My Father was at a Bomb test that was twice the size of Hiroshima

His eyewitness account shows that the movie got it right.

After seeing the Oppenheimer movie, I started rereading my father’s memoir of his time working on the Manhattan Project. It begins with his description of an atomic test that he saw in the early fifties that was twice the size of the Alamogordo test depicted in the movie. Here’s first hand evidence that the movie got it right: First a blinding silent flash, then a rumble in the earth and finally the sound of the explosion traveling through the air

Quoting from the book:

I was shivering in the cold predawn air, waiting for something to happen, when the countdown began. On my knees burying my face in my thighs, I was intensely aware of the smell of the dry dirt and rock, and the silence of the desert night. In spite of myself I begin to feel real fear as the countdown continued with the inevitability of the voice of doom. That SOB can afford to sound calm, I thought. He’s at the observation post, 10 miles away. Did the clowns who calculated I’d be safe really know what they’re doing? I don’t see any of them here. They can’t even be sure how big a bang this will be. This is really just an experiment. I am somebody’s guinea pig. Did I really volunteer for this? I didn’t even hear the count…