Talked to my Dad tonight about his...

[rrrr]

...1957 Ford sedan delivery. Here's the story. My Dad and my grandfather started a commercial sheet metal business in Albuquerque in 1953. They chose Albuquerque because they knew the government intended to spend billions of dollars in New Mexico to build facilities for the production of nuclear weapons. The business had over 125 employees by 1967.

This was during the time the Cold War was quickly expanding. The US built over 30,000 atomic fission and hydrogen fusion warheads between 1950 and 1960. The warheads were designed and built at the secret Los Alamos National Laboratory, near Santa Fe, with material from Oak Ridge, TN and Hanford, WA. Sandia Base, in Albuquerque, was responsible for designing and building the bomb casings, high explosive trigger assemblies, and fusing for the bombs.

To give you an idea of how these materials were used, a 10 megaton hydrogen fusion thermonuclear bomb warhead required about 22 lbs of Plutonium, 15 lbs of Uranium 235, about five ounces of Lithium Deuteride, and around 5,000 lbs of high explosive to trigger the explosion. It produced an explosive force of ten million tons of TNT.

In 1963, my Dad bought a black 1957 Ford sedan delivery from a government auction at Sandia Base. It had a 312 CI Y-block engine, in a factory version that was quite rare. The engine had a Paxton supercharger (built by McCulloch), a four barrel Holley carburetor, and was rated at 300 HP. From what I can tell by using online searches, the actual horsepower was closer to 340.

It also had a Warner T-85 three speed overdrive transmission. I believe this combination was only available in Thunderbirds, but obviously also in special government spec vehicles like the car Dad bought.

When Dad went to pick up the vehicle after the auction ended, he was told the vehicle was used to transport secret material to and from Los Alamos National Laboratory to Sandia Base, and also Kirtland AFB for air transport to and from Oak Ridge and Hanford. Oak Ridge produced enriched weapons grade Uranium 235, and Hanford produced Plutonium.

I was a small kid at the time, but remember riding in it. My Dad still has pictures of the car and engine. This is a photo of the engine I found online. The supercharger is mounted at the right front of the engine. Comparing it to a standard 312 CI, the supercharged version has 2" radiator hoses instead of 1½", and a four row radiator rather than the stock three row to handle the increased power output and resultant heat.

 

[monkeyswrench]

Damn! Your pops had an honest to God, men in black, black ops car! Being into all things both weird and Ford, I heard a story about a truck, F100, that had the same drive train. I'd think they would have been the precursors to the modern day "Office of Secured Transport" or whatever it's called.

...and the shopping list for an A-Bomb is pretty cool too! Never really heard how much high explosives were needed to start the reaction on the old stuff.

 

[rrrr]

Damn! Your pops had an honest to God, men in black, black ops car! Being into all things both weird and Ford, I heard a story about a truck, F100, that had the same drive train. I'd think they would have been the precursors to the modern day "Office of Secured Transport" or whatever it's called.

...and the shopping list for an A-Bomb is pretty cool too! Never really heard how much high explosives were needed to start the reaction on the old stuff.

He called it the Black Mariah, which is what Soviet citizens called the vehicles that appeared in the night to whisk away victims to the KGB's Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.

What has always amazed me is how a hydrogen bomb gets its power. The conventional explosives cause a fission reaction of the Plutonium, and that provides an X-ray flux and temperatures over several million degrees to light the tiny bit of Lithium Deuteride.

Those few ounces of material create a fusion reaction, releasing enormous amounts of energy at temperatures hotter than the sun. This also ignites a secondary fission reaction in the Uranium, and the boost it gives to the explosion combines with the fusion reaction of the lithium and hydrogen compound. That's how a thermonuclear bomb takes less than fifty pounds of material and produces the equivalent of ten million tons of TNT exploding.

The equation Einstein promulgated in 1905, E=mc², says the energy contained in any and all things is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared. That's a big freekin' number.

 

[Joe mama]

Cool read

 

[HBCraig]

Hell f'n yes!

 

[Mandelon]

Damn.....

