Wow! signal

Wow! signal


The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of The Ohio State University then located at Ohio Wesleyan University's Perkins Observatory, Delaware, Ohio. The signal bore expected hallmarks of potential non-terrestrial and non-Solar System origin. It lasted for the full 72-second duration that Big Ear observed it, but has not been detected again. The signal has been the subject of significant media attention. Amazed at how closely the signal matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal in the antenna used, Ehman circled the signal on the computer printout and wrote the comment "Wow!" on its side. This comment became the name of the signal.

Interpretation of the paper chart


The circled alphanumeric code 6EQUJ5 describes the intensity variation of the signal. A space denotes an intensity between 0 and 1, the numbers 1 to 9 denote the correspondingly numbered intensities (from 1.000 to 10.000), and intensities of 10.0 and above are denoted by a letter ('A' corresponds to intensities between 10.0 and 11.0, 'B' to 11.0 to 12.0, etc.). The value 'U' (an intensity between 30.0 and 31.0) was the highest detected by the radio telescope, on a linear scale it was over 30 times louder than normal deep space.[1] The intensity in this case is the unitless signal-to-noise ratio, where noise was averaged for that band over the previous few minutes. Two different values for its frequency have been given: 1420.356 MHz (J. D. Kraus) and 1420.4556 MHz (J. R. Ehman). The frequency 1420 MHz is significant for SETI searchers because, it is reasoned, hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, and hydrogen resonates at about 1420 MHz, thus extraterrestrials might use that frequency on which to transmit a strong signal. The frequency of the Wow! signal matches very closely with the hydrogen line, which is at 1420.40575177 MHz. The two different values given for the frequency of the Wow! signal (1420.356 MHz and 1420.4556 MHz) are the same distance apart from the hydrogen line—the first being about 0.0498 MHz less than the hydrogen line, and the second being about 0.0498 MHz more than the hydrogen line. The bandwidth of the signal is less than 10 kHz (each column on the printout corresponds to a 10 kHz-wide channel; the signal is only present in one column). The original print-out of the Wow! signal, complete with Jerry Ehman's famous exclamation, is preserved by the Ohio Historical Society.

Location of the signal


Determining a precise location in the sky was complicated by the fact that the Big Ear telescope used two feed horns to search for signals, each pointing to a slightly different direction in the sky following Earth's rotation; the Wow! signal was detected in one of the horns but not in the other, although the data was processed in such a way that it is impossible to determine in which of the two horns the signal entered. There are, therefore, two possible right ascension values:

1-19h22m24.64s ± 5s (positive horn)

2- 19h25m17.01s ± 5s (negative horn)

The declination was unambiguously determined to be −27°03′ ± 20′. The preceding values are all expressed in terms of the B1950.0 equinox. Converted into the J2000.0 equinox, the coordinates become RA= 19h25m31s ± 10s or 19h28m22s ± 10s and declination= −26°57′ ± 20′.This region of the sky lies in the constellation Sagittarius, roughly 2.5 degrees south of the fifth-magnitude star group Chi Sagittarii, and about 3.5 degrees south of the plane of the ecliptic. Tau Sagittarii is the closest easily visible star.

Time variation

The Big Ear telescope was fixed and used the rotation of the Earth to scan the sky. At the speed of the Earth's rotation, and given the width of the Big Ear's observation "window", the Big Ear could observe any given point for just 72 seconds. A continuous extraterrestrial signal, therefore, would be expected to register for exactly 72 seconds, and the recorded intensity of that signal would show a gradual peaking for the first 36 seconds—until the signal reached the center of Big Ear's observation "window"— and then a gradual decrease. Therefore, both the length of the Wow! signal, 72 seconds, and the shape of the intensity graph may correspond to a possible extraterrestrial origin.

Searches for recurrence of the signal

The signal was expected to appear three minutes apart in each of the horns, but this did not happen.Ehman unsuccessfully looked for recurrences of the signal using Big Ear in the months after the detection.

In 1987 and 1989, Robert Gray searched for the event using the META array at Oak Ridge Observatory, but did not re-detect it. In a July 1995 test of signal detection software to be used in its upcoming Project Argus search, SETI League executive director H. Paul Shuch made several drift-scan observations of the 'Wow!' signal's coordinates with a 12 meter radio telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank WV, also achieving a null result. In 1995 and 1996, Gray also searched for the signal using the Very Large Array, which is significantly more sensitive than Big Ear. Gray and Simon Ellingsen later searched for recurrences of the event in 1999 using the 26m radio telescope at the University of Tasmania's Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory.Six 14-hour observations were made at positions in the vicinity, but did not detect anything similar to the Wow! signal.

Speculation on the signal's origin

Interstellar scintillation of a weaker continuous signal—similar, in effect, to atmospheric twinkling—could be a possible explanation, although this still would not exclude the possibility of the signal being artificial in its nature. However, even by using the significantly more sensitive Very Large Array, such a signal could not be detected, and the probability that a signal below the Very Large Array level could be detected by the Big Ear radio telescope due to interstellar scintillation is low. Other speculations include a rotating lighthouse-like source, a signal sweeping in frequency, or a one-time burst. Ehman has stated his doubts that the signal is of intelligent extraterrestrial origin: "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-sourced signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris. He later recanted his skepticism somewhat, after further research showed an Earth-borne signal to be very unlikely, due to the requirements of a space-borne reflector being bound to certain unrealistic requirements to sufficiently explain the nature of the signal. Also, the 1420 MHz signal is problematic in itself in that it is "protected spectrum": it is bandwidth in which terrestrial transmitters are forbidden to transmit due to it being reserved for astronomical purposes. In his most recent writings, Ehman resists "drawing vast conclusions from half-vast data"—acknowledging the possibility that the source may have been military in nature or otherwise may have been a production of Earth-bound humans.

United States Numbered Highways

United States Numbered Highways

The system of United States Numbered Highways (often called U.S. Routes or U.S. Highways) is an integrated system of roads and highways in the United States numbered within a nationwide grid. As these highways were coordinated among the states, they are infrequently referred to as Federal Highways, but they have always been maintained by state or local governments since their initial designation in 1926. The numbers and locations are coordinated by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO).The only federal involvement in the AASHTO is a non-voting seat for the United States Department of Transportation. North-to-south highways are odd-numbered, with lowest numbers in the east and highest numbers in the west. Similarly, west-to-east highways are even-numbered, with the lowest numbers in the north and highest numbers in the south. Major north–south routes have numbers ending in "1" while major east–west routes have numbers ending in "0". Three-digit numbered highways are spur routes of each parent highway but are not necessarily connected to their parent route. Divided routes exist to provide two alignments to one route, even though many have been eliminated, while special routes, usually posted with a banner, can provide various routes, such as an alternate or bypass route, for a U.S. Highway. The Interstate Highway System has largely replaced the U.S. Highways for through traffic, though many important regional connections are still made by U.S. Highways and new routes are still being added.


