tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5148048131502110089.post4400889391871212793..comments2024-02-08T03:37:01.136-06:00Comments on Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout: The Port Chicago Explosion and a Travesty of JusticePatrick Murfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05191688376908660270noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5148048131502110089.post-58177088177293925102023-01-14T16:28:08.451-06:002023-01-14T16:28:08.451-06:00Three little-known but documented facts should lea...Three little-known but documented facts should lead to a new investigation of the Port Chicago explosion, and especially serious consideration of the nuclear explosion theory, First espoused by Peter Vogel in the Spring 1982 edition of The Black Scholar, the PCnet is the subject of my 2022 book, American Nuclear Deception: Why "the Port Chicago Experiment" must be investigated. Listed below are just a few of the surprising facts I discovered in my extensive research:<br /><br />1) Few people are aware that scientists and engineers used data from the Port Chicago explosion to produce the atomic bomb. Within days of the explosion, Navy Captain William S. Parsons, head of ordnance for the Manhattan Project, led a team of investigators to the site to study "the effects of the detonation." Speaking as Rear Admiral in 1948, Parsons told an audience at the Naval War College that the Port Chicago data provided his team with their first realistic expectations of blast damage. <br /><br />2.) The memorandum authorizing the Port Chicago court martial was issued on July 14th, 1944. Two documents establishing this fact are included in the transcript of the trial. There may be a valid explanation for why the court martial was authorized three days before the explosion and three weeks before the "work stoppage" that led to the largest trial in U.S. Naval history. Without this explanation, though, the pre-explosion authorization date calls attention to the fact that "the" story of the unprecedented, historic blast became the story of the Port Chicago 50, as news of the explosion was soon and permanently upstaged by the highly publicized military tribunal.<br /><br />3.) The most comprehensive and most often cited primary source of information about the explosion was the report issued by the Naval Court of Inquiry that investigated the explosion. The Court reported that the cause of the explosion could not be determined because key witnesses and evidence were lost in the blast. But a review of the entire record shows that in their summary Findings, Opinion and Recommendation, the Court chose not to report the testimony of witnesses who said the initial explosion took place on the S.S. Quinault Victory, the ship that had just arrived and had no ammunition aboard. That report was corroborated by the separate testimony of the salvage divers who discovered a hole in the hull of the Quinault Victory. <br /><br />(It should be noted that one of the men on the three-man Court, Captain James Crenshaw, was the brother-in-law and long-time friend of Capt. Parsons.)<br /><br />These are just a few of the surprising facts that emerge when the story of the Port Chicago explosion is viewed through the controversial lens of the Port Chicago nuclear explosion theory. At minimum, the documented link to the Manhattan Project should be a well-fact of history, and the obscurity of this fact lends credence to the discredited but not debunked theory.<br /><br />The website of the Port Chicago Navy National Memorial simply says a nuclear test was 'unlikely." A claim this big demands strong evidence, but so does the counterclaim; and a claim this serious merits an equally sober response. Historians dismiss the PCnet as "hogwash"; yet there has been no official investigation of the increasingly plausible "conspiracy theory" that the blast was the result of a secret test conducted under the auspices of the Manhattan Project. <br /><br />With so many secrets now emerging about nuclear history -- including the devastating impact of nuclear tests on American veterans and civilian populations -- these unknown, significant and documented facts suggest that the theory merits further investigation.the Port Chicago Witnesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00683288987476466093noreply@blogger.com