W-day dawned wet, cold and foggy last week. Toward noon, Chicago Tribune staffers and WGN engineers gathered expectantly in Room 833 of the Tribune Tower. Outside the window they could see a shiny brass whistle, four feet high, ten inches in diameter, which until recently had graced the West Coast steamship Yale. Now Yaleman Bertie McCormick ('03) had acquired it for a new and loftier mission: to warn Chicagoland of an atomic-bomb raid. Before leaving for an Arizona vacation, the colonel had left orders for a test toot.
Just before the test, somebody warned a Trib man not to stand too...
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