Prior to the U.S. Routes, auto trails were predominant in marking roads through the United States. In 1925, the Joint Board on Interstate Highways, recommended by American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), worked to form a national numbering system for roads. After several meetings, a final report was approved by the Department of Agriculture in November 1925. After numerous complaints from across the country about the assignment of routes, several modifications were made and the U.S. Highway System was approved in November 1926. As a result of compromises made to get the U.S. Highway System approved, many routes divided into two alignments to serve different towns. In subsequent years, the AASHTO called for splits in U.S. Routes to be eliminated. Expansion of the system continued until 1956 when the Interstate Highway System was formed and many U.S. Routes were replaced by Interstate Highways. Despite the Interstate system, U.S. Routes are still used, and often used as alternate routes for Interstate highways during heavy traffic or accidents.

System details

In general, U.S. Routes do not have a minimum design standard, unlike the later Interstate Highways, and are not usually built to freeway standards, although some stretches of U.S. Routes do meet those standards. Many are the main streets of the cities and towns through which they run. However, new additions to the system must "substantially meet the current AASHTO design standards".[3] As of 1989, the United States Numbered Highways system has a total length of 157,724 miles (253,832 km). Except for toll bridges and tunnels, very few U.S. Routes are toll roads. AASHTO policy says that a toll road may only be included as a special route, and that "a toll-free routing between the same termini shall continue to be retained and marked as a part of the U.S. Numbered System.Although U.S. Route 3 meets this obligation, as in New Hampshire, it does not actually follow tolled portions of the Everett Turnpike. However, four toll roads in the system follow this:

• U.S. Route 51 uses part of the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway in Illinois; the old road is Illinois Route 251.
• U.S. Route 278 uses the tolled Cross Island Parkway in South Carolina; the old road is U.S. Route 278 Business.
• U.S. Route 412 uses the Cimarron Turnpike in Oklahoma; the old road is U.S. Route 64.
• U.S. Route 412 uses the Cherokee Turnpike in Oklahoma; the old road is Alternate U.S. Route 412.

Numbering

The two-digit U.S. Routes follow a simple grid, in which odd-numbered routes run generally north to south and even-numbered routes run generally east to west. (U.S. Route 101 is considered a two-digit route, its first "digit" being 10.) The numbering pattern for U.S. Routes is the reverse of that for the Interstate Highway numbers—U.S. Routes proceed from low even numbers in the north to high even numbers in the south, and from low odd numbers in the east to high odd numbers in the west. Numbers ending in 0 or 1 (and U.S. Route ), and to a lesser extent in 5, were considered main routes in the early numbering, but extensions and truncations have made this distinction largely meaningless. For example, U.S. Route 6 was until 1964 the longest route (that distinction now belongs to U.S. Route 20). The Interstate Highway System's numbering grid, which has numbers increasing from west-to-east and south-to-north, is intentionally opposite from the U.S. grid, to keep identically numbered routes apart and to keep them from being confused with one another. Three-digit numbers are assigned to spurs of two-digit routes. For instance, U.S. Route 201 splits from U.S. Route 1 at Brunswick, Maine, and runs north to Canada.[7] Not all spurs travel in the same direction as their "parents"; some are only connected to their "parents" by other spurs, or not at all, instead only traveling near their "parents". As originally assigned, the first digit of the spurs increased from north to south and east to west along the "parent"; for example, U.S. Route 60 junctioned, from east to west, U.S. Route 160 in Missouri, U.S. Route 260 in Oklahoma, U.S. Route 360 in Texas, and U.S. Route 460 and U.S. Route 560 in New Mexico.[8] As with the two-digit routes, three-digit routes have been added, removed, extended and shortened; the "parent-child" relationship is not always present. Several spurs of the decommissioned U.S. Route 66 still exist, and U.S. Route 191 travels from border to border, while U.S. Route 91 has been largely replaced by Interstate 15. 

Several routes approved since 1980 do not follow the numbering pattern:

• U.S. Route 400, approved in 1994, has no "parent" since there is no U.S. Route 0 or U.S. Route 100.
• U.S. Route 412, approved c. 1982, is nowhere near U.S. Route 12.
• U.S. Route 425, approved in 1989, is nowhere near U.S. Route 25.

In addition, U.S. Route 163, designated in 1970, is nowhere near U.S. Route 63. The short U.S. Route 57, approved ca. 1970, connects to Federal Highway 57 in Mexico, and lies west of former U.S. Route 81. While AASHTO guidelines specifically prohibit Interstate Highways and U.S. Routes from sharing a number within the same state (which is why there are no Interstates 50 or 60), the initial Interstate numbering approved in 1958 violated this with Interstate 24 and U.S. Route 24 in Illinois and Interstate 40, Interstate 80, U.S. Route 40 and U.S. Route 80 in California (US 40 and US 80 were removed from California in its 1964 renumbering). Some recent and proposed Interstates, some of them out-of-place in the grid, also violate this: Interstate 41 and U.S. Route 41 in Wisconsin (which will run concurrently),[13] Interstate 49 and U.S. Route 49 in Arkansas,[7][14] Interstate 69 and U.S. Route 69 in Texas,[7][15] and Interstate 74 and U.S. Route 74 in North Carolina (which run concurrently). Some two-digit numbers have never been applied to any U.S. Route, including 39, 47, 86 and 88.

Divided and special routes

Divided routes have been around since 1926, and designate roughly-equivalent splits of routes. For instance, U.S. Route 11 splits into U.S. Route 11E (east) and U.S. Route 11W (west) in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the routes rejoin in Bristol, Virginia. Occasionally only one of the two routes is suffixed; U.S. Route 6N in Pennsylvania does not rejoin U.S. Route 6 at its west end.  AASHTO has been trying to eliminate these since 1934;  its current policy is to deny approval of new ones and to eliminate existing ones "as rapidly as the State Highway Department and the Standing Committee on Highways can reach agreement with reference thereto".Special routes—those with a banner such as alternate or bypass—are also managed by AASHTO.These are sometimes designated with lettered suffixes, like A for alternate or B for business.

Naming

The official route log, last published by AASHTO in 1989, has been named United States Numbered Highways since its initial publication in 1926. Within the route log, "U.S. Route" is used in the table of contents, while "United States Highway" appears as the heading for each route. All reports of the Special Committee on Route Numbering since 1989, use "U.S. Route", and federal laws relating to highways use "United States Route" or "U.S. Route" more often than the "Highway" variants. The use of U.S. Route or U.S. Highway on a local level depends on the state, with some states such as Delaware using "route" and others such as Colorado using "highway".

History

Early auto trails

In the early 1910s, auto trail organizations—most prominently the Lincoln Highway - began to spring up, marking and promoting routes for long-distance automobile travel. While many of these organizations worked with towns and states along the route to improve the roadways, others simply chose a route based on towns that were willing to pay dues, put up signs, and did little else.

