Voyage to the CROSSROADS

by Vic Socotra

Overview

Ed Gilfillen's account of a remarkable adventure in maritime has stood the test of time. He was diagnosed with what would prove a fatal case of multiple myeloma in the mid-1970s. His suspicion upon treatment was that the cancer had been a result of radioactive exposure suffered while a participant in the CROSSROADS atomic tests at Eniwetok Atoll in 1946. Warned that his story was classified at the time, it remained a secret from the end of the operation to evaluate America's atomic status until his death in 1978. A life-long athlete and technical expert, he kept his secret as directed, but wrote an account that came to me as a young Naval Intelligence officer after his passing. I promised his story would be told. It combines a rollicking old-school sea story with something else completely new. Ed called his his non-volunteer sailors "a Pirate Crew of Yankees" attempting to operate the last capital ship of a proud Navy with all instructions in Japanese. After a wild transit of over 2,000 miles, Nagato was anchored in a position to suffer the blows of two powerful atomic detonations by the same 'Fat Man' designs that ended a war. It is a tale of nautical magic and atomic mystery on which the future of a world would be based. It was not until Ed, and hundreds of Atomic Veterans had died that the Clinton Administration allowed the curtain to be lifted. The time for Ed's story is finally here.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781638211785
Publisher:	Socotra House LLC
Publication date:	06/06/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	198
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Ed was a World Two Navy Surface Line Officer sent to Occupation-era Japan as part of the Naval Technical Group, an intelligence operation intended to winnow through the wreckage of the Imperial war machine for items of use to the growing threat of the Cold War. While in the former IJN port of Ykokosuka, his shipboard skills made him suitable for a special assignment more important than the secret operation to uncover Japanese secrets: steam the last Japanese battleship to Eniwetok, 2,175 miles from Yokosuka and prepare the ship for the Atomic tests of Operation CROSSROADS. The voyage is a rollicking sea story, since the skeleton Yankee crew could not read the operating manuals, all in Japanese, and the ABLE and BAKER detonations, highly classified, were also what Ed called "FUBAR." He died young, in 1978, a possible victim of the same exposure suffered by thousands of young sailors. His story is appropriate today, and the threat of nuclear employment has made our present time termed as "the most dangerous since the Cuban Missile Crisis."

Table of Contents

Alpha and Omega

BAKER's Dozen

Climb Mount Niitaka

The Manuscript

Three Feathers and a Flag

Part One: Meeting the XO

Meet the XO

Tabis

General Quartering

Naval Architecture

Water, Water Everywhere

All Bets Are Off

Montano

Liberty Party

Shackles

Sea and Anchor

Hairless Joe and the Lonesome Polecat

Part Two: At Sea and Underway

Bikini Bound

Fuel State Critical

Nagato Adrift

Deck Division

Mutiny in Paradise

Part Three: Able, Baker and Charlie

Testing, One, Two Three...

Between Doomsday and the 4th of July

Situation (Ab)Normal

Demon Core

The Fabulous BAKER Boys

At the Crossroads

FUBAR

Epilogue

Ship Disposition

Author Bio