Inside the abandoned island where Hitler's former rocket man conducted nuke tests with the US military
SOURCE:Daily Mail
The island, which sits in the Central Pacific Ocean, is where the US first conducted ultra-high altitude nuclear test blasts. One of the explosions terrified people in Hawaii 700 miles away.
It is one of the most remote islands in the world.
Tucked away around 800 miles off the coast of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, Johnston Atoll is a stunning wildlife sanctuary where few humans ever step foot.
But beneath the beauty lies a very dark history linked to Nazis and nuclear warfare - with a new war brewing between SpaceX and those preserving the transformed paradise.
Now, thanks to incredible new pictures and expert interviews, the Daily Mail can finally lay bare the island's deepest secrets - and what its future holds.
In 2019, volunteer biologist Ryan Rash, 30, flew to Hawaii and took the three-day boat journey to Johnston on a mission to eradicate an invasive species of ant.
From June to November, he and four others lived in tents and rode their bikes around the roughly one-square-mile island searching for colonies of yellow crazy ants. Not native to the island, they were multiplying into the millions and spraying acid into the eyes of ground-nesting birds, he told the Daily Mail.
Rash quickly familiarized himself with the island's many abandoned buildings and relics primarily from the 1990s, when it hosted as many as 1,100 military members and civilian contractors, according to the CIA.
During his explorations, Rash recalled seeing multiple restaurants and bars, the remains of what used to be a movie theater, basketball and volleyball courts, an Olympic-sized swimming pool and decaying officers' quarters.
An aerial photo of Johnston Atoll, where the US military conducted seven nuclear tests throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s
Ryan Rash, 30, on the island inside a Quonset hut on May 12, 2021. Weeks later, he left Johnston after spending about a year of his life trying to eradicate yellow crazy ants, an invasive species
Some concrete foundations remain on the island (pictured) but, in many cases, it's impossible to know what was stood on them
A decaying bench on the island that has been left open to the elements
'Near where some of these officers' quarters were, there was a giant clam shell that they had mortared into a wall as a sink,' he said.
There was even a nine-hole golf course where, Rash said, he found a golf ball that said 'Johnston Island' on it. He also found Johnston Island branded poker chips and coffee mugs.
These were all signs of the island's past lives - when it played host to the US military and an ex-Nazi scientist. Johnston Atoll was the site of seven nuclear tests throughout the late 1950s and early '60s.
In the summer of 1958, the island was teeming with the US military's best and brightest - tasked with conducting the first-ever, ultra-high altitude nuclear blast test.
Sixty-three-years later, in 2021, Navy Lieutenant Robert 'Bud' Vance, published a detailed memoir with the US Naval Institute about his time there and the highly-classified experiment known as Operation Hardtack.
At the time, Vance was a 34-year-old civil engineer who had survived the horrors of both World War II and the Vietnam War. He had a wife, five-year-old twins and another child on the way.
One of Vance's closest colleagues on the island was Dr. Kurt Debus. Debus had been a member of the Nazi party's SS and worked to develop long-range missiles for Germany during World War II.
Robert 'Bud' Vance (second from right) is seen in his Navy Blues. He stands alongside his family and another officer. Vance was on Johnston Atoll for the 'Teak Shot,' a nuclear device that was detonated at an altitude of 252,000 feet on July 31, 1958
Dr. Kurt Debus in 1968 at Cape Kennedy, Florida. After serving as Adolf Hitler's rocket scientist, he defected and was taken to the US where he began helping the military develop ballistic missiles. Vance worked closely with Debus to prepare for the 'Teak Shot'
The island is under the jurisdiction of the US Air Force, which has proposed using it as a landing site for SpaceX rockets. The project is in limbo after environmental groups sued the federal government
Debus arrived in the US in 1945, where he developed the Redstone Rocket - a ballistic missile used to launch the two nuclear bombs from Johnston, Vance wrote.
In rigidly-precise prose, Vance explained that he was under massive pressure to get the first rocket launch - dubbed 'Teak Shot' - ready before a three-year moratorium on nuclear testing began between the US, Soviet Union and United Kingdom on October 31, 1958.
Earlier that year, Vance had spent four months building the rocket launching facilities at the original test location, Bikini Atoll, 1,700 miles west of Johnston.
In his memoir, he wrote that they abandoned Bikini Atoll because Army commanders feared that people living as far as 200 miles away 'could have their eyes damaged by the thermal pulse of the fire ball'.
But still, Vance got the Teak Shot launched from Johnston right on schedule: late at night on July 31, 1958. Once it ascended to 252,000 feet, it exploded into what he described as a second sun.
'Although it was about midnight, I could see the other end of Johnston Island as if the sun was shining,' Vance wrote. 'Dr. Debus and I were standing close together. We could see that the fireball was very large and was rising very rapidly.
'From the bottom of the fireball there appeared a brilliant Aurora and purple streamers which spread towards the North Pole.'