Planning

Wisconsin was the first state in the U.S. to number its highways, erecting signs in May 1918.Other states soon followed, and the New England states got together in 1922 to establish the six-state New England Interstate Routes.Behind the scenes, the federal aid program had begun with the passage of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, providing 50% monetary support from the federal government for improvement of major roads. The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921 limited the routes to 7% of each state's roads, while 3/7 had to be "interstate in character". Identification of these main roads was completed in 1923.The American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), formed in 1914 to help establish roadway standards, began to plan a system of marked and numbered "interstate highways" at its 1924 meeting. AASHO recommended that the Secretary of Agriculture work with the states to designate these routes.Secretary Howard M. Gore appointed the Joint Board on Interstate Highways, as recommended by AASHO, on March 2, 1925. The Board was composed of 21 state highway officials and three federal Bureau of Public Roads officials. At the first meeting, on April 20 and 21, the name—U.S. Highway—was adopted. It was also decided that the system would not be limited to the federal-aid network; if the best route did not receive federal funds, it would still be included. The tentative design for the U.S. Highway shield was also adopted, based on the shield found on the Great Seal of the United States.Opposition soon formed from the auto trail associations, who rejected the elimination of the highway names. Six regional meetings were held to hammer out the details—May 15 for the West, May 27 for the Mississippi Valley, June 3 for the Great Lakes, June 8 for the South, June 15 for the North Atlantic, and June 15 for New England. The auto trail associations were not able to address the meetings. However, as a compromise, they talked with the Joint Board members and came up with a general agreement with their plans. The tentative system added up to 81,000 miles (130,000 km), 2.8% of the public road mileage at the time.

The second full meeting was held August 3 and 4, 1925. At that meeting, discussion was held over the appropriate density of routes. William F. Williams of Massachusetts and Frederick S. Greene of New York favored a system of only major transcontinental highways, while many states recommended a large number of roads of only regional importance. Greene in particular intended New York's system of only four major through routes as an example to the other states. Many states agreed in general with the scope of the system, but believed the Midwest to have added too many routes. The shield, with few modifications from the original sketch, was adopted at that meeting, as was the decision to number rather than name the routes. A preliminary numbering system, with eight major west–east and ten major north–south routes, was deferred to a numbering committee "without instructions".

After working with states to get their approval, the system had expanded to 75,800 miles (122,000 km), or 2.6% of total mileage, over 50% more than the plan approved August 4. The skeleton of the numbering plan was suggested on August 27 by Edwin Warley James of the BPR, who matched parity to direction, and laid out a rough grid. Major routes from the earlier map were assigned numbers ending in 0, 1 or 5 (5 was soon relegated to less-major status), and short connections received three-digit numbers based on the main highway they spurred from. The five-man committee met September 25, and submitted the final report to the Joint Board secretary on October 26. The board sent the report to the Secretary of Agriculture of October 30, and he approved it November 18, 1925.

Disagreement and refinement 1925–26

The new system was both praised and criticized by local newspapers, often depending on whether that city ended up on a major route. While the Lincoln Highway Association understood and supported the plan, partly because they were assured of getting the U.S. Route 30 designation as much as possible, most other trail associations lamented their obsolescence. At their January 14–15, 1926 meeting, AASHO was flooded with complaints.In the Northeast, New York still wanted fewer routes, and Pennsylvania, which had been absent from the local meetings, convinced AASHO to add a dense network of routes, which had the effect of giving six routes termini along the state line. (Only U.S. Route 220 still ends near the state line, and now it ends at an intersection with future Interstate 86.) The indirect nature of U.S. Route 20, passing through Yellowstone National Park, led Idaho and Oregon to request that U.S. Route 30 be swapped with US 20 to the Pacific coast.

Many local disputes centered on the choice between two roughly equal parallel routes, often competing auto trails. At their January meeting, AASHO approved the first two of many split routes (specifically U.S. Route 40 between Manhattan, Kansas and Limon, Colorado and U.S. Route 50 between Baldwin City, Kansas and Garden City, Kansas). In effect, each of the two routes received the same number, with a directional suffix indicating its relation to the other. These splits were initially shown in the log as—for instance—US 40 North and US 40 South, but were always posted as simply US 40N and US 40S.

The most heated argument, however, was the issue of US 60. The Joint Board had assigned that number to the Chicago-Los Angeles route, which ran east from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City, but then angled sharply to the northeast, running more north–south than west–east in Illinois. Kentucky strongly objected to this, as it had been left off any of the major west–east routes, instead receiving the U.S. Route 62 designation. This, along with the part of U.S. Route 52 east of Ashland, Kentucky, was assigned the U.S. Route 60 number in January 1926, while US 62 was given to the Chicago-Los Angeles route, contingent on the approval of the states along the former US 60. But Missouri and Oklahoma did object—Missouri had already printed maps, and Oklahoma had prepared signs. A compromise was proposed, in which US 60 would split at Springfield, Missouri into US 60E and US 60N, but both sides objected. The final solution resulted in the assignment of U.S. Route 66, which did not end in zero, but was still seen as a nice round number. With 32 states already marking their routes, the plan was approved by AASHO on November 11, 1926. This plan included a number of directionally split routes, several discontinuous routes (including U.S. Route 6, U.S. Route 19 and U.S. Route 50), and some termini at state lines. Major numbering changes had been made in Pennsylvania by the publishing of the first route log in April 1927, in order to align the routes to the auto trails,and U.S. Route 15 had been extended across Virginia.Much of the early criticism of the U.S. Highway System focused on the choice of numbers to designate the highways, rather than names. Some saw a numbered highway system as cold and heartless compared to the more colorful names of the auto trail systems. The New York Times wrote, "The traveler may shed tears as he drives the Lincoln Highway or dream dreams as he speeds over the Jefferson Highway, but how can he get a 'kick' out of 46, 55 or 33 or 21?" The writer Ernest McGaffey was quoted as saying, "Logarithms will take the place of legends, and 'hokum' for history."

Expansion and adjustment: 1926–56

When the U.S. numbered system was started in 1925, a few optional routings were established which were designated with a suffixed letter after the number indicating "north," "south," "east," or "west". While there are still a few roads in the system numbered in this manner, it is believed that they should be eliminated wherever possible, by the absorption of one of the optional routes into another route.In 1934, AASHO attempted to eliminate many of the split routes by removing them from the log, and designating one of each pair as a three-digit or alternate route, or in one case U.S. Route 37. AASHO described its renumbering concept in the October 1934 issue of American Highways:

Wherever an alternate route is not suitable for its own unique two-digit designation, standard procedure assigns the unqualified number to the older or shorter route, while the other route uses the same number marked by a standard strip above its shield carrying the word "Alternate." Most states adhere to this approach. However, some maintain legacy routes which violate the usual rules in various ways. Examples can be found in California, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oregon, and Tennessee. In 1952, AASHO permanently recognized the splits in U.S. Route 11, U.S. Route 19, U.S. Route 25, U.S. Route 31, U.S. Route 45, U.S. Route 49, U.S. Route 73, and U.S. Route 99.General expansion and the occasional elimination continued to occur through the years. One of the more interesting cases was the proposed extension of U.S. Route 97 to Alaska along the Alaska Highway, canceled because the Canadian Yukon Territory refused to renumber its section as 97.For the most part, the U.S. Routes remained the primary method of inter-city travel; the main exceptions were toll roads such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike and parkway routes such as the Merritt Parkway. Many of the first high-speed roads were U.S. Highways: the Gulf Freeway carried U.S. Route 75,[28] the Pasadena Freeway carried U.S. Route 66,[29] and the Pulaski Skyway carried U.S. Route 1 and U.S. Route 9.

