Photographer's Film Froze Chilling Blast


April 29, 1993|By Bill Bond of The Sentinel Staff

It took place nearly 50 years ago.

Over and over again, authorities at the super-secret White Sands testing grounds in the New Mexico desert kept telling the military photographer and electronics specialist from Cincinnati there wouldn't be a chance to ''shoot it again.''

''It'' was the world's first atomic bomb blast.

Bob Hayes' job that historic day in July 1945 was to capture that blast on still and motion picture film.

It was a tall and mysterious order.

''All I was told was that it was going to be a big explosion and they wanted movies and still photos,'' said Hayes, who is retired and now lives in Tavares.

''I was told it was going to be a one-time deal and I wouldn't have a second chance to film it,'' he said.

Hayes didn't know what was being developed at the site. Nor did most everybody else, for that matter.

Only a handful of civilian scientists and military officials knew about the top-secret Manhattan Project from the get-go.

''I had no idea what was going on. Nobody else did, either. They used reservation Indians who couldn't speak English as carpenters and electricians. It was the most guarded secret ever,'' said Hayes.

He set up four movie and four still cameras on tripods strategically located between the tower and a lead-lined underground bunker a quarter of a mile from point zero.

The flash from the explosion was so bright and intense it burned the film and melted all but two cameras.

The motion picture and still cameras farthest from the center of the blast survived.

All the cameras were set up to operate electrically, said Hayes.

''The pictures you see of the blast on television and in newspapers today were taken by me,'' said Hayes, who spent nearly four years at Fort Bliss, Texas, and nearby Los Alamos, N.M., preparing for the test blast.

He is convinced he was handpicked for the Manhattan Project long before the atomic bomb test in July 1945.

He joined the Army in 1941 and immediately was sent to specialized electronics training schools at secret locations around the country.

''We studied eight hours a day, six days a week until I was assigned to the War Department in 1944,'' Hayes said. ''People would ask us why we didn't wear uniforms. I told them I didn't know - and I didn't know.''

Government officials checked Hayes' background all the way back to elementary school. ''They wanted to know what church I attended and they questioned my pastor,'' said the Ohio native.

An FBI agent even contacted a friend of Hayes in North Africa. ''We were under constant FBI watch,'' Hayes said.

He said he and others involved in the project were warned repeatedly: ''What you see, what you do here, what you hear here, let it stay here.''

Hayes said he was finally shown where the tower was located and then told he had to get pictures.

''We were told it would be a sizable explosion, but I was shocked when I learned the device was just big enough to hold in your hand like a tennis ball,'' said Hayes.

At detonation, Hayes said, the ground rumbled, there was a hissing sound and then an explosion before the mushroom cloud formed.

Hayes and others watched through welder's goggles from the bunker.

Hayes said he also processed ground scenes of the Hiroshima destruction.

''It was so awesome to think that that much destruction had come from one bomb,'' he said.

Orlando Sentinel Articles