Several people who knew me well, asked me how I could have retired so early when I had a job that a lot of engineers would have killed for.

I explained that my good fortune did not obligate me to perpetuate it if I felt that my career had been completed. This was a true representation of my feelings.

The career that seems to have started in Junior High School was complete. It could have continued to be repetitious, it could have continued until it just withered and died, or I died, or it exploded, imploded, or whatever, but I believe that a lot of things we think are non-organic and static, really are not.

In any relationship or undertaking, there is an energy involved and this is dynamic, and when that energy has been expended, it is complete. Those lacking this knowledge, and those not able to respond to this condition, try to make relationships last too long.   In the end, the relationships at their best, become tedious – at their worst, destructive and ugly.

As an engineer, I was simply through.

'How did I get through so early?' should have been the next question but I was never asked that, but obviously I knew the answer.

The answer is NOT, 'If your vision is sufficiently limited, you can be a success VERY early' (though that is a true statement).’

We have all known people who turned off their imaginations and ambitions really, really soon.

I was not one of these.

I simply had, when young, an interest, which I developed, and made it a hobby. I pursued it and studied it -- whatever we want to call "it." In those days, it was not uncommon for hobbies to become careers. This is certainly not the case today.

So, I had virtually dropped in my lap, the most fantastic engineering projects, under the cream of engineering-management, from my first technical job until, a few months before retiring.

In a week of retrospection, I acknowledged to myself that I had done everything that was within my grasp and I was "through." (Granted, I did have to pay attention to opportunity, know when to make a move, prepare for the moment, but I would never suggest that "I" did it all. I was simply an incredibly fortunate engineer.)

I was done -- completed -- through.

This image shows the first technical project I worked on.

This goes back to the earlier comment about a 1949 article on "Atomic-Powered Bombers." I was 15 when I read that the first time...and I DID read it.

WWII ended with a beginning; the start of the Atomic Age (which had more intrinsic promise than citizens had/have imagination and courage).

Because of this "New Age", the Air Force received so many unsolicited proposals for nuclear turbines and nuclear powered bombers, the Air Force had to acknowledge some and spend a little money to demonstrate that they were forward-thinkers.

A preliminary design team developed a concept, and then a few minor study-contracts and letters of intent were sent out.

One went to General Electric, the turbine people, asking them 'to go forth away unto yon desert away from man and beast and hearken to render forth a small reactor' to heat air blowing past some sufficiently hot fins to start a turbine spinning. And GE was to determine what kind of thrusts might be produced.

Their paper-designs looked promising; there were two basic concepts.

And the Air Force was wondering if someone could just shield a crew in a regular jet and stick in a nuclear turbine?

What would a high-radiation environment do to traditional aircraft systems and sub-systems?

A study contract was issued and it was determined that this aircraft shielding and contamination research required an aircraft flying in a high radiation environment -- so obviously, what was needed was a good-sized, portable nuclear reactor carried in an airplane. Not to power it (yet), but to just irradiate it.

Unfortunately, lead and reactors are heavy, and there would be the need of a lot electronic equipment, and please believe that "miniaturization" was a virtually unknown term then. It would take a big, big airplane and a company familiar with working with big airplanes.

In 1951, Convair-Ft. Worth was given a contract to answer a lot of these questions. (I was a high school Junior in a dusty, South Texas Mexican town below San Antone -- and reading lots of science fiction and model airplane magazines.)

Which aircraft should be used?

A B-36, certainly, but which one?

A Texas tornado answered the question when a brand new, B-36H-20, tail number 51-5712, Ship 242, was spun into the corner of a building, seriously damaging the nose.

"Hey! Why not that one?"

The aircraft had six radials with 28 cylinders each and each had two-turbochargers and each developed 3,800 hp.  With the four jets having 5,200 pounds thrust each that ought to do it. Each engine drove 19' diameter, three-bladed props -- a blade (paddle) was 18" wide.

The bomb bay could carry a LOT of stuff -- a pressurized crew tunnel ran the length of it so crewmen could lie on a wheeled cart and whiz from one end to the other to gain access to forward and aft crew areas. The tunnel was 85' long. Access to the bomb bay was through only two sets of doors, meaning that with doors open, the bomb bay was perfect for nuclear test operations.

Though this modified aircraft was named "Crusader," it was never referred to as that but as "NTA" (Nuclear Test Aircraft) but most often she was just "Ship 242."

It wasn't referred to by any name in the press -- they (and the public) didn't know about it.

The configuration was that the entire nose was re-designed to hold a five-man crew (crew of standard B-36 was 11); pilot left front, to his side the co-pilot, behind the pilot was the reactor operator, and to his right behind the co-pilot was the data engineer, and stuck in a little hole between and behind them was the flight engineer.