Interstate era 1956–present

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 appropriated funding for the Interstate Highway System, a vast network of freeways across the country. By 1957, AASHTO had decided to assign a new grid—numbered in the opposite directions as the U.S. Highway grid—to the new routes. Though the Interstate numbers were to supplement, rather than replace, the U.S. Route numbers, in many cases (especially in the west) they were routed along the new Interstates.Major decommissioning began with California's highway renumbering in 1964, and the 1985 removal of U.S. Route 66 is often seen as the end of an era.A few major connections not served by Interstate Highways include US 6 from Hartford, Connecticut, to Providence, Rhode Island; US 101 from Los Angeles to San Francisco; and US 93 from Phoenix to Las Vegas. The four state capitals in the contiguous US that are served only by U.S. Routes are Dover, Delaware; Jefferson City, Missouri; Pierre, South Dakota; and Carson City, Nevada.The last major U.S. Route to be constructed was US 12 on the Idaho side of Lolo Pass, completed in 1962. The last remaining segment of unpaved U.S. Route was US 183 between the villages of Rose and Taylor, Nebraska, which was paved ca. 1967.In 1995 the National Highway System was defined which included both the Interstate Highway System and also other roads, which are important to the nation's economy, defense, and mobility.AASHTO is in the process of eliminating all intrastate U.S. Highways less than 300 miles (480 km) in length "as rapidly as the State Highway Department and the Standing Committee on Highways of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials can reach agreement with reference thereto". New additions to the system must serve more than one state and "substantially meet the current AASHTO design standards".

1958 Tybee Island mid-air collision

1958 Tybee Island mid-air collision

The Tybee Island B-47 crash was an incident on February 5, 1958, in which the United States Air Force lost a 7,600-pound (3,400 kg) Mark 15 hydrogen bomb in the waters off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia, USA. During a practice exercise the B-47 bomber carrying it collided in midair with an F-86 fighter plane. To protect the aircrew from a possible detonation in the event of a crash, the bomb was jettisoned. Following several unsuccessful searches, the bomb was presumed lost somewhere in Wassaw Sound off the shores of Tybee Island.

Accident

The B-47 bomber was on a simulated combat mission from Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. It was carrying a single 7,600-pound (3,400 kg) bomb. At about 2:00 AM, the B-47 collided with an F-86. The F-86 crashed after the pilot ejected from the plane, but the B-47, despite being damaged, remained airborne, albeit barely. The crew requested permission to jettison the bomb in order to reduce weight and prevent the bomb from exploding during an emergency landing. Permission was granted and the bomb was jettisoned at 7,200 feet (2,200 m) while the bomber was traveling about 200 knots (370 km/h). The crew did not see an explosion when the bomb struck the sea. They managed to land the B-47 safely at Hunter Air Force Base, later Hunter Army Air Field. The pilot, Colonel Howard Richardson, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after this incident for his role in piloting the B-47.

Bomb


The 12-foot (4 m) long Mark 15 bomb weighs 7,600 pounds (3,400 kg) and bears the serial number 47782. It contains 400 pounds (180 kg) of conventional high explosives and highly enriched uranium. The Air Force maintains that the bomb's nuclear capsule, used to initiate the nuclear reaction, was removed prior to its flight aboard B-47. As noted in the Atomic Energy Commission "Form AL-569 Temporary Custodian Receipt (for maneuvers)" signed by the aircraft commander, the bomb contained a simulated 150 pound cap which was made of lead. However, according to 1966 Congressional testimony by then Assistant Secretary of Defense W.J. Howard, the Tybee Island bomb was a "complete weapon, a bomb with a nuclear capsule," and one of two weapons lost up to that time that contained a plutonium trigger. Nevertheless, a study of the Strategic Air Command documents indicates that in February 1958, Alert Force test flights (with the older Mark 15 payloads) were not authorized to fly with nuclear capsules on board. Such approval was pending deployment of safer "sealed-pit nuclear capsule" weapons that did not begin deployment until June 1958.


Recovery efforts


Starting on February 6, 1958, the Air Force 2700th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Squadron and 100 Navy personnel equipped with hand held sonar and galvanic drag and cable sweeps mounted a search. On April 16, 1958 the military announced that the search efforts had been unsuccessful. Based upon a hydrologic survey, the bomb was thought by the Department of Energy to lie buried under 5 to 15 feet (2 to 5 m) of silt at the bottom of Wassaw Sound. In 2004, retired Air Force Colonel Derek Duke claimed to have narrowed the possible resting spot of the bomb to a small area approximately the size of a football field. He and his partner located the area by trawling the area in their boat with a Geiger counter in tow. Secondary radioactive particles 4 times the naturally occurring levels were detected and mapped, and the site of radiation origination triangulated. Subsequent investigations found the source of the radiation was natural. In any case, a geiger counter is not efficient in detecting the alpha radiation from enhanced uranium.

Ongoing concerns


The risk of corrosion of the alloy casing of the bomb is less if it is completely covered in sand. But if part of the alloy casing of the bomb is exposed to seawater due to the shifting strata in which it is buried, rapid corrosion could occur, as demonstrated in simulation experiments. Eventually, the highly enriched uranium could be leached out of the device and enter the aquifer that surrounds the continental shelf in this area. Storms, hurricanes, and strong currents frequently change the sands of the continental shelf near Tybee Island. To date, no undue levels of unnatural radioactive contamination (over and above the already high levels thought to be due to monazite, a locally occurring sand which is naturally high in radiation) have been detected in the regional Upper Floridan aquifer by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. This event, as well as the 1956 B-47 disappearance, were the basis for NCIS Episode "Broken Arrow," which aired in 2010.

Vela Incident

Vela Incident


The Vela Incident — sometimes referred to as the South Atlantic Flash — was an unidentified "double flash" of light that was detected by an American Vela Hotel satellite on September 22, 1979 near the Prince Edward Islands or Antarctica. There is uncertainty as to the true nature of the flash though it is widely believed to have been the result of a nuclear detonation. While a "double flash" signal is characteristic of a nuclear weapons test, the signal might have been a spurious electronic signal that was generated by an aging detector in an old satellite or a meteoroid hitting the Vela satellite. No corroboration of an explosion, such as the presence of nuclear byproducts in the air, was ever publicly acknowledged, even though there were numerous passes in the area by U.S. Air Force planes that were specifically designed to detect airborne radioactive dust. Other examiners of the data, including the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and defense contractors, have come to the conclusion that the flash was a result of a nuclear detonation. Much of the information relating to the event remains classified. The most widespread theory among those who believe that the flash was of nuclear origins was that it resulted from a joint South African and Israeli nuclear test The topic remains highly disputed today.

