THEY WERE UP WELL BEFORE DAWN. They wanted to get to the beach in time to see — if indeed they could see something. It was scheduled for 5 a.m. It would be on another South Pacific island 200 miles away. But they thought they might see something if they looked in the right place. Gerald Busch ’52 knew where to look and pointed the others in that direction.
“We thought we’d see a flicker on the horizon,” he said.
What he saw stays vividly with him 70 years later.
“The whole sky lit up,” he said. “There was enough light to read a newspaper.”
A companion on the beach had indeed brought a newspaper.
When the darkness returned, the men went back to the mess hall. They got their food and sat down to eat. Then the dishes rattled and the building shook. Twenty minutes earlier they had witnessed the sky light up from a hydrogen bomb exploding. The shock wave had just arrived, having traveled the 200 miles from Bikini, the site of the explosion, to the mess hall on Enewetak.
Busch, then two years out of UD’s business school, was not new to massive explosions. He had previously gone with UD researchers to the Nevada desert about 60 miles from Las Vegas for atomic tests. “The A-bomb was nothing compared to the H-bomb,” he said. Busch’s path from business school to being a witness to the dawn of the atomic age began with a high school class in drafting. During Busch’s senior year at UD, math professor Ken Schraut assembled a group of adozen math majors to help nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base read flight charts. “The charts were a foot deep and 20 feetlong; my cousin Ken was a math student; and they needed a draftsman. So, I worked about 15 hours a week on the project.”
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ZEFERLI, iSTOCK
As UD developed a research staff (located, Busch recalls, on the second floor of the library, then in Albert Emanuel Hall), “Wright-Patterson wanted people to measure aircraft damage at atomic tests,” Busch said.
John Westerheide ’47, who would become the first director of the University of Dayton Research Institute a few years later, asked Busch, who in June 1952 was about to graduate, if he wanted a full-time job. “I said, ‘Yes, but only for a year,’” Busch said. He would go on to spend over two decades on the business side of UDRI before moving for the rest of his 40-year UD career to St. Mary’s Hall as purchasing director.
About a year into his research job, he went with a group of 50 to the Nevada desert. “I was the administrator for the group, so I stayed mostly in the back. But I asked Westerheide if I could do some ‘pick-and-shovel’ work. And I did for a few days.”
Busch made several UD trips to the desert for tests. His role expanded beyond administrator. On one trip, he was in Nevada with John Moreau, who was a photographer at UD for 40 years. Moreau had secret clearance. But the area where damaged aircraft parts were to be photographed required topsecret clearance. “I had that,” Busch said. “And the government didn’t have a photographer.”
So, Busch borrowed Moreau’s Speed Graphic camera, put on overalls and a mask and went out accompanied by someone measuring radiation while Busch made a photographic record of the impact of an atomic bomb.
In the Pacific, Busch almost moved again beyond the business side of the operation. “Oscilloscopes were put ona B-36 to measure the blast. It took four engineers to monitor them. I was trained as the fifth,” he said. “It wasn’t that difficult. But I didn’t have to fly on the mission.”
Later in his career, long after the atomic tests, Busch’s work also extended beyond his job. He served on the city council of Kettering, Ohio, for 22 years, eight as mayor. When his career at UD and stint as mayor came to an end in 1989, he ran for Kettering clerk of courts. He won and served two six-year terms.
A version of this article appears in print in the Winter 2024-45 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 62. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE
