Hi, I'm the History Guy. I love history and if you
love history too, this is the channel for you. In 1947, a remote part of Southern California
that was referred to simply as “The Hill” became a surprising and largely forgotten front-line in the
Cold War, and while it played a surprising role some of the most momentous events of the era,
it also caused some surprising and largely forgotten casualties in that war. The history
of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory is history that deserves to be remembered.
Founded in 1928, aircraft manufacturer, North American Aviation, produced important aircraft
designs during the Second World War, including the T-6 the most widely used trainer aircraft
in history with nearly 17,000 produced. The twin-engine B-25 Mitchell Bomber, used in James
Doolittle famous raid on Tokyo in February of 1942, and the legendary P-51 Mustang, generally
regarded as one of the best fighter aircraft of the Second World War. After the war NAA continued
to design military aircraft, including the F-86 Sabre, still the most produced Western jet
fighter aircraft in history. But North American diversified in the post-war era where there was
far less demand for military aircraft, but new technologies were transforming the aerospace
industry. One of those new technologies was rocket engines, North American had started experimenting
with rocket engines in 1946 testing them in the parking lot of their Los Angeles facility and
protecting the cars by parking of bulldozer in front of the engine. The U.S. Department of Defense
contracted North American to study the V-2 rocket that had been developed by Germany during the war,
the goal was to adapt the V-2 design to U.S. manufacturing standards. Using ideas derived from
the V-2 design, North Americans started to design a much larger engine. Originally powered the SM-64
Navajo, a proposed supersonic intercontinental cruise missile. Given the size of the project, the
parking lot would no longer suffice. In 1947 NAA leased acreage in the Santa Susana mountains, near
Canoga Park California. The area was considered a good place to test rocket engines. The site, which
early employees dubbed “The Hill” had good geology for rocket test stands, with isolated peaks and
rocky bowls that acted as a natural buffer for the blasts and sound. While it was still able to
leverage the robust Southern California aerospace industry at the time, it was significantly more
remote than other North American aviation facilities. And rocket technology was not
the only technology that was interesting North American Aviation, following the development of
the atomic bomb, the United States government, and the people, had become fascinated with the
potential for nuclear power. In 1948, North American Aviation created an internal division
to manage its government and commercial nuclear research, they built a small five watt reactor
in their facility in the town of Downey California southeast of Los Angeles, that in 1952, became the
first nuclear reactor to operate in the state of California. In 1955 that reactor was moved to the
NAA land in the Santa Susana Mountains, where a new area under the supervision of the U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission, housed facilities for testing nuclear reactors and nuclear support operations. In 1955
North American Aviation's spun off its rocket development has a new division called Rocketdyne
and its nuclear technology and reactor development as a division called Atomics international,
both of these were headquartered in the Los Angeles suburb of Canoga Park.
By the late 1950s the mountainsite, known as the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, had developed
into four major test areas with 18 large static rocket engine test stands, five component test
laboratories, an advanced propulsion test facility and the area for nuclear facilities overseen by
the Atomic Energy Commission. The entire Santa Susana Field Laboratory eventually encompassed
2,558 acres including buffer zones in the north and south. The facility tested rocket engines
for the Army, the Air Force and by 1960, for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The test stands, some of the first of the kind in North America, could test everything from
individual rocket components to full engines. More than 30,000 rocket engine tests were conducted
at SSFL. NASA argues that the contribution of the Field Laboratory to the development of the
nation's spaceflight program cannot be overstated. The test stands were used in the development of
virtually every major rocket system used by the United States, including the Atlas, Thor, Delta
and Saturn rocket families. The Rockets tested were critical parts of U.S. ballistic missile
systems but also manned space missions and the rockets used for the Mercury and Apollo programs.