Detection

The "double flash" was detected on September 22, 1979, at 00:53 GMT, by the American Vela satellite 6911, which carried various sensors that had been designed specifically to detect nuclear explosions. In addition to being able to detect gamma rays, X-rays, and neutrons, the satellite also contained two silicon solid-state bhangmeter sensors that would be able to detect the dual light flashes associated with an atmospheric nuclear explosion: the initial brief, intense flash, followed by the second longer flash.

The satellite reported the characteristic double flash of a small atmospheric nuclear explosion of two to three kilotons, in the Indian Ocean between The Crozet Islands (a very small, sparsely inhabited French possession) and the Prince Edward Islands which belong to South Africa at 47°S 40°ECoordinates: 47°S 40°E. The previous 41 double flashes that the Vela satellites detected were all subsequently confirmed to be nuclear explosions. There was, and remains, much doubt as to whether the satellite's observations were accurate. The Vela Hotel 6911 satellite was one of a pair that had been launched on May 23, 1969, over ten years before the "double-flash" event, and this satellite was already more than two years beyond its so-called "design lifetime". This satellite was known to have a failed electromagnetic pulse (EMP) sensor, and it had developed a fault (in July 1972) in its recording memory, but that fault had cleared itself by March 1978. Additionally, early technical speculation also examined the possibility that the Vela had recorded a combination of natural phenomena, such as lightning in conjunction with a meteor strike. Other early news media articles of the time discussed the possibility of a large extraterrestrial object strike, such as an asteroid, occurring.The Vela satellite's flash detectors were sensitive to lightning superbolts,which resulted in two scientists, John Warren and Robert Freyman from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (then called the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory), immediately flying to and investigating a rare, overland superbolt occurrence on Bell Island, Newfoundland, in April 1978. Their observations of the event, called the 'Bell Island Boom', noted building structural damage, dead farm animals and destroyed electrical devices amongst other evidence (the superbolt's blast was heard 55 kilometers away in Cape Broyle, Newfoundland). The Bell Island Boom was among some 600 "mystery booms" that occurred along the North American eastern seaboard from late 1977 to mid‑1978.

Nonetheless, the initial assessment by the United States National Security Council (NSC), with technical support by the Naval Research Laboratory in October 1979 was that the American intelligence community had "high confidence" that the event was a low-yield nuclear explosion, although no radioactive debris had ever been detected, and there was "no corroborating seismic or hydro-acoustic data. A later NSC report revised this position to "a position of agnosticism" about whether a test had occurred or not. The NSC concluded that responsibility for a nuclear explosion, if any, should be ascribed to the Republic of South Africa. Several U.S. Air Force WC-135B surveillance aircraft flew 25 sorties over that area of the Indian Ocean soon after the "double flash" was reported, but they failed to detect any sign of nuclear radiation.

Studies of wind patterns confirmed that fall-out from an explosion in the southern Indian Ocean could have been carried from there to southwestern Australia.  It was reported that low levels of iodine-131 (a short-half-life product of nuclear fission) were detected in sheep in the southeastern Australian States of Victoria and Tasmania soon after the event. Sheep in New Zealand showed no such trace. The Arecibo ionospheric observatory and radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected an anomalous ionospheric wave during the morning of September 22, 1979, which moved from the southeast to the northwest, an event which had not been observed previously by the scientists.

Office of Science and Technology evaluation

The administration of USA President Carter asked the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to convene a panel of instrumentation experts to re-examine the Vela Hotel 6911 data, and to attempt to determine whether the optical flash detected came from a nuclear test. The outcome was important to Carter, as his presidency and 1980 re-election campaign prominently featured the themes of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. In particular, the SALT II treaty had been signed three months earlier, and was pending ratification by the United States Senate. An independent panel of scientific and engineering experts was commissioned by Frank Press, who was the Science Advisor to president Carter and the chairman of the OSTP, to evaluate the evidence and determine the likelihood that the event was a nuclear detonation. The chairman of this science panel itself was Dr. Jack Ruina of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and also the former director of the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency. Reporting in the summer of 1980, the panel noted that there were some key differences in the detected optical signature from that of an actual nuclear explosion, particularly in the ratio of intensities measured by the two detectors on the satellite. The now-declassified report contains details of the measurements made by the Vela Hotel satellite.

The explosion was picked up by a pair of sensors on only one of the several Vela satellites; other similar satellites were looking at different parts of the earth, or weather conditions precluded them seeing the same event. The Vela satellites had previously detected 41 atmospheric tests — by countries such as France and the PRC — each of which was subsequently confirmed by other means, including testing for radioactive fallout. The absence of any such corroboration of a nuclear origin for the Vela Incident also suggested that the "double flash" signal was a spurious 'zoo' signal of unknown origin, possibly caused by the impact of a micrometeoroid. Such 'zoo' signals which mimicked nuclear explosions had been received several times earlier. Their report noted that the flash data contained "many of the features of signals from previously observed nuclear explosions", but that "careful examination reveals a significant deviation in the light signature of the September 22 event that throws doubt on the interpretation as a nuclear event". The best analysis that they could offer of the data suggested that, if the sensors were properly calibrated, any source of the "light flashes" were spurious "zoo events". Thus their final determination was that while they could not rule out that this signal was of nuclear origin, "based on our experience in related scientific assessments, it is our collective judgment that the September 22 signal was probably not from a nuclear explosion". Victor Gilinsky (former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) attempted to cast doubt on the science panel's findings, arguing that its members were politically motivated.There was some data that seemed to confirm that a nuclear explosion was the source for the "double flash" signal. There was the "anomalous" traveling ionospheric disturbance that was measured at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico at the same time,but many thousands of miles away in a different hemisphere of the earth. A test in Western Australia conducted a few months later found some increased nuclear radiation levels.However, a detailed study done by New Zealand's National Radiation Laboratory found no such evidence of excess radioactivity, and neither did a U.S. Government-funded nuclear laboratory.

 Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists who worked on the Vela Hotel program have professed their conviction that the Vela Hotel satellite's detectors worked properly.Leonard Weiss, at the time Staff Director of the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Nuclear Proliferation, has also raised concerns about the findings of the Ad-Hoc Panel, arguing that it was set up by the Carter administration to counter embarrassing and growing opinion that it was an Israeli nuclear test.Specific intelligence about the Israeli nuclear program was not shared with the panel whose report therefore produced the plausible deniability that the administration sought.

 Possible responsible parties

If a nuclear explosion did occur, it occurred within the 3000-mile-wide (4,800 km diameter) circle covering parts of the Indian Ocean, the South Atlantic, the southern tip of Africa, and a small part of Antarctica. 

