Dear friends,
"Top-secret
wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a
tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal." So begins the article
below from the New Zealand Herald, New Zealand's largest circulation
newspaper. Declassified government documents show that this tsunami bomb was
developed during WWII. Though I imagine all documents related to current developments
of the project are highly classified, I have little doubt that the weapon
has been further developed and refined over the last 60 years. This news raises
questions about the recent tsunami in Indonesia.
The many
layers of intense secrecy both in the government and military result in very
few people being aware of the gruesome capabilities for death and destruction
that have been developed over the years. For more reliable, verifiable information
on this crucial topic, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/warinformation
In order to avoid further wars and destruction, let us all work towards
greater transparency and cooperation between all good people who share our
world.
With very best wishes,
Fred Burks for the WantToKnow.info team
Tsunami
bomb - NZ's devastating war secret
30.06.2000
By Eugene Bingham
Top-secret
wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a
tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal.
An Auckland University professor seconded to the Army set off a series of
underwater explosions triggering mini-tidal waves at Whangaparaoa in 1944
and 1945.
Professor
Thomas Leech's work was considered so significant that United States defence
chiefs said that if the project had been completed before the end of the war
it could have played a role as effective as that of the atom bomb.
Details
of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old documents
released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Papers stamped
"top secret" show the US and British military were eager for
Seal to be developed in the post-war years too. They even considered sending
Professor Leech to Bikini Atoll to view the US nuclear tests and see if they
had any application to his work.
He did not make the visit, although a member of the US board of assessors
of atomic tests, Dr Karl Compton, was sent to New Zealand.
"Dr Compton is impressed with Professor Leech's deductions on the Seal
project and is prepared to recommend to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that all
technical data from the test relevant to the Seal project should be made available
to the New Zealand Government for further study by Professor Leech,"
said a July 1946 letter from Washington to Wellington.
Professor Leech, who died in his native Australia in 1973, was the university's
dean of engineering from 1940 to 1950.
News of his being awarded a CBE in 1947 for research on a weapon led to speculation
in newspapers around the world about what was being developed.
Though high-ranking New Zealand and US officers spoke out in support of the
research, no details of it were released because the work was on-going.
A former
colleague of Professor Leech, Neil Kirton, told the Weekend Herald that the
experiments involved laying a pattern of explosives underwater to create a
tsunami.
Small-scale explosions were carried out in the Pacific and off Whangaparaoa,
which at the time was controlled by the Army.
It is unclear what happened to Project Seal once the final report was forwarded
to Wellington Defence Headquarters late in the 1940s.
The bomb was never tested on a full scale, and Mr Kirton doubts that Aucklanders
would have noticed the trials.
"Whether it could ever be resurrected ... Under some circumstances I
think it could be devastating."
