The Atom: Bingo Blast

"Bingo! There she goes—and what a wallop. Everyone felt it."

So, last week, cried Washington Democratic Senator "Scoop" Jackson. The cause of his elation: he had just heard of the on-target success of the first U.S. attempt to fire a Polaris missile with a live nuclear warhead from a submarine.

Since U.S. nuclear testing was resumed near the Pacific's Christmas Island, there have been eight explosions of airplane-dropped atomic devices to check out new weapons designs, and one underwater shot to study antisubmarine techniques. Security rules prevented anyone from disclosing what the air tests showed, although California's Republican Representative Craig Hosmer...