in from thousands of Scandinavian citizens in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. It is now history that in July and August of 1946 that Scandinavia was engulfed in the first UFO wave of the century: The "Ghost rocket" sightings. [NICAP UFO Evidence, 1964, Hall, X] At the same time during the summer of 1946, shocking atomic tests were being conducted in the Marshall Islands.

The first impression, since the objects were mostly elongated ones, was that they "must be" German V-2 type rockets. Since the war was over and many of the reports came from the Baltic Sea area, the Russians were prime suspects. Nevertheless, the Russians vigorously denied knowledge of the missiles. Before the "ghost rockets" disappeared as mysteriously as they had come, Swedish authorities, annoyed at the flagrant violations of their air spaces, had clamped down with stringent security measures to prevent the owners of the missiles from gaining any useful information about the progress of the flights. For at least five months the inexplicable "fireballs" or "rockets" cavorted around in Scandinavian skies causing much confusion and displeasure. Then authority spoke. Dr. Manne Siegbahn, Swedish nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner, said on September 17: "There is no clear evidence that any guided missiles have been flying over Sweden."

Missiles eliminated, unknown flying objects had been observed.

The United States conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests (by official count) between 1945 and 1992, including 216 atmospheric, underwater, and space tests. The Operation Crossroads series in July 1946, was the first postwar test series and one of the largest military operations in U.S. history. included Shot "Baker" (July 25th). It was the most graphic and the first underwater nuclear explosion that shocked everyone with its destructive power. The series consisted of two detonations, each with a yield of 23 kilotons:

1. ABLE detonated at an altitude of 520 feet (158 meters) on 1 July
2. BAKER detonated 90 feet (27 meters) underwater on 25 July.

The series was to study the effects of nuclear weapons on ships, equipment, and material. A fleet of more than 90 vessels was assembled in Bikini Lagoon as a target. This target fleet consisted of older U.S. capital ships, three captured German and Japanese ships, surplus U.S. cruisers, destroyers and submarines, and a large number of auxiliary and amphibious vessels. Military equipment was arrayed on some of the ships as well as amphibious craft that were berthed on Bikini Island. Technical experiments were also conducted to study nuclear weapon explosion phenomena. Some experiments included the use of live animals.

The support fleet of more than 150 ships provided quarters, experimental stations, and workshops for most of the 42,000 men (more than 37,000 of whom were Navy personnel) of Joint Task Force 1 (JTF 1), the organization that conducted the tests. Additional personnel were located on nearby atolls such as Eniwetok and Kwajalein. The islands of the Bikini Atoll were used primarily as recreation and instrumentation sites.

Before the first test, all personnel were evacuated from the target fleet and Bikini Atoll. These men were placed on units of the support fleet, which sortied from Bikini Lagoon and took safe positions at least 10 nautical miles (18.5 kilometers) east of the atoll.

In the ABLE test, the weapon was dropped from a B-29 and burst over the target fleet. In BAKER, the weapon was suspended beneath an auxiliary craft anchored in the midst of the target fleet.

Baker sank eight ships and damaged more ships than ABLE. The detonation caused most of the target fleet to be bathed in radioactive water spray and radioactive debris from the lagoon bottom. With the exception of 12 target vessels anchored in the array and the landing craft beached on Bikini Island, the target fleet remained too radiologically contaminated for several weeks for more than brief on-board activities.

I've seen all of the nuclear tests that we have been allowed to see, but none disturbed me more than the Baker Blast.  Knowing what I know now, instead of looking at the detonation as just an event in our history, I was observing the heart-pounding, scary event through alien eyes. Already being contemplated was terribly destructive weapons being mounted on missiles and later placed in orbit. Obviously now too was that humans build things and then.......they use them.

It is a given that we were, and still are, being observed.  There is no doubt in my mind that after all the warlike events our observers have seen, culminating in two horrendous World Wars, with the immediate use of not one, but TWO nuclear weapons on Japan the previous year, and rocket delivery systems being tested and used by the super powers, that they had to be alarmed. Just as we watched things develop in the Gulf, prior to the Gulf War, and put our aircraft carriers and U-2's in the region prior to the mass invasion, it is my opinion that something happened in the next 8-10 months that culminated in the first massive UFO Wave of 1947 with over 900 sightings of "flying discs" in a 6-week period that culminated in the UFO crash at Roswell.

And this was just the beginning.

Francis Ridge,
 Coordinator,
The Nuclear Connection Project

Source: http://www.nicap.org/ncp/1956argustests.pdf