 

[rrrr]

I forgot to mention my Dad had a US Government "Q" clearance, which allowed him access to secret lab areas when required. The clearance required an intensive background search, and provided access on a "need to know" basis. Obviously my Dad didn't know about laboratory procedures or secret documents, but back in that era, the clearance was required just to walk into certain areas at Los Alamos and Sandia Base.

A Q Clearance is equivalent to a United States Department of Defense Top Secret clearance. "...the Q access authorization corresponds to the background investigation and administrative determination similar to what is completed by other agencies for a Top Secret National Security Information access clearance."

Anyone possessing an active Q clearance is always categorized as holding a National Security Critical-Sensitive position (sensitivity Level 3).

DOE clearances apply for access specifically relating to atomic or nuclear related materials ("Restricted Data" under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954). The clearance is issued predominantly to non-military personnel. In 1946, U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps Major William L. Uanna, in his capacity as the first Chief of the Central Personnel Clearance Office at the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission, named and established the criteria for the Q Clearance.

The security clearance process at the DOE is adjudicated by the DOE Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA), where an individual whose security clearance is at issue may seek to appeal a security clearance decision to an administrative judge, and subsequently, to an Appeal Panel.

Q clearance - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Hydroman55]

All so cool…..

 

[Rajobigguy]

So what became of the Sedan delivery?

 

[Cobalt232]

I forgot to mention my Dad had a US Government "Q" clearance, which allowed him access to secret lab areas when required. The clearance required an intensive background search, and provided access on a "need to know" basis. Obviously my Dad didn't know about laboratory procedures or secret documents, but back in that era, the clearance was required just to walk into certain areas at Los Alamos and Sandia Base.

A Q Clearance is equivalent to a United States Department of Defense Top Secret clearance. "...the Q access authorization corresponds to the background investigation and administrative determination similar to what is completed by other agencies for a Top Secret National Security Information access clearance."

Anyone possessing an active Q clearance is always categorized as holding a National Security Critical-Sensitive position (sensitivity Level 3).

DOE clearances apply for access specifically relating to atomic or nuclear related materials ("Restricted Data" under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954). The clearance is issued predominantly to non-military personnel. In 1946, U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps Major William L. Uanna, in his capacity as the first Chief of the Central Personnel Clearance Office at the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission, named and established the criteria for the Q Clearance.

The security clearance process at the DOE is adjudicated by the DOE Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA), where an individual whose security clearance is at issue may seek to appeal a security clearance decision to an administrative judge, and subsequently, to an Appeal Panel.

Q clearance - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

My dad had a high clearance as well. The same clearance that the VP gets. When I was a kid and even later we were not allowed to leave the country. Even after retirement, there were several countries on his 'cannot travel to' list including even Austria. My mom really wanted to go to Vienna...

My wife's grandpa was from Russia. When my wife and I got married in 1986, my dad failed to disclose that we had gotten married. He got into a little bit of trouble when that fact caught up with him.

Edit---I forgot to say what he did: Spy satellite program manager.

 

[WhatExit?]

Cool stuff thanks for sharing but because of you, this thread, and all of RDP are now being surveilled by the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI.

Ignore this post I wasn’t here

PS: did your Pop’s car glow in the dark?

 

[Rajobigguy]

Cool stuff thanks for sharing but because of you, this thread, and all of RDP are now being surveilled by the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI.

Ignore this post I wasn’t here

PS: did your Pop’s car glow in the dark?

Oh great , I can feel the paranoia returning. I'm pretty sure that there is a stealth blimp hanging over my house in the evenings and I'm seeing more and more black Crown Vics. in the neighborhood.
Thanks for that.

 

[port austin pirate]

Talked to a friend of my brother in law back in Mich said he bought a new ford back in 57 with the paxton and drag raced it I thought he said he ran 100 in the quarter, said nobody (stock class ) beat him, also There was a high school coach in my little hometown he was from a metro area said his Dad would pick him up from school with a 57 T-bird that had the paxton 312 in it, that thing would be worth mega bucks now days, back then that Bird must have been killer car. Great story RRR DAd must have been quite a guy

 

[ATKpilot]

That is such a cool story....Your Dad run one this around her...she's a 3 today son...let's go!

