A Navy carrier pilot parlayed a 250-pound bomb into an explosion he described as looking like a miniature atom bomb in an airstrike just inland from the northeast Korean coastline this week.

Lt. Dan C. Downs Ogden, Utah reported he and his crewman completely wiped out a communist rear area ammunition dump near Yongdong-Ni in an early morning strike.

"The building was over a block and a half long," Downs said, "and looked almost square. When the bomb hit, a huge ball of fire shot up and then we saw the thick, gray smoke that made it look like an A Bomb had gone off."

THE SMOKE went up in a column and about 3,000 feet, the pilot reported.

Downs� radarmen, AE2 J.P. McCarter (AL2 J.P. Mac Carter), Long Island, N.Y., and AE3 T. J. Joice, (AE3 T.J. Joyce) South Boston. Mass., said the building looks like a house someone had shoved off it�s foundation.

"It happened almost too fast," said Joice. "I saw the explosion, but by the time we banked around there wasn�t anything left but a lot of smoke."

Ordinarily flying night missions, this was the first day mission Downs and his crewmen had flown in their night attack bomber.