Page 197 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

crossings, and in general maintain saturated soil conditions longer than would
normally be expected. After seeding about sixty-eight cloud targets, the Pop-
eye experimenters concluded, using their own techniques of analysis, that their
interventions had caused “significant” increases in both cloud growth and pre-
cipitation and the operational feasibility of the technique had been clearly
40
established. St. Amand, who had designed the seeding flares and was leading
the project, claimed that “the first [cloud] we seeded grew like an atomic bomb
explosion and it rained very heavily out of it and everybody was convinced with
41
that one experiment that we’d done enough.” General Dyrenforth would
have concurred.
operation Motorpool, which began on March 20, 1967, was conducted by
air force fliers each year during the rainy monsoon season until July 5, 1972. This
was done with the full and enthusiastic support of President Lyndon B. John-
son, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, and the U.S. State Depart-
ment. General William Westmoreland was one of the few individuals privy to
the details. The governments of Thailand, Laos, and South Vietnam were not
informed, nor were the American ambassadors to those countries. After 1969,
the administration of President Richard M. Nixon continued the program—and
the secrecy. 42
operating out of Udorn Air Base, Thailand, the Fifty-fourth Weather Recon-
naissance Squadron flew three WC-130 and one or two RF-4 aircraft in more
than 2,600 seeding sorties, expending almost 50,000 flares over a period of
43
approximately five years at an annual cost of approximately $3.6 million. Air
force pilot Howard Kidwell told how, out of curiosity, he volunteered for a
secret mission, code-named Motorpool, and once he was approved for a higher-
level security clearance, was involved in trying to make rain over the Ho Chi
Minh Trail:

During the rainy season each crew flew once a day, on the average, in addition to
regular missions. A “scout” plane (WC-130) would call back and “scramble” us—
giving us a flight level, which was usually 19,000 [feet]. We would go into the roll
cloud (or whatever you WX guys call it) by the side of each thunderstorm. When it
got to raining like crazy we would pickle off a cart [fire a rack of silver iodide flares],
count to 5, pickle off another one, and then you were out in the blue, made a 360
degree turn and, like magic, another thunderstorm had usually formed and you did
the same thing again. 44

Although some claimed that operation Motorpool induced from 1 to 7
inches of additional rainfall annually along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, no scientific

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