 

[rrrr]

That is such a cool story....Your Dad run one this around her...she's a 3 today son...let's go!
View attachment 1039828

LOL, I have one of those. It appears to work, but I don't have any radioactive material to test it with.

 

[monkeyswrench]

Oil pressure, engine temo, Geiger Counter...
All the necessary equipment for cruising New Mexico in the late 50's

 

[rrrr]

Oil pressure, engine temo, Geiger Counter...
All the necessary equipment for cruising New Mexico in the late 50's

I picked up the Geiger counter at the gift shop in the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. It's in Albuquerque, just a mile or so away from one of the gates at Sandia Base. It has great artifacts and exhibits.

It's also on South Eubank Blvd, where @playdeep and I used to go for illegal drag racing on Saturday nights, and where Speedway Park, a ⅜ mile banked clay oval used to be.

The Unsers raced there, and so did playdeep. I did some part-time crewing at the track in my teens before I left New Mexico and moved to Texas.

The image below is of the Trinity test on July 16, 1945 in the Southern New Mexico desert, the first detonation of an atomic bomb. You can tell I'm a science geek, I didn't need to look up that date.

Home

www.nuclearmuseum.org

Trinity (nuclear test) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[lbhsbz]

Those super chargers are neat…not sure if they all had it, but a guy I know has one in a ‘53 Ford truck with a vari-drive pulley on it…

 

[monkeyswrench]

Those super chargers are neat…not sure if they all had it, but a guy I know has one in a ‘53 Ford truck with a vari-drive pulley on it…

I think all the early ones had that pulley. Every 50's T-bird and Studebaker setup I've seen did at least.

 

[lbhsbz]

I think all the early ones had that pulley. Every 50's T-bird and Studebaker setup I've seen did at least.

I wish I knew what happened to this guy…he was a master at fabrication, hand hammered out replacement gullwing fenders from junkyard hoods he cut and welded together and the car won an award at pebble beach

The truck was badass…it was on air bags, and he cut out a little paper truck and stuck it to the needle of a gas gage that showed if the truck was level or not. Tons of other little trick shit.

 

[playdeep]

I picked up the Geiger counter at the gift shop in the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. It's in Albuquerque, just a mile or so away from one of the gates at Sandia Base. It has great artifacts and exhibits.

It's also on South Eubank Blvd, where @playdeep and I used to go for illegal drag racing on Saturday nights, and where Speedway Park, a ⅜ mile banked clay oval used to be.

The Unsers raced there, and so did playdeep. I did some part-time crewing at the track in my teens before I left New Mexico and moved to Texas.

The image below is of the Trinity test on July 16, 1945 in the Southern New Mexico desert, the first detonation of an atomic bomb. You can tell I'm a science geek, I didn't need to look up that date.

Home

www.nuclearmuseum.org

Trinity (nuclear test) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Great memories Ron...South Eubank every Fri/Saturday night.
Crazy to think that we used take our dirtbikes out behind Speedway Park&actually ride into the air force base restricted area.wouldn't take long before a security jeep would suddenly appear to chase us off.
You could actually see the large missile silo doors open on occasion in the nearby "hollow" Manzano mountains.

 

[rrrr]

Great memories Ron...South Eubank every Fri/Saturday night.

You could actually see the large missile silo doors open on occasion in the nearby "hollow" Manzano mountains.

This thread is turning into an rrrr RDP History Lesson ™.

In the late 1940s through the first part of the 1950s, all of the United States nuclear weapons were stored in a highly guarded tunnel complex just east of the Albuquerque airport and Kirtland AFB. In later years, warheads began to be moved to other locations and on ICBM missiles in silos around the Midwestern US, but there are still nukes in the complex today.

The security complex has seven separate electrified fences ringing the small mountain were the weapons are stored. When I was a kid and teenager, I would see instances where a stray animal triggered the sensors around the mountain, and the hundreds of bright floodlights spaced along the fence lines illuminated. They literally lit up the entire mountain.

