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Contact Info
Home Town Avalon, PA
Last Address Pompano Beach, FL
Date of Passing Oct 15, 1989
Location of Interment U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery and Columbarium (VLM) - Annapolis, Maryland
Wall/Plot Coordinates Unknown
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Last Known Activity:
US Navy Vice Admiral. Parker graduated from the United States Naval Academy in
1925. By the time the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Parker was a Lt. Commander,
the Commanding Officer of the Parrott a World War I class destroyer that was
part of the Asian Fleet. While Commander of the Parrott, Parker was awarded the
Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism and for extreme disregard of personal
safety when his command delivered a determined attack with torpedoes and gunfire
during action with the enemy on the night of January 24th to the 25th, 1942. The
following month he also engaged the enemy in the Badoeng Straits off the Island
of Ball, Netherlands, East Indies and was awarded a second Navy Cross for
distinguished service and heroism in a fierce battle with the Japanese. In
addition to the Navy Cross for the battle of the 24th and 25th Parker received
the Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity as Commander Destroyer
Division Fifty nine. He received a third Navy Cross for leadership of Destroyer
Division Fifteen aboard the Destroyer USS Cushing during an engagement with the
Japanese naval forces near Savo Island on the night of November 12, 1942. The
force to which he was attached engaged at close quarters and defeated a superior
enemy force. From November of 1945 to April of 1946 he commanded a destroyer
squadron and participated in the Allied occupation of both Korea and North
China. Later that year he was an observer and commander at Bikini Atoll during
Operation Crossroads, which was designed to test the effectiveness of atomic
weapons on naval vessels. By 1947 he was now a captain and after commanding the
Newport News, he was named deputy chief of the Atomic Support Agency. In 1952
Parker was promoted to Rear Admiral and in 1960 promoted to Vice Admiral and was
appointed the deputy director of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff at
Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. In 1962 he was named assistant director of
the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency which advises the President and the
Secretary of State on arms control policy. He held that post until 1963 when he
retired. After retirement Parker and his wife spent much of their time sailing
and he was chosen the commodore of the Lighthouse Point Yacht Club in Pompano
Beach, Florida.
Description Operation Crossroads was a pair of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. They were the first nuclear weapon tests since Trinity in July 1945, and the first detonations of nuclear devices since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The purpose of the tests was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on warships.
The Crossroads tests were the first of many nuclear tests held in the Marshall Islands, and the first to be publicly announced beforehand and observed by an invited audience, including a large press corps. They were conducted by Joint Army/Navy Task Force One, headed by Vice Admiral William H. P. Blandy rather than by the Manhattan Project, which had developed nuclear weapons during World War II. A fleet of 95 target ships was assembled in Bikini Lagoon and hit with two detonations of Fat Man plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapons of the kind dropped on Nagasaki, each with a yield of 23 kilotons of TNT (96 TJ).
The first test was Able. The bomb was named Gilda after Rita Hayworth's character in the 1946 film Gilda, and was dropped from the B-29 Superfortress Dave's Dream of the 509th Bombardment Group on July 1, 1946. It detonated 520 feet (158 m) above the target fleet and caused less than the expected amount of ship damage because it missed its aim point by 2,130 feet (649 m). The second test was Baker. The bomb was known as Helen of Bikini and was detonated 90 feet (27 m) underwater on July 25, 1946. Radioactive sea spray caused extensive contamination. A third deep-water test named Charlie was planned for 1947 but was canceled primarily because of the United States Navy's inability to decontaminate the target ships after the Baker test. Ultimately, only nine target ships were able to be scrapped rather than scuttled. Charlie was rescheduled as Operation Wigwam, a deep-water shot conducted in 1955 off the California coast.
Bikini's native residents agreed to evacuate the island, and were evacuated on board the LST-861, with most moving to the Rongerik Atoll. In the 1950s, a series of large thermonuclear tests rendered Bikini unfit for subsistence farming and fishing because of radioactive contamination. Bikini remains uninhabited as of 2015, though it is occasionally visited by sport divers. Planners attempted to protect participants in the Operation Crossroads tests against radiation sickness, but one study showed that the life expectancy of participants was reduced by an average of three months. The Baker test's radioactive contamination of all the target ships was the first case of immediate, concentrated radioactive fallout from a nuclear explosion. Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, the longest-serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, called Baker "the world's first nuclear disaster."
