Castle Bravo
The decision to carry out the Bravo test under the prevailing winds was made by Dr. Alvin C. Graves, the Scientific Director of Operation Castle. Graves had total authority over detonating the weapon, above that of the military commander of Operation Castle. Graves appears in the widely available film of the earlier 1952 test "Ivy Mike", which examines the last-minute fallout decisions. The narrator, the western actor Reed Hadley, is filmed aboard the control ship in that film, showing the final conference. Hadley points out that 20,000 people live in the potential area of the fallout. He asks the control panel scientist if the test can be aborted and is told "yes", but it would ruin all their preparations in setting up timed measuring instruments. In Mike, the fallout correctly landed north of the inhabited area but, in the 1954 Bravo test, there was a large amount of wind shear, and the wind that was blowing north the day before the test steadily veered towards the east.
Daigo Fukuryū Maru
The "Daigo Fukuryū Maru" encountered the fallout from the U.S. Castle Bravo nuclear test at Bikini Atoll, near the Marshall Islands, on March 1, 1954. When the test was held, the "Daigo Fukuryū Maru" was catching fish outside the danger zone that the U.S. government had declared in advance. However, the test was more than twice as powerful as predicted, and changes in weather patterns blew nuclear fallout, in the form of a fine ash, outside the danger zone. On that day, the sky in the west lit up like a sunset. Seven minutes later, the sound of the explosion arrived, with fallout reaching the ship two hours later. The fishermen attempted to escape from the area, but they took time to retrieve fishing gear from the sea, exposing themselves to radioactive fallout for several hours.