Entry was made by climbing a ladder through the nose gear retract area, through a lead and plastic-layered hatch about 14" thick, and as soon as entering the crew compartment, the crewman slid into whichever seat was to be occupied -- no one walked around in the NTA crew compartment.

The four windows were 12" thick and was a lead-impregnated plastic. The entire "lead coffin" was shielded with lead, rubber, and plastics. When in flight, no sounds were heard and the pilots thought of it as a glider. The soft windshield would be pitted by blowing dust, which Ft. Worth had a lot of, so the windows were covered almost all the time the aircraft was on the ground.

What exotic material was used to cover these windows?

Pieces of cardboard boxes from the local grocery store were cut with pocket knives and taped in place. This was when engineers could use quick-n-dirty solutions to simple problems and then be free to concentrate on important stuff.

In the forward bomb-bay was a pressurized instrument capsule which was shielded with lead and plastic. Technicians entered through a small round hatch at floor level. Everything was way off the ground! The capsule had racks of equipment on both sides with a 20"-wide aisle between full racks. Head clearance was 6' and the interior capsule was 10' long.

The hatch was about 24" in diameter and I remember easily going through it at the same speed as walking. (That hatch would seem much, much smaller to me today.)

Most of the instrumentation supported the ton of radiation detectors scattered all over the aircraft, and of course, all this data had to be recorded -- on 24-track magnetic tape.

The mega-watt reactor was just behind the instrument capsule. Large air-scoops on the aft sides of the fuselage pulled in cooling air. The air went across and through the reactor and exited the aircraft through two ports on the aft upper portion of the fuselage. Normally, there would have been plexiglass bubbles there for crew sighting.

Radial engines leak oil and the big pusher engines had transmissions on them to help control the big props and to take some of the thrust-load off the engines. Since there could be no one outside of the nose crew compartment when the reactor was critical ("lit"), the in-flight engine inspections were done by closed-circuit TV -- which in that day was not that straight-forward either.

The TV lens ports were in the center of the white star on the aft fuselage sides. TV also permitted the reactor operator to see the reactor control rod positions.

So now there is a throttleable radiation source and a full aircraft system in a high-radiation environment.

What next?

A B-50 was acquired from the Air Force and it was outfitted with tons of radiation detectors and data recording systems.

This was the airborne portion of the radiation detection system.

What else would be needed?

Safety stuff.

Like what?

Like if on take-off or landing, the aircraft broke up, it would be nice if all the contamination could be gathered up in a hurry.

The reactor was made to stay in one piece.

So a tank-retriever was retrieved from the Army and modified so the operator would be in a lead coffin with thick plexi windows (and no air-conditioning) and there would be a blade on one end of the tank and a big hook and crane on the other.

The idea being that the tank driver would race (?) to the crash scene and decide if he needed the hook to engage the shackle at the top of the reactor or use the blade to scoop up the biggest pieces of fuel rods, etc.

And what would he do with them once he had them?

Race boldly to the north end of the runway and dump them into Lake Worth so the water could moderate the continuing high radiation. (Did I mention that Ft. Worth was getting its drinking water from this lake?)

What else would be needed?

What if the reactor would not scram when critical? (Scraming is the sudden positioning of the control rods to make the reactor become non-critical.)

This was not much of a problem because in those days, engineers designed with a higher level of reliability when there were a lot of unknowns -- and this was way-unknown territory -- consequently, the reactor was designed so conservatively, the question was never "Would it scram?" but "Would it go critical?"

But what if something did go wrong?

"No problem!" (Said my friend, the untrained engineer, Alf.)

It is in the bomb bay, right?

Just open the bomb bay doors and drop that sucker! A design and safety feature was to paint it bright yellow-orange and then in red, paint "BOMB" on both sides.

That ought to do it!

And it was decided that a paratrooper aircraft would be solicited from the Air Force and in this would be some trained health physics personnel with radiation detectors on their belts and parachutes on their backs.

The aircraft was a horrible dog -- an early C-119 Boxcar. Either way, if the bomb was dropped...I mean...if the reactor was released, the parachuting health physicists would go down and map out the area of contamination and mark it off and tell the press and public not to go there and everything would be perfectly fine.

We knew better, but we were engineers trying to do the best we could.

"We?"

Yes, I had just arrived at Convair's Nuclear Engineering Department (Dept. 6-8), with the India ink hardly dry on a Chicago school diploma. I answered the only questions the manager could think to ask and they were the only ones to which I knew the answers – and I was dutifully welcomed aboard.

They wanted to know who knew something about radiation and health physics and would jump out of an airplane. I raised my hand immediately. (Heck, the first two parts I thought I knew, and how hard could it be jumping out of an airplane? Gravity does all the work.)