In the 1970s, my sister's husband at the time was an Airman in the USAF, and he was posted.to the security forces guarding the facility. He told me the doors at the entrances to the complex were made of solid steel three or four feet thick, and designed to withstand a nuclear bomb hit within a certain distance from the doors. Of course if a direct hit occurred, all bets were off.

RDP members have read my stories of living between Albuquerque and Holbrook, AZ between 1961 and 1967. At the time, my Dad's company was doing a lot of work for the BIA, building schools and dormitories in reservation towns like Chinle, Shonto, and Tuba City. My grandfather and Dad built a 30,000 SF shop and two houses on the east side of Holbrook, which are still there, behind the Motel 6 just off I-40.

The BIA work wasn't the only reason they established the location in Holbrook. Because of the secret work the company was doing at Sandia Base and Los Alamos, my grandparents and parents knew of the atomic warheads stored just three miles from our houses and the big sheet metal shop located on an entire city block they owned, literally fifty yards from the perimeter fence of Sandia Base.

My grandmother was convinced the Soviet Union was going to attack the US, and because of the warheads in the Manzano complex, Albuquerque was the most important target in the United States. She was the driving force behind building the shop and houses in Holbrook. The work in Northern Arizona required my family to move there when the workload demanded my Dad's presence, and we would return to Albuquerque when that shop was busier.

The business expanded to projects installing HVAC systems in 25+ story highrise office buildings from Portland, OR to Columbus, OH. Industrial work was also a large part of the business. The company's largest industrial project was constructing the Four Corners Generating Project, built on the Navaho Reservation near Farmington.

The first three units of the plant were built between 1962 and 1964, and two more were constructed in 1969. Its total generating capacity was 2,040 megawatts. One of NASA's Mercury program astronauts reported he could see two manmade objects from space, one being the Great Wall of China, and the other condensation plumes from the huge cooling towers of the Four Corners project.

My Grandfather was an alcoholic. In 1967, my Dad bought out my grandfather. My Grandmother had died of heart disease in 1964, and my Grandfather's addiction worsened to the point where he was out of control. The shop in Holbrook was shut down, and we moved back to Albuquerque. My Grandfather retired to Phoenix, where he died just a couple of years later.

I turned eleven that summer of 1967, and started working in the sheet metal shop for 50¢ an hour. Because the company was a union shop, I couldn't touch metal during normal hours and just swept floors. On weekends, my biggest task was cleaning up the dropoffs from the shop's largest shear, a 10' throat/10 gauge capacity Wysong. I sorted the larger pieces by size and gauge, from 10 to 24, and put them in rack beside the main rack which held 10' X 4' sheets of all gauges.

This was the beginning of my life in the construction trades. I had fantastic opportunities to learn a universe of skills. My Dad is now 87 years old, and I call him often to talk about days gone by. He thoroughly enjoys reminiscing about the work we did together, and also the many times we went hunting, fishing, and exploring Northwestern New Mexico and Southwestern Colorado.

My Mom passed away in October 2011. These last ten years have been tough on my Dad. They were married when my Dad was nineteen and my Mom was sixteen. My Mom wanted a bunch of children, and by the time she turned 21, there were four. Ten years later, she wanted more babies, and my parents adopted my two youngest brothers.

I hope these long posts aren't too boring. I really enjoy talking about New Mexico's history, and including my personal experiences bring back great memories.

 

[TITTIES AND BEER]

LOL, I have one of those. It appears to work, but I don't have any radioactive material to test it with.

But you have one if needed

 

[Willie B]

… Back to the Y block…I was told along time ago by a very knowledgeable person that if I were to build a Y block…start with a 292 block as 312 blocks are kind of weak in the main webbing…
…Googled it and saw that with certain 312 blocks …drill the main bolt holes a little further into the block and use longer bolts???…
…Then it said something else which I believe meant in certain blocks this can block an oil passage… but I believe there was also a fix to that???…

… A friend of mine just sold the woodshop teacher from our high school… Just sold his 55 Thunderbird that this teacher bought in 1957..,it was kind of a mild custom tribe grill and a few other things …well at some point somebody put a 312 into it which kind of shied me away from making an offer on it ..,and my friend who got 23K for the car for our 90 year old woodshop teacher said that when they loaded it …it was going to be on the carrier above a Lamborghini… My friends words were ..,I sure hope they put some thing under the Teebird as leaks oil out of the rear main???..,
When he said that it made me really glad that I did not get serious about buying the car..,
…looking at the blower motor pictures kind of makes me wondered if Ford used what used to be called the teapot carburetor with the blower ???…which is about of 400 CFM Holly something or other other???