USSR

In 1979, the DIA reported that the test may have been a Soviet test done in violation of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.The USSR had conducted a few secret underwater tests in the Pacific in 1959.

Israel

Well before the Vela Incident, American intelligence agencies had made the assessment that Israel probably possessed its own nuclear weapons.According to journalist Seymour Hersh, the detection was the third joint Israeli-South African nuclear test in the Indian Ocean, and the Israelis had sent two IDF ships and "a contingent of Israeli military men and nuclear experts" for the test.Author Richard Rhodes also concludes the incident was an Israeli nuclear test, conducted in cooperation with South Africa, and that the United States administration deliberately obscured this fact in order to avoid complicating relations with South Africa.Author Richard Rhodes also concludes the incident was an Israeli nuclear test, conducted in cooperation with South Africa, and that the United States administration deliberately obscured this fact in order to avoid complicating relations with South Africa. Likewise, Leonard Weiss offers a number of arguments to support the test being Israeli, and claims that successive US administrations continue to cover up the test to divert unwanted attention that may portray its foreign policy in a bad light.  In the 2008 book The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman stated their opinion that the "double flash" was the result of a joint South African-Israeli nuclear bomb test. David Albright stated in his article about the "double flash" event in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that "If the 1979 flash was caused by a test, most experts agree it was probably an Israeli test".

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa did have a nuclear weapons program at the time, and it falls within that geographic location. Nevertheless, it had acceded to the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, and since the fall of apartheid, South Africa has disclosed most of the information on its nuclear weapons program, and according to international inspections and the ensuing International Atomic Energy Agency report, South Africa could not have constructed such a nuclear bomb until November 1979, two months after the "double flash" incident. Furthermore, the IAEA reported that all possible South African nuclear bombs had been accounted for. A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report dated January 21, 1980, that was produced for the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency concluded that:

In sum, State/INR finds the arguments that South Africa conducted a nuclear test on 22 September inconclusive, even though, if a nuclear explosion occurred on that date, South Africa is the most likely candidate for responsibility.The United Nations Security Council Resolution 418 of November 4, 1977 introduced a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa, which also required all states to refrain from "any co-operation with South Africa in the manufacture and development of nuclear weapons".

India

India had carried out a nuclear test in 1974 (codenamed Smiling Buddha). The possibility that India would test a weapon was considered, since it would be possible for the Indian Navy to operate in those waters so far south, however, this was dismissed as impractical and unnecessary (given the fact that India had signed and ratified the Limited Test Ban Treaty or LTBT in 1963, and had complied with it even in its first test).

France

Since the "double flash", if one existed, could have occurred not very far to the west of the French-owned Kerguelen Islands, it is possible that the French were testing a small neutron bomb or other small tactical nuclear bomb.

Subsequent developments

Since 1980, some small amounts of new information have emerged. However, most questions remain unanswered: 

• A Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory report from 1981 notes:

TIROS-N plasma data and related geophysical data measured on 22 September 1979 were analyzed to determine whether the electron precipitation event detected by TIROS-N at 00:54:49 universal time could have been related to a surface nuclear burst (SNB). The occurrence of such a burst was inferred from light signals detected by two Vela bhangmeters −2 min before the TIROS-N event. We found the precipitation to be unusually large but not unique. It probably resulted from passage of TIROS-N through the precipitating electrons above a pre-existing auroral arc that may have brightened to an unusually high intensity from natural causes −3 min before the Vela signals....We conclude that such an event, although rare, is not unique and, furthermore, that this particular event was associated with an auroral arc that probably existed before the Vela event. Although it may be argued that the segment of the arc sampled by the TIROS-N was intensified by a SNB, we find no evidence to support this thesis or to suggest that the observation was anything but the result of natural magnetospheric processes.

• In October 1984, a National Intelligence Estimate on the South African nuclear program noted:

There is still considerable disagreement within the Intelligence Community as to whether the flash in the South Atlantic detected by a US [...] satellite in September 1979 was a nuclear test, and if so, by South Africa. If the latter, the need for South Africa to test a device during the time frame of this Estimate is significantly diminished. A shorter form of this wording was used in a subsequent National Intelligence Council memorandum of September, 1985.

• In February 1994, Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, a convicted Soviet spy and the commander of South Africa's Simon's Town naval base at the time, talked about the incident upon his release from prison. He said:

Although I was not directly involved in planning or carrying out the operation, I learned unofficially that the flash was produced by an Israeli-South African test, code-named Operation Phoenix. The explosion was clean and was not supposed to be detected. But they were not as smart as they thought, and the weather changed — so the Americans were able to pick it up. Gerhardt further stated that no South African naval vessels had been involved, and that he had no first-hand knowledge of a nuclear test.

• On April 20, 1997, the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz quoted the South African deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, as supposedly confirming that the "double flash" from over the Indian Ocean was indeed from a South African nuclear test. Haaretz also cited past reports that Israel had purchased 550 tons of uranium from South Africa for its own nuclear plant in Dimona. In exchange, Israel allegedly supplied South Africa with nuclear weapons design information and nuclear materials to increase the power of nuclear warheads.Pahad's statement was confirmed by the United States embassy in Pretoria, South Africa,but Pahad's press secretary stated that Pahad had said only that "there was a strong rumor that a test had taken place, and that it should be investigated". In other words, he was merely repeating rumors that had been circulating for years. David Albright, commenting on the stir created by this press report, stated:

The U.S. government should declassify additional information about the event. A thorough public airing of the existing information could resolve the controversy.

• In October 1999, a white paper that was published by the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee in opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty stated:

There remains uncertainty about whether the South Atlantic flash in September 1979 recorded by optical sensors on the U.S. Vela satellite was a nuclear detonation and, if so, to whom it belonged.

• In his 2006 book On the Brink, the retired C.I.A. clandestine service officer Tyler Drumheller wrote of his 1983–88 tour-of-duty in South Africa:

We had operational successes, most importantly regarding Pretoria's nuclear capability. My sources collectively provided incontrovertible evidence that the apartheid government had in fact tested a nuclear bomb in the South Atlantic in 1979, and that they had developed a delivery system with assistance from the Israelis. Some American information related to this incident has been declassified in the form of heavily redacted reports and memoranda following applications made under the USA Freedom of Information Act; on May 5, 2006, many of these declassified documents were made available through the USA National Security Archive.

