A Story Too Good to Kill

In July I944, the U.S. Naval Magazine at Port Chicago, California, was devastated by the largest stuteside explosion during World War II. One ammunition ship disappeared and another was broken in two at this depot near San Francisco; the Navy Court of Inquiry found that all evidence of the cause also disappeared. In 1982, however, a journalist raised the possibility that Port Chicago was destroyed by U.S. authorities in a deliberate, clandestine test of a nuclear weapon. This explanation advanced by a full year the "official" historical date of the first nuclear detona tion (formerly accepted as the Los Alamos Laboratory's "Trinity" test). The reporter presented evidence that the explosion bore nuclear characteristics, that a gun-type weapon was designed by that date, and that sufficient uranium 235 had been purified for a Hiroshima-type bomb. This article examines that evidence critically, and refutes the conclusion that Port Chicago could have been a nuclear event. The episode demonstrates insights into the sociology of publishing astounding knowledge claims, and suggests how historians might better assist journalists in evaluating such claims.