 

[OkHallett270]

That is such a cool story....Your Dad run one this around her...she's a 3 today son...let's go!
View attachment 1039828

This is a survey meter not a Geiger counter. Geiger counter is only good for small amounts of radiation and will flood out of the exposure rate is too high, when they flood out they read zero which could lead you to believe you are in a safe area. Survey meter is way better tool for reducing exposure to hazardous radiation. We used digital survey meters when I was doing x-Ray on pipeline. Pretty cool tools!

Geiger counters usually have a cord with a radiation sensing wand on the end and the measurement scales are a lot lower. We use these where I work now to detect NORM (Normally Occurring Radioactive Material) on truckloads of downhole equipment when it comes back from the wellsite. Also cool tools!

 

[OkHallett270]

This is a really cool thread. Thanks for sharing your stories @rrrr !
I have a good friend that I grew up with and have known my whole life pretty much who works out at Los Alamos lab now. He’s an electrician. I didn’t know this til he started out there, but Uncle Sam has a whole agency dedicated to extreme background checks. He needed to gain clearance to work in a certain part of the facility so he put me down as a reference. I met this lady at a library in Midland Texas to talk about my friends background. To say the least she knew more about him than he did. I have known him since 3rd grade and I didn’t know some of the answers to questions she had. I mentioned we used to drink beer and hang out at the lake together. She made a concerned face like that might have been some information I didn’t need to disclose to the .gov or something. It was a bizarre experience. I called my friend after the whole deal and he told me not to worry about it, they know me better than I do. They haven’t called me for another check since! He told me all that security check is usually so they can go run electric for a water heater or something in a building that hasn’t needed hot water since about 1947! Lol
I go up to visit him at least once a year to play some golf around Santa Fe. Good food up there! But, man there’s a ton of granola eating Subaru driving teva sandal wearing mountain bike pumping hippie kinda folks up there. I don’t know if I could live there being an Okie redneck and all. Good times for a yearly visit though.

 

[rrrr]

Speaking of Paxton superchargers...

I've posted these photos before. In 2003, I was in Michigan for the IndyCar race, and there was a Main Street car show going on in Jackson, the town closest to Michigan International Speedway.

This Studebaker Lark III was one of the nicest cars there. It was one of the best restorations I've ever seen. The engine is a 289 Studebaker V8. The car was for sale. I talked to the owner about the work that was done on it. The list was huge. It was a complete frame off.

Oh man...the little wheels were spinning in my head. He was asking $26K for it, and after some conversation he was at $22K. I was seriously considering buying the car, it was just beautiful and done right. It was a heckuva deal at that price.

But it was Saturday evening. I had to be at the track at 8 AM the next day, the race started at 1:00 PM, and my plane left Detroit at 6:00 PM. I let it go. It sure would have been a fun car to own.

 

[rrrr]

This is a survey meter not a Geiger counter. Geiger counter is only good for small amounts of radiation and will flood out of the exposure rate is too high, when they flood out they read zero which could lead you to believe you are in a safe area. Survey meter is way better tool for reducing exposure to hazardous radiation. We used digital survey meters when I was doing x-Ray on pipeline. Pretty cool tools!



View attachment 1040297
Geiger counters usually have a cord with a radiation sensing wand on the end and the measurement scales are a lot lower. We use these where I work now to detect NORM (Normally Occurring Radioactive Material) on truckloads of downhole equipment when it comes back from the wellsite. Also cool tools!

Here's mine...

 

[Headless hula]

This thread is turning into an rrrr RDP History Lesson ™.