I would be sent to El Centro, CA, for parachute training. But first, my security clearance had to come in and since I was a hardly-shaving young man, I would not have had much time to work my way into the KGB, so my clearance shouldn't take too long.

My background check started with a G-man-looking guy, in a black suit no less (Men In Black), walking into the dusty, hot little town in South Texas, going to the one barber shop and asking, "Any one around here know a Kenneth David Cashion?"

None did, though I got my haircut there every time my mother noticed my sideburns and collar. But I was a good kid and didn't cause trouble -- thusly, my anonymity was certain. However, with the other Cashions, it was a different story -- but I digress.

This nuclear project was so secret that we all had to get "Q" clearances through the Atomic Energy Commission. This was about the highest clearance attainable -- it was well, well above piddlely-little, "Top Secret." The "Q" was so high, that if you told someone that you knew had to have a "Q" that you had a "Q", you automatically lost it. Even our clearance level was above Top Secret! Now, THAT'S secret.

Everything was classified "NTK" - Need-To-Know. How can this be done? It is actually very easy. No matter what the question, the answer is "You have NTK?"

"Where did you guys eat lunch today?"

"You have NTK?"

Making it a joke kept the serious questions on a real NTK basis.

I made it a point to need-to-know a lot.

My clearance arrived at Convair 24 hours AFTER the future-parachuting health physicists departed for El Centro -- I wasn't going to learn how to jump out of airplanes.

(Again, I digress. This is not supposed to be about my career.)

The NTA made its first flight September 17, 1955, and flew 47 missions.

A mission consisted of positioning the NTA over the reactor pit where the aircraft reactor was underground going through some idling tests. (We had three other reactors, as well, to support other nuclear engineering projects.)

Then the bomb bay doors would open and big concrete and steel doors in the ground would roll back and the reactor would be winched up into the bomb bay and then cables, hoses, etc. connected.

The aircraft would start a 24-hour standardization procedure. Small radiation sources with known emission rates would be strapped to the jillion detectors, and the data engineer on the flight deck would sample the data from each detector to make sure it was working and then he would record a base-line measurement on the mission data tape, all amplifier gains would be set, and in general, during the non-stop 24 hours, all sub-systems would be calibrated.

There were a maze of intercom ports in and on the aircraft.  Yelling, would not be heard above other aircraft noises. Also, it was a long way around that aircraft.

Then there would be an aircraft preflight when flight crew would run all engines and test aircraft systems. During this time the data engineer would make another calibration recording of each detector.

All power would be removed from the aircraft, including ground air-conditioning, calibration sources would be removed from detectors, and all ports and instrument hatches closed.

The engineering crew would depart and the ground chief would sign over the aircraft to the flight crew and they would take possession of the aircraft and go through a standard abbreviated preflight and then taxi to the ramp.

The B-50 would have been going through identical tests on the other side of the ramp.

The NTA would taxi to the edge of the runway and the B-50 would taxi to the runway and wait an OK to take off.

(One time at this point, a mission was scrubbed because the tank-reactor-retriever wouldn't start.)

With an OK, the B-50 would take off and make a large circuit of the field and then the NTA would take off. As the NTA was just clearing the ground, the B-50 would come down the runway at about 200' altitude, align with the NTA, and both would start a slow turn to the west.

The reactor would have been idled once in the aircraft in the reactor area and then shut down.

The C-119 would have left an hour before; it had two speeds - fly/crash.

They got to the barren New Mexico desert and started the experiment. Flying different altitudes with different radiation levels, the B-50 holding one position taking data and then moving over to the adjacent position to take data, and thereby mapping radiation contours around the NTA. This would take care of the shielding and scattering portion of the mission.

Additional tests would start the radiation effects portion.

The C-119, just flew in big circles and drove the uncomfortable, rigged, sweating, parachuting health physicists mad and/or sick.

With the experiment completed, they would turn for home and after they had taken off just after sun-up, they would arrive home at sun-set. (The C-119 had been stopping for fuel and got back later.)

The B-50 and B-36 could have flown longer but the NTA had no radar, the minimum in radio communication, and it flew under visible flight rules.

The NTA and B-50 would go into immediate post-flight calibration which was a near-repeat of the standardization tests.

The data tape would be taken to the nuclear lab where I worked and I would spin it up and start down-loading data to punch card or directly to printouts. I also assisted in the aircraft standardization procedures -- it took a lot of people.

From the data results of that flight, the next mission profile would be developed, and then we would do it again.

"Did the NTA get away?"

"Yep. It had six a'turnin' an' four a'burnin'!"

To this day, this statement thrills and stirs me with great memories.

But the end of the program was already set because of one of the involved aircraft.

Which one?

Why?

Ken Cashion