Hughes and the mystery atomic test

The Los Angeles Times had an interesting story Sunday about one small unanswered question from the atomic testing era at the Nevada Test Site. Naturally, Howard Hughes played a role.

Among the hundreds of atomic tests of the Cold War era, just one of them occurred at what is known as the Central Nevada Test Area, a remote area northeast of Tonopah. There has been speculation for decades as to why this detonation, code-named Faultless, took place where it did on Jan. 19, 1968, and why no further tests were conducted in this area far to the north of where most of the other atomic tests occurred.

The Times, however, interviewed Philip Coyle, former test director at the Nevada Test Site, who says the test was conducted at the distant outpost in response to pressure from Hughes, who was then living on the ninth floor of the Desert Inn and was among the earliest critics of atomic testing. The atomic blasts were known to shake the hotels on the Strip, alarming guests and employees alike. Hughes also was deeply worried about radiation exposure from the blasts.

According to the Times report: "The Atomic Energy Commission was under so much heat from Hughes, as well as other hotel owners, that the agency ordered a test to see whether a big detonation farther from the Strip would reduce the shaking there."

It turned out that Faultless, an extremely large explosion, still shook the Strip hotels. In addition, according to the Times, it "caused the earth to sink eight feet and opened gaps three feet across."

In short, Faultless proved to the AEC that detonating a bomb a little farther away from Las Vegas wasn't going to solve its dispute with Hughes.

To read the full article, go here.

Tulsa auction yields $1 million bid for Hughes car

I'm not sure where this car came from, but somebody paid $1 million for it the other day. See story here. The new owner, a former pro basketball player, envisions the car ending up in the Evergreen Aviation Museum, alongside Hughes' famed flying boat. That tidbit is in a story here.

The Silver Slipper sign story: True or false?

A memorial service was held recently for the late casino operator Claudine Williams, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal story about it notes that Williams and her husband sold the Silver Slipper to Howard Hughes. Citing an oral history by Williams, the story says Hughes wanted to buy the casino because he was worried that the casino's sign, a rotating silver slipper, might come loose and crash into his Desert Inn hotel across the street. See the story here.

This story conflicts with another common tale about why Hughes wanted to buy the Silver Slipper. In this story, the rotating sign was shining into his hotel room window and he didn't like it. The problem with this story is that Hughes' windows were covered. He didn't look out and little or no light came in. He wasn't sitting in his suite looking out on the Strip, so he might not have even been aware of the rotating sign at all.

This fact, of course, also calls Williams' story into question. However, Williams' story contains an important fact: It was Bob Maheu, Hughes' chief executive in Las Vegas, who told her that Hughes worried about the sign. Maheu was instructed to buy the casino, so in order to get the job done, he could have cooked up any old story about why Hughes wanted it. He could have told Williams the fictional story about the sign just to make conversation, or to in some way entice her to make the sale.