Author: TravelGal

Nye County, Nevada/USA

In mid-60-es the state of Nevada in general, and the Mojave Desert in particular were widely used for testing various nuclear-radioactive toys, as part of the popular “whose dick is bigger” Cold War competition between the United States and the USSR.  Endless wilderness and absence of curious masses of population presented an ideal ground for these exercises, and to this day continues to attract military-research enthusiasts.

One of the lesser-known, but still epic events within the nuclear research program was “Project Faultless” – underground detonation of a megaton nuclear bomb right in the middle of the Mojave Desert.  The reason for this particular test was quite peculiar – ordinarily, hydrogen and other big-ass bombs were detonated much closer to Las Vegas, getting on frayed nerves of one Mr. Howard Hughes, an elderly Texas multi-billionaire, enjoying his retirement in one of the hotels on The Strip.  The race for nuclear armament sped up to a point when a bomb was going off in the vicinity of the Desert Inn, a hotel, chosen and then bought by Mr. Hughes for his residence, every three days.  A pissed-off multi-billionaire is a force to be reckoned with, and Mr. Hughes‘ angry letters to all sorts of officials, and personally to President Johnson quickly got the attention of the Atomic Energy Commission.  They agreed to move the testing site deeper into the desert, which they hoped would reduce the shaking of the ground near The Strip, and calm down the pestering billionaire.

Those conducting the experiment probably could have guessed that its results would not be too cheerful, but the nuclear curiosity combined with military determination and the desire to get rid of Mr. Hughes, got the better of them.  The bomb with a yield of 1.0 megatons (“only” about 67 times the energy of the one dropped on Hiroshima) was put a thousand meters under ground, and happily detonated there.  The results were devastating: the ground in the radius of several miles collapsed, forming a huge underground cave at the point of detonation.  Radiation levels on its bottom were similar to the core of a nuclear reactor and will stay this way for the next couple thousand years.

The force of the explosion pushed the steel pipe used for putting the bomb down almost 10 feet up (initially it was level with the ground) and at the moment it remains the only sign of the past outrage.

Visiting or even finding the site is not all that easy.  You have to drive to the end of the Extraterrestrial Highway, push on for another hour down an adjacent road, and then for another 40 minutes along the dirt track.  After that you have to open up our eyes and start searching for the pipe.  Big and tall close up, it is completely lost in endless desert.  It towered up in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by lame warning signs, blabbering something about petroleum pollution, and notifying the visitors not to drill, dig, or pick up rocks from the site.  Sure…  Petroleum, my ass!…  

The plaque on the side of “Project Faultless” (quite an ironic name, considering the consequences…) did explain what it was all about, but only in very general terms.

For the record, according to all available information the level of radiation on the surface has nothing in common with the insides of a nuclear reactor, and is not expected to have any ugly consequences for visitors to the site.  Which is basically confirmed by free access to the epicenter of the past horror.  Just in case, it is advisable to follow the warning signs, and abstain from excavations in the vicinity of the pipe, or pocketing rocks for souvenirs.

Detailed directions on how to find the place can be found here: https://www.rachel-nevada.com/places/faultless.html

Landsberg-am-Lech, Bavaria/Germany

In the 1930s several programs were launched by the German Reich for the construction of the explosives industry.  One of them was the “Rapid Plan for the Production of Powder, Explosives and Chemical Warfare Agents, Including Precursors” dated August 13, 1938. This plan included the construction of more than 40 manufacturing sites in the German Reich, including 28 built by Dynamit AG, of them eight factories for the production of nitrocellulose.  The factory, construction of which started in 1939 in the Frauenwald between Landsberg and Kaufering was one of them.

The plant was to be a dedicated facility for the large-scale production of nitrocellulose, an explosive and fire-prone material.  The factory was expressly built for manufacturing under (air) war conditions and was planned to produce 500 tons of nitrocellulose a month.  The planning of the plant therefore took into account the requirements of explosion protection and camouflage, and the construction of the facility was executed with typically German professionalism and perfectionism characteristic of many military installations of that time.

The Frauenwald plant consisted of around 130 buildings distributed along concrete roads in the forest.  It was a complex chemical factory with production buildings, power plants, workshops, and social buildings, most of which had flat tiled roofs planted with trees and bushes to camouflage the facility.  Construction work was interrupted between 1941 and 1943, and the plant was not completed until the end of the war in 1945.  With all the precision and perfectionism poured into building the factory, production was never started, even though the facilities and one of the two power plants were largely completed and equipped with the process equipment.

In 1945, the US troops took over the grounds of Frauenwald and established an air force base there.  Because of this, the factory was not destroyed, even though any operational power plants or armament factories in Germany were as a rule demolished immediately after the war.  The Frauenwald factory is thus the only materially preserved facility that exemplifies a multitude of factories spread throughout the German Reich.  The factory’s power plant in the Frauenwald is also likely to be the only surviving example of a 1930s coal power plant built in camouflage construction.

From 1958 to 1995, the Bundeswehr used parts of the facility for storage purposes.  The whole area remained military restricted area during this time and was strictly shielded.  In 1998, the city of Landsberg acquired the area with the aim of turning it into a commercial space and a recreational area. 

Currently, remaining buildings of the factory in the Frauenwald are being slowly swallowed by the surrounding industrial area – some buildings being repurposed, and others demolished.  One such repurposed building can be seen at Celsiusstrasse 17 in Landsberg am Lech and houses a tools manufacturing company.  The remaining parts of the facility are cordoned off but as of 2018 could be accessed from the end of Kelvinstrasse in Landsberg am Lech.

More information about the place can be found here (in German).