 

War Plan Red

War Plan Red

Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan Red, also known as the Atlantic Strategic War Plan, was a hypothetical war plan by the United States to fight Great Britain (the "Red" forces). Although a war plan (theoretical), it nevertheless discussed the potential for fighting a hypothetical war with Britain and its Empire and what steps would become necessary to defend the Atlantic coast. It also discussed fighting a two-front war with both Japan and the British Empire simultaneously (as envisioned in War Plan Red-Orange). War Plan Red was developed by the United States Army following the 1927 Geneva Naval Conference and approved in May 1930 by the Secretary of War and the Secretary of Navy and updated in 1934–35. In 1939 a decision was taken that no further planning was required but that the plan be retained.War Plan Red was not declassified until 1974.The war plan outlined those actions that would be necessary to undertake war between Britain and the United States. The plan suggested that the British would initially have the upper hand by virtue of the strength of its navy. The plan further assumed that Britain would probably use its dominion in Canada as a springboard from which to initiate a retaliatory invasion of the United States. The assumption was taken that at first Britain would fight a defensive battle against invading American forces, but that the US would eventually defeat the British by blockading the United Kingdom and economically isolating it.

History

War Plan Red was one of a number of U.S. color-coded war plans developed by the U.S. after the First World War.When War Plan Red was declassified in 1974, it caused a stir in American-Canadian relations because Canada, codenamed "Crimson" in the plan, was to have been the principal target of American forces.

Outline

War Plan Red first set out a description of Canada's geography, military resources, and transportation , and went on to evaluate a series of possible pre-emptive American campaigns to invade Canada in several areas and occupy key ports and railways before British troops could provide reinforcement to the Canadians - the assumption being that Britain would use Canada as a staging point. The idea was that the American attacks on Canada would prevent Britain from using Canadian resources, ports, or airbases. A key move was a joint US army-navy attack to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting off the Canadians from their British allies. Their next objective was to "[s]eize Canadian Power Plants near Niagara Falls" (Carlson, 2005). This was to be followed by a full-scale invasion on three fronts: From Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, from North Dakota to take over the railhead at Winnipeg, and from the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario. In parallel, the U.S. Navy was to seize the Great Lakes and blockade Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific ports.

Zones of operation
The main zones of operation discussed in the plan are:

• Nova Scotia and New Brunswick:
• Occupying Halifax, following a poison gas first strike, would deny the British a major naval base and cut links between Britain and Canada. 
• The plan considers several land and sea options for the attack and concludes that a landing at St. Margarets Bay, a then undeveloped bay near Halifax, would be superior to a direct assault via the longer overland route. 
• Failing to take Halifax, the U.S. could occupy New Brunswick by land to cut Nova Scotia off from the rest of Canada at the key railway junction at Moncton.

• Quebec and the valley of the Saint Lawrence River: 
• Occupying Montreal and Quebec City would cut the remainder of Canada off from the Eastern seaboard, preventing the movement of soldiers and resources in both directions.
• The routes from northern New York to Montreal and from Vermont to Quebec are both found satisfactory for an offensive, with Quebec being the more critical target.

•  Ontario and the Great Lakes area:
• Occupying this region gains control of Toronto and most of Canada's industry, while also preventing Britain and Canada from using it for air or land attacks against the U.S. industrial heartland in the Midwest.
• The plan proposes simultaneous offensives from Buffalo across the Niagara River, from Detroit into Ontario, and from Sault Ste. Marie into Sudbury. Controlling the Great Lakes for U.S. transport is considered logistically necessary for a continued invasion.

• Winnipeg 
• Winnipeg is a central nexus of the Canadian rail system for connecting the country.
• The plan sees no major obstacles to an offensive from Grand Forks, North Dakota, to Winnipeg.

• Vancouver and Victoria: 
• Although Vancouver's distance from Europe reduces its importance, occupying it would deny Britain a naval base and cut Canada off from the Pacific Ocean.
• Vancouver could be easily attacked overland from Bellingham, Washington, and Vancouver Island could be attacked by sea from Port Angeles, Washington. 
• The British Columbia port Prince Rupert has a rail connection to the rest of Canada, but a naval blockade is viewed as easy if Vancouver were taken.

No attacks outside Western Hemisphere

Unlike the Rainbow Five plan, War Plan Red did not envision striking outside the Western Hemisphere. The plan assumed that the British Empire would have a much larger army and slightly larger navy. Because of the Empire's historical strength, the United States had traditionally planned for a defensive war with the British. War Plan Red recommended continued use of this strategy even as American military might grew to match Britain's. Its authors saw conquering Canada as the best way to attack the British Empire and believed that doing so would cause Britain to negotiate for peace. A problem with the plan was that it did not discuss how to attack the Empire if Canada declared its neutrality, which the authors believed was likely. (The plan advised against accepting such a declaration without permission to occupy Canadian ports and some land until the war ended.) Based on extensive war games conducted at the Naval War College, the plan rejected attacking British shipping or attempting to destroy the British fleet. The main American fleet would instead stay in the western North Atlantic to block British-Canadian traffic. The navy would wait for a good opportunity to engage the British fleet, and if successful would then attack British trade and colonies in the Western Hemisphere. In 1935 War Plan Red was updated and specified which roads to use in the invasion. "The best practicable route to Vancouver is via Route 99" (Carlson, 2005). Further, in 1935 Americans planned to build three military airfields near the Canadian border and disguise them as civilian airports. "In February 1935, the War Department arranged a Congressional appropriation of $57 million to build three border air bases for the purposes of pre-emptive surprise attacks on Canadian air fields" (Berlin Glasnost, 1992–2007). The airfields were to be kept secret, but their existence was accidentally published by the Government Printing Office and reported on the front page of the New York Times on May 1, 1935. Interestingly, American war planners had no thoughts of returning captured British territory. "The policy will be to prepare the provinces and territories of CRIMSON and RED to become states and territories of the BLUE union upon the declaration of peace." 

British strategy for war with America

The Royal Navy never prepared a formal plan for war with America during the first half of the 20th century. The government of David Lloyd George in 1919 restricted the navy from doing so to prevent it from using American naval growth to justify building more ships. Like their American counterparts, most Royal Navy officers viewed cooperation with the other nation as the best way to maintain world peace due to the shared culture, language, and goals, although Britons feared that British attempts to regulate trade during a war with another nation might force a war with the United States. Royal Navy officers generally believed that if war did occur, they could transport an army to Canada if asked, but nonetheless saw it as impossible to defend against the much larger United States, so did not plan to do so, as Canada's loss would not be fatal to Britain. An invasion of the United States was unrealistic and a naval blockade was too slow. The navy could not use a defensive strategy of waiting for the American fleet to cross the Atlantic because Imperial trade was too vulnerable. The Royal Navy officers believed that the United Kingdom was so vulnerable to a blockade that, if a superior American fleet appeared near the British Isles, Britain would quickly surrender. The officers planned to, instead, attack the American fleet from a Western Hemisphere base, likely Bermuda, while other ships based in Canada and the West Indies would attack American shipping and protect Imperial trade. The navy would also bombard coastal bases and make small amphibious assaults. India and Australia would help capture Manila to prevent American attacks on British trade in Asia and perhaps a conquest of Hong Kong. The officers hoped that such acts would result in a stalemate making continued war unpopular in the United States, followed by a negotiated peace.

