Subject Files, 1943-1953, 1981, Undated

The subject files feature documents and photographs directly related to Project Cirrus, but not to specific flights. Photos include equipment, precipitation, general cloud photos, and Schaefer appearing at functions during the Cirrus years. Researchers will also find some data on cloud seeding endeavors elsewhere, such as California and Sydney, Australia. Correspondence files do exist within this subseries, but researchers might also want to consult the correspondence files in Series #1 for the years 1947 to 1952 as it is likely that Schaefer kept Cirrus letters with his other General Electric correspondence. Other documents include news clippings, bulletins from meteorological conferences, and weather radar reports from MIT.

One highlight of the subject files is the material on Project Blowdown. Unlike Hurricane King and Operation Red, which were direct offshoots of Project Cirrus, Project Blowdown was a side project of Irving Langmuir’s in which he was advisor to Joe Silverthorne, a commercial seeder acting on behalf of the United Fruit Company. But their methods were those being used at the same time in the Project Cirrus operations. Project Blowdown dealt with intense storms that would destroy stands of fruit trees in Honduras.