Sherman tanks at Trinity Site

Not the first time I have heard rumors of a tank being buried up at Los Alamos. The gent whom I corresponded with through the Nukeworker site also said something similar about a trench that is about the be excavated rumored to hold a tank and a truck.
I don't know why they would have gone to the trouble of driving a tank back to Los Alamos, or having it trucked via a transporter though. Would it have had any scientific relevance from driving around at ground zero? The aircraft that were parked and exposed to one of the blasts at Frenchman Flat back in the 50's, while not rolled across ground zero, were contaminated and they were later moved off to the edge of the flat to 'cool off' for several years. I think a B-17 from that group is now flying around with someone.
So, I still wonder how long they would have waited for a Sherman to 'cool off' before driving or transporting it to Los Alamos or Kirtland (if it wasnt just buried).

 

Again, not the Trinity Sherman tanks, but an M4A3E8 that was buried at a
psychiatric center. The American Armored Foundation now has this tank with an M2 plow attached that had been buried at a state hospital for 21 years. Be sure to go to their website to see photos of the excavation and what the tank looks like today.

 

Thanks, bongopete! I googled and came up with this illustrated full history of the tank in question.

 

Thanks Sentinel! That was great!!!! Really appreciated reading that.

 

So, after reading Sentinels posting about the Centurion tank at the EMU test site in Australia, I get an email from an individual who works at White Sands. He only added that a rumor there (White Sands) is that the tank that drove into the crater was so radioactive that the boys at Los Alamos had it buried at the site instead of hauling it away. He said that he personally didn't believe that it was buried there. His belief was that it was washed down for decon and went to Los Alamos.
He based that on the fact that when Los Alamos was face with cleaning up the site, they never mentioned a buried tank. They (and here is where we go off on a tangent...regarding something I had never heard of) "dug out Sleeping Beauty and destroyed it. They dug out the storage containers of Trinitite and took them away. There was not mention of anything else."

Does anyone know what 'Sleeping Beauty' is???
As I said, totally on a tangent from what this thread was related to, but I found a letter from a Michael Swickard Ph.d in New Mexico who wrote a little thing where he said that there had been THREE atomic tests at Trinity, one failed. The one that failed was an underground test that didnt go off and was left in place until 1967 when the boffins knew that the batteries that were powering the device were well and truely discharged and that this one was nicknamed 'sleeping beauty' Say WHAT????????

 

Over at the 'Manhattan Project Heritage Preservation Association' (MPHPA) website, there is a photo of both Sherman tanks together. This photo was taken by Marvin Davis, who was an MP at the site during Manhattan. I don't think I had seen both vehicles together before, so it is worth looking at.

 

I also saw a study or review of the films John Wayne had been in where they suspect radiation exposure and there were many actors from the same film that seemed to turn up with possibly radiation related cancers but we can only wonder and try to be safer into the future with these things. I do know there was a lack of careful procedures by those observing and handling equipment around the first experiments. Some observers to the first blast actually remembered taking down their eye protection to observe the wild colors produced by the blast. That was something the dark lenses obstructed a view of and they wanted to see it, a natural reaction. I don't know where one may find it but the test blasts in Nevada are on film and the resulting change at the surface of the earth over the buried blasts can only be viewed to comprehend how powerful these blasts were. I was made to study these things in an honors class at Highlands University for some physics credits. I think that if there was radiation that harmed the filming(John Wayne) it would be gone over some length of time even if there was a harmful immediate exposure. I will remind you that the clouds emanating from Nevada blasts were visibly able to be followed over the areas they covered at the time. Ranchers and herdsman saw this phenomena and did not know what it was until later.

 

Hi Victor,
I think the Wayne film in question was 'The Conqueror' and that parts of it were filmed around St George Utah. Supposedly they filmed in areas that had had repeated fallout from the Nevada Test Site. Also, supposedly, large quantities of the sand were trucked in from the same area they had been filming, back to studios in LA to keep the same look (of the sand). At least this is what I remember from a documentary that came out back in the 80s or so about this.
I don't know how much proof there was that the sand (both in Utah and what was trucked to LA) was actually contaminated, but if not, it certainly would be one of those freak coincidence things considering the number of cancer cases that ran among the cast and crew.

 

Just a matter of degrees between Trinity nuke and the demise of John Wayne. Who'd have thunk?

 

Thanks Bongo, that enabled me to look a few things up and I guess 46 people(out of 220) by the 1980's had some form of cancer that was fatal and that was way above the norm for this many people so I think they probably had some harmful exposure and there are comments they may have known there was radiation as some knew what was going on in the area and actually read a geiger counter, but none were knowledgeable enough to take any precautions. Not many were aware of any dangers from exposure.

 

Still no idea as to the final disposition of the Trinity Sherman tanks...but I now know that Luis Alvarez at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project located the two tanks at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. They were then inspected at Salt Lake City for their initial use in the RaLa experiments at Los Alamos as mobile labs after they were stripped internally of warfighting gear. After it was discovered that fixed shelters would suffice, the tanks then later found use at Trinity. Only one tank was fitted with lead shielding (approx 15 tons) which was to drive over ground zero itself. The other was fitted with rockets which would be shot onto ground zero from a near point and then dragged back out.

 

Pete,
A find by a mate on WW2T has led to a snippet of video of the Trinity machines.
Not moving, but some more detail.

Trinity Sherman - World War 2 Talk

~A