Canadian counterpart

Canadian military officer Lieutenant Colonel James "Buster" Sutherland Brown developed an earlier counterpart to War Plan Red called Defense Scheme No. 1 on April 12, 1921. Maintaining that the best defense was a good offense, "Buster" Brown planned for rapid deployment of flying columns to occupy Seattle, Great Falls, Minneapolis, and Albany. With no hope of holding these objectives, the idea was to divert American troops to the flanks and away from Canada, hopefully long enough for Imperial allies to arrive with reinforcements. Defence Scheme No. 1 was terminated by Chief of the General Staff Andrew McNaughton in 1928, two years prior to the approval of War Plan Red.

Marree Man

Marree Man

The Marree Man, or Stuart's Giant, is a modern geoglyph discovered by air on 26 June 1998. It appears to depict an indigenous Australian man hunting birds or wallabies with a throwing stick. It lies on a plateau at Finnis Springs 60 km west of the township of Marree in central South Australia. It is just outside the 127,000 square kilometres (49,000 sq mi)[1] Woomera Prohibited Area. The figure is 4.2 km (2.6 mi) tall with a perimeter of 15 by 28 kilometres (9.3 mi × 17 mi). Although it is the second largest geoglyph (and largest non-commercial geoglyph) in the world, its origin remains a mystery, with not a single witness to any part of the expansive operation. The name "Stuart's Giant" was given to it in a fax sent to the media anonymously by those believed to have created the figure, after John McDouall Stuart. Shortly after its discovery, the site was closed by the South Australian government following legal action taken in late July by Native Title Claimants but, as of 2010, joy flights were still allowed over the site as Native title falls under federal government jurisdiction.

Work

The Marree Man geoglyph depicts a man holding either a throwing stick once used to disperse small flocks of birds, or a boomerang (but see Plaque section below). The lines of the figure were 20–30 cm deep at the time of discovery and up to 35 metres wide. Selecting a suitable site would have required aerial photography or satellite imagery.[citation needed] Using a computer, the figure could have been superimposed over the photograph and adjusted to fit the geography with the corresponding latitude and longitude coordinates mapped out. Some surveying skills would have been needed to plot the outline, and then with the aid of a hand-held global positioning system stakes could have been placed every hundred metres or so.[2]
The image is gradually eroding through natural processes, but because the climate is extremely dry and barren in the region, the image is still visible as of 2012. While there is a layer of white chalk material slightly below the red soil, the figure was not defined to this depth. This raises the question why the creators did not dig a little deeper to make the image both more visible and more permanent.

Discovery

Trec Smith, a charter pilot flying between Marree and Coober Pedy in the remote north of South Australia spotted the figure from the air on 26 June 1998. The discovery of the geoglyph fascinated Australians due to its size and the mystery surrounding how it came to be there. At the time of the discovery there was only one track entering and one track exiting the site and no footprints or tire marks were discernible. Shane Anderson from the William Creek Hotel, located 200 km north-west of the town of Marree claimed the hotel received an anonymous fax describing the location of the artwork, but they ignored it, dismissing the fax as a joke.

Anonymous press releases

Several anonymous press releases which appeared following the discovery led to the suggestion that the Marree Man was created by people from the United States. The releases quoted measurements in miles, yards and inches, instead of the metric system usually used in Australia. This would be unusual for an Australian press release, but since the metric system was only introduced in Australia in the late 1960s, older Australians still often quote imperial measurements. The releases also said "your State of SA", "Queensland Barrier Reef" and mentioned Aborigines "from the local Indigenous Territories", terms not used by Australians. The press releases also mentioned the Great Serpent in Ohio, which is not well known outside the US. But it has been conjectured that these features of the press releases may have been red herrings, inserted to provide the illusion of American authorship. When the site was discovered, several items were found in a small pit: what appeared to be a satellite photo of the figure, a jar containing a small flag of the US, and a note which referred to the Branch Davidians, a religious group infamous for being attacked in the Waco raid in 1993. These were the only man-made items found at the site when it was discovered.
Artist Christopher Headley says that he sent two letters, one to Colonel Tom Meade, the head of the former US-Australian Joint Defense Facility Nurrungar, to ask about the possibility of making a permanent commemoration of the American presence in Australia. This could have inspired the idea of creating a geoglyph among locals.

Plaque

In January 1999, officials were told about a plaque buried 5 metres south of the nose of the figure, by way of a fax which was received via a hotel in Oxford, England. The fax also said that the plaque was intended to have been dug up by a "prominent US media figure" shortly before the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Similar clues were said to be buried near the Cerne Abbas giant near Dorset and the Long Man of Wilmington, Sussex, in England.[citation needed] The plaque has a 3 centimetres (1.2 in) long by 2 centimetres (0.79 in) wide American flag and an imprint of the Olympic rings. It reads: In honour of the land they once knew. His attainments in these pursuits are extraordinary; a constant source of wonderment and admiration. The quote on the plaque buried at the figure comes from a book, "The Red Centre", by H.H. Finlayson, in a section describing the hunting of wallabies with throwing sticks and with photographs of hunters without loin cloths and with other details like the "Marree Man".In the book it can be deduced that the subject is a hunter from the Pitjantjatjara tribe.

Suggested creators

Bardius Goldberg, a Northern Territory artist who died in 2002 and lived at Alice Springs, has been suggested as the creator of the work. Goldberg, who was known to be interested in creating a work visible from space, refused to either confirm or deny that he had created the image when questioned. A close friend said Goldberg was given $10,000 at the time of the Marree Man's discovery.

Reactions

Much of the public and media reaction to the discovery of the figure was positive. The Advertiser, the State's only daily newspaper, called for the figure to be made permanent by excavating the outline down to the white chalk layer. At the time of discovery, the area was part of a Federal Court legal battle through the National Native Title Tribunal to determine the "traditional owners". The area was claimed by both the Arabunna people and the Dieri Mitha who had been "warring" for several years. The Dieri Mitha publically complained of harm and exploitation of the Dreamtime, calling for the image to be erased and for the artist to be prosecuted. As Native Title Claimants, the Dieri Mitha took legal action to stop charter flights and vehicles visiting the site, prompting the state government to close the area to the public shortly after discovery. The Arabunna replied to the issue through a solicitor who stated that the area covered points of archaeological interest and that the artist could be prosecuted. In May 2012, the Federal Court handed native title to the Arabunna people. The artwork was called environmental vandalism by the Environment minister, Dorothy Kotz, and graffiti by the South Australian chief of Aboriginal affairs, David Ruthman.

Authenticity of the figure

While the figure was shown nude, if the picture were copied from a 19th-century photograph it has been said that it may have had a loin cloth. There was also initially some question as to whether the figure is holding a throwing stick or a boomerang, but these issues seem to have been resolved following discovery of the plaque and the origin of the plaque quote and likely source photographs of similar nude hunters. The hand which is not throwing has the correct posture in the normal Aboriginal technique for throwing.The initiation scars placed on the chest have also been said to have been placed perfectly. The figure appears to be an amalgam of the body of a man photographed in the distinctive throwing stance and the head of another man wearing a headband and chignon.