In the late 1940s through the first part of the 1950s, all of the United States nuclear weapons were stored in a highly guarded tunnel complex just east of the Albuquerque airport and Kirtland AFB. In later years, warheads began to be moved to other locations and on ICBM missiles in silos around the Midwestern US, but there are still nukes in the complex today.

The security complex has seven separate electrified fences ringing the small mountain were the weapons are stored. When I was a kid and teenager, I would see instances where a stray animal triggered the sensors around the mountain, and the hundreds of bright floodlights spaced along the fence lines illuminated. They literally lit up the entire mountain.

In the 1970s, my sister's husband at the time was an Airman in the USAF, and he was posted.to the security forces guarding the facility. He told me the doors at the entrances to the complex were made of solid steel three or four feet thick, and designed to withstand a nuclear bomb hit within a certain distance from the doors. Of course if a direct hit occurred, all bets were off.

RDP members have read my stories of living between Albuquerque and Holbrook, AZ between 1961 and 1967. At the time, my Dad's company was doing a lot of work for the BIA, building schools and dormitories in reservation towns like Chinle, Shonto, and Tuba City. My grandfather and Dad built a 30,000 SF shop and two houses on the east side of Holbrook, which are still there, behind the Motel 6 just off I-40.

The BIA work wasn't the only reason they established the location in Holbrook. Because of the secret work the company was doing at Sandia Base and Los Alamos, my grandparents and parents knew of the atomic warheads stored just three miles from our houses and the big sheet metal shop located on an entire city block they owned, literally fifty yards from the perimeter fence of Sandia Base.

My grandmother was convinced the Soviet Union was going to attack the US, and because of the warheads in the Manzano complex, Albuquerque was the most important target in the United States. She was the driving force behind building the shop and houses in Holbrook. The work in Northern Arizona required my family to move there when the workload demanded my Dad's presence, and we would return to Albuquerque when that shop was busier.

The business expanded to projects installing HVAC systems in 25+ story highrise office buildings from Portland, OR to Columbus, OH. Industrial work was also a large part of the business. The company's largest industrial project was constructing the Four Corners Generating Project, built on the Navaho Reservation near Farmington.

The first three units of the plant were built between 1962 and 1964, and two more were constructed in 1969. Its total generating capacity was 2,040 megawatts. One of NASA's Mercury program astronauts reported he could see two manmade objects from space, one being the Great Wall of China, and the other condensation plumes from the huge cooling towers of the Four Corners project.

My Grandfather was an alcoholic. In 1967, my Dad bought out my grandfather. My Grandmother had died of heart disease in 1964, and my Grandfather's addiction worsened to the point where he was out of control. The shop in Holbrook was shut down, and we moved back to Albuquerque. My Grandfather retired to Phoenix, where he died just a couple of years later.

I turned eleven that summer of 1967, and started working in the sheet metal shop for 50¢ an hour. Because the company was a union shop, I couldn't touch metal during normal hours and just swept floors. On weekends, my biggest task was cleaning up the dropoffs from the shop's largest shear, a 10' throat/10 gauge capacity Wysong. I sorted the larger pieces by size and gauge, from 10 to 24, and put them in rack beside the main rack which held 10' X 4' sheets of all gauges.

This was the beginning of my life in the construction trades. I had fantastic opportunities to learn a universe of skills. My Dad is now 87 years old, and I call him often to talk about days gone by. He thoroughly enjoys reminiscing about the work we did together, and also the many times we went hunting, fishing, and exploring Northwestern New Mexico and Southwestern Colorado.

My Mom passed away in October 2011. These last ten years have been tough on my Dad. They were married when my Dad was nineteen and my Mom was sixteen. My Mom wanted a bunch of children, and by the time she turned 21, there were four. Ten years later, she wanted more babies, and my parents adopted my two youngest brothers.

I hope these long posts aren't too boring. I really enjoy talking about New Mexico's history, and including my personal experiences bring back great memories.

I think that your stories are fantastic and I read every single one. Please do not stop rambling on.

I’m not sure which I enjoy more, this story, or the tangent you went on when I started the Ford museum thread.