The satellites that allow many of the modern conveniences of our age including the Global
Positioning System were launched on systems tested at SSFL. In addition, Santa Susanna's component
and system test laboratory successfully tested and qualified maneuvering control systems for
the Gemini and Apollo missions, the lunar ascent engine for the lunar excursion module and other
reaction control systems for programs such as the Mariner and Viking programs. The test stands were
also used to test the space shuttle main engine or SSME. Used in sets of three, the SSME's launching
a space shuttle, can produce a maximum thrust of a whopping 37 million horsepower and the reusable
SSME, described as the world's most reliable and highly tested large rocket engine ever built,
powered the program that's like 135 missions, and was critical to construction of the International
Space Station, the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope, conducted hundreds of experiments,
launched important communication satellites and launched the Magellan, Galileo and Ulysses
interplanetary missions. Meanwhile the 209 acre section of the field lab called Area 4
was dedicated to nuclear research, including the development and testing of experimental nuclear
reactors. Over the course of four decades, Area 4 would become home to ten reactors,
a plutonium fuel fabrication facility, a uranium fuel facility and a hot lab for remotely cutting
up dangerous radioactive material. The reactors included the pioneering sodium reactor experiment,
a reactor which in 1957 became the first nuclear reactor in the United States to produce electric
power for a commercial power grid, by powering the nearby city of Moore Park. Operations at
Area 4 helped to develop components and designs for a nuclear power generation. But while the
Cold War contributions of the Santa Susana field laboratory are largely forgotten, the site has
become increasingly better known, especially in Southern California, for another reason.
The site was chosen for its remote location, allowing scientists to test the boundaries of
dangerous technologies with less risk to human populations. But Southern California continued
to grow and clean around the once rural site. Today more than 1/2 million people live within
10 miles of SSFL. That is a problem for a site that tested dangerous technologies and
utilized toxic chemicals. The site developed during the Cold War when the technologies were
seen as important to National Security. That led to an environment where safety
environmental protocols were placed behind the need for speedy development, and in fact,
when many protocols had not even been established. For example, solvents containing volatile organic
compounds were used to clean rocket engines, and toxic chemicals were allowed to seep into the
groundwater. Chemicals were improperly disposed of, former employees and Department of Energy
investigations found that toxic and radioactive chemicals where sometimes burned in open pits,
allowing toxic substances to be released into the air. Reportedly employees would dispose of drums
of toxic chemicals by shooting them with a rifle until they exploded, allowing the toxins to blow
wherever the wind chose. But perhaps the worst environmental disaster at the site occurred in
July of 1959, the sodium reactor experiment was just that an experiment, the conditions
had been untried and limits were only theoretical. In the course of operation that chemical lubricant
leaked into the liquid sodium cooling system, the chemical broke down into organic compounds
that then partially blocked the cooling system as it ran across the fuel rods. Technicians
were aware of anomalous readings but continued to operate the system while seeking solutions.
Eventually technicians shut the reactor down to determine the problem and discovered that
13 of 43 reactor fuel elements had partially melted down. That event has since become a
matter of dispute. While documents released at the time suggested that the radiation release
was negligible, whistle-blowers since have alleged that significant amounts of radioactive material
was released and that the accident was covered up. Some analysts believe that the amount of
radioactive material released was actually much more than the 1979 Three Mile Island incident.
Because despite the fact that the Three Mile Island reactor was much larger, the sodium reactor
experiment had no concrete containment dome. These analyses suggest that the worst nuclear disaster
in U.S. history was covered up at the time, and the public only became aware after documents were
discovered nearly 20 years later in the wake of Three Mile Island. Astoundingly the little-known
accident was only one of at least four accidents involving experimental nuclear reactors at SSFL.
Nuclear research at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory concluded in 1988, and the last
rocket test was in 2006. The changing needs of the space program have rendered the site unnecessary
and most the site is scheduled for environmental remediation with much of the planned to be turned
into parkland. The Rocketdyne and Atomics International divisions of North American
were sold to the Boeing Corporation in 1996, and while they have been resold since, Boeing retained
ownership of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory and thus the cleanup is the responsibility of the
Boeing Corporation along with the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, and that has been a subject of intense litigation and disagreement. Experts
hired by Boeing dispute the claim that the 1959 reactor accident released substantial radiation,
claiming only that a small amount of material was released that was well within federal
guidelines. A 2004 class-action lawsuit, that alleged damages due to that leak, was settled
out of court and to this day the true extent of that 1959 nuclear accident is unknown. In 2006,
a study by independent scientists determined that at least several hundred diagnosed
cases of cancer are directly attributable to pollution at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory,
and the number might actually be higher as other studies suggest that people that live within two
miles of the facility are much more likely to be diagnosed with certain cancers. And that suggests
that we are still seeing casualties in this largely forgotten battlefield of the Cold War.
I'm the History Guy and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, 5 minutes of short snippits
of forgotten history about 10 minutes long. If you
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