They made some scientific observations, Vance recalled, before he and Debus shook hands, smiled and said in unison, 'We did it!'
But, what was a beautiful moment of accomplishment for the scientists, was a very different experience for those living about 800 miles away in Hawaii.
The military had failed to warn civilians about the nuclear test. It caused a panic, with Honolulu police receiving over 1,000 calls from terrified residents.
The front page of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin the day after the 'Teak Shot' on July 31, 1958
Men stationed on Johnston Island for the 'Teak Shot' exit the blast doors of the bunker to watch the nuclear detonation. This was around midnight, so the explosion was so bright that it made it look like it was daytime
Soldiers watch the Operation Hardtack thermonuclear detonation in 1958 near the Marshall Islands
Photographers on Eniwetak Atoll capture the Koa nuclear test as part of Operation Hardtack on May 12, 1958
'I thought at once it must be a nuclear explosion,' a man living near Honolulu told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin the day after the blast. 'I stepped out on the lanai and saw what must have been the reflection of the fireball. It turned from light yellow to dark yellow and from orange to red.'
Hawaii was adequately warned ahead of time about the second planned test - the 'Orange Shot' - which was launched at around 12:30am on August 12 that same year.
Vance died in 2023, just before his 99th birthday.
His daughter Charmaine, who helped him write his memoir, told the Daily Mail that her father was incredibly brave and tough in the most dire situations.
She remembered him saying that he matter-of-factly told his colleagues on Johnston that if they were even a little bit off in their calculations, the nuclear bomb would detonate too low and they'd all be vaporized.
Despite the known risks, Johnston was the site of five more nuclear tests in October 1962. Housatonic, one of the last bombs to be detonated on the island, was nearly three times more powerful than the blasts which Vance oversaw.
In the early '70s, the military began using the island to store unused chemical weapons, including mustard gas, nerve agents and Agent Orange.
In 1986, Congress ordered the military to destroy the national stockpile of these weapons. By then, the use of chemical agents had already been considered a war crime for decades under American law and international law.
The Joint Operations Center on Johnston Atoll. It was a multi-use building for the military with offices and decontamination showers. It was one of the only structures not completely torn down by soldiers after they left in 2004
The runway military planes used to land on when arriving at Johnston Atoll now sits deserted
A photo taken by Ryan Rash who had spent months on Johnston eradicating the yellow crazy ant population. This led to the bird nesting population tripling by 2021
A turtle on Johnston Atoll. The abandoned island is now teeming with wildlife
The military was also responsible for cleaning up the radioactive pollution on the island that was left over from decades past.
For example, large areas were contaminated with plutonium from multiple botched nuclear tests in 1962 (one rained radioactive debris over the island while another leaked plutonium and mixed with rocket fuel, which was carried over the island by winds).
Soldiers did their best to clean up the island in the immediate aftermath, but a much larger effort was mounted in the '90s.
Between 1992 and 1995, approximately 45,000 tons of nuclear contaminated soil was sorted through and a 25-acre landfill site created in which to bury it. Clean soil was packed on top of the fenced-in area.
Some of the contaminated dirt was paved over with asphalt and concrete. Other portions of radioactive soil were put into drums and taken to a site in Nevada for disposal.
By 2004, the military had wrapped up its cleanup efforts. While wildlife was present on the island before, lessening the radioactivity of the soil allowed animal populations to rebound.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service took over and has been in charge of managing the island as a national wildlife refuge. This status prevents any tourists from visiting and also bars commercial fishing within a 50 nautical mile radius around the island.
At times, small groups of volunteers visit for temporary trips to maintain biodiversity and protect endangered species.
Rash went on one such trip in 2019. His team eventually eradicated the yellow crazy ant population, which then allowed the bird nesting population to triple by 2021.
The island, now managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, is now a sanctuary for birds and other species
This plaque marks the spot where the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) was. It was housed in a large building that has since been demolished. The JACADS was where large stashes of chemical weapons were incinerated
The island is now a national wildlife refuge. Small groups of volunteers take temporary trips there to help with maintenance and promote biodiversity
Although Johnston's days of being a military base are long behind it, there have been rumblings that it could soon be repurposed for landing SpaceX rockets.
In March the Air Force, which retains jurisdiction over the island to this day, announced that Elon Musk's company and the US Space Force were in talks to jointly build 10 landing pads on the island for re-entry rockets.
Environmental groups promptly sued the federal government leaving the project in limbo.
The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition argued that constructing landing pads and having rockets land on Johnston could disrupt the contaminated soil and create an ecological disaster.
The group's petition for the project to be halted stated: 'For nearly a century, Kalama (Johnston Atoll) has been controlled by the US Armed Forces and has endured the destructive practices of dredging, atmospheric nuclear testing, and stockpiling and incineration of toxic chemical munitions. The area needs to heal, but instead, the military is choosing to cause more irreversible harm. Enough is enough.'
The government is now exploring other areas to build re-entry pads for SpaceX rockets.