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."
== Background ==
The first proposal to test nuclear weapons
against naval warships was made on August
16, 1945, by Lewis Strauss, future chairman
of the Atomic Energy Commission. In an internal
memo to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal,
Strauss argued, "If such a test is not made,
there will be loose talk to the effect that
the fleet is obsolete in the face of this
new weapon and this will militate against
appropriations to preserve a postwar Navy
of the size now planned." With very few bombs
available, he suggested a large number of
targets widely dispersed over a large area.
A quarter century earlier, in 1921, the Navy
had suffered a public relations disaster when
General Billy Mitchell's bombers sank every
target ship the Navy provided for the Project
B ship-versus-bomb tests. The Strauss test
would be designed to demonstrate ship survivability.
Nine days later, Senator Brien McMahon, who
within a year would write the Atomic Energy
Act and organize and chair the Congressional
Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, made the
first public proposal for such a test, but
one designed to demonstrate the vulnerability,
rather than survivability, of ships. He proposed
dropping an atomic bomb on captured Japanese
ships and suggested, "The resulting explosion
should prove to us just how effective the
atomic bomb is when used against the giant
naval ships." On September 19, the Chief of
the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF),
General of the Army Henry H. Arnold, asked
the Navy to set aside ten of the thirty-eight
captured Japanese ships for use in the test
proposed by McMahon.Meanwhile, the Navy proceeded
with its own plan, which was revealed at a
press conference on October 27 by the Commander
in Chief, United States Fleet, Fleet Admiral
Ernest King. It involved between 80 and 100
target ships, most of them surplus U.S. ships.
As the Army and the Navy maneuvered for control
of the tests, Assistant Secretary of War Howard
C. Peterson observed, "To the public, the
test looms as one in which the future of the
Navy is at stake ... if the Navy withstands
[the tests] better than the public imagines
it will, in the public mind the Navy will
have 'won.'"The Army's candidate to direct
the tests, Major General Leslie Groves, head
of the Manhattan Project which built the bombs,
did not get the job. The Joint Chiefs of Staff
decided that because the Navy was contributing
the most men and materiel, the test should
be headed by a naval officer. Commodore William
S. "Deak" Parsons was a naval officer who
had worked on the Manhattan Project and participated
in the bombing of Hiroshima. He was now the
assistant to the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations
for Special Weapons, Vice Admiral William
H. P. Blandy, whom he proposed for the role.
This recommendation was accepted, and on January
11, 1946, President Harry S. Truman appointed
Blandy as head of Army/Navy Joint Task Force
One (JTF-1), which was created to conduct
the tests. Parsons became Deputy Task Force
Commander for Technical Direction. USAAF Major
General William E. Kepner was Deputy Task
Force Commander for Aviation. Blandy codenamed
the tests Operation Crossroads.Under pressure
from the Army, Blandy agreed to crowd more
ships into the immediate target area than
the Navy wanted, but he refused USAAF Major
General Curtis LeMay's demand that "every
ship must have a full loading of oil, ammunition,
and fuel." Blandy's argument was that fires
and internal explosions might sink ships that
would otherwise remain afloat and be available
for damage evaluation. When Blandy proposed
an all-Navy board to evaluate the results,
Senator McMahon complained to Truman that
the Navy should not be "solely responsible
for conducting operations which might well
indeed determine its very existence." Truman
acknowledged that "reports were getting around
that these tests were not going to be entirely
on the level." He imposed a civilian review
panel on Operation Crossroads to "convince
the public it was objective."
== Opposition ==
Pressure to cancel Operation Crossroads altogether
came from scientists and diplomats. Manhattan
Project scientists argued that further testing
was unnecessary and environmentally dangerous.
A Los Alamos study warned "the water near
a recent surface explosion will be a witch's
brew" of radioactivity. When the scientists
pointed out that the tests might demonstrate
ship survivability while ignoring the effect
of radiation on sailors, Blandy responded
by adding test animals to some of the ships,
thereby generating protests from animal rights
advocates.Secretary of State James F. Byrnes,
who a year earlier had told physicist Leo
Szilard that a public demonstration of the
bomb might make the Soviet Union "more manageable"
in Europe, now argued the opposite: that further
display of U.S. nuclear power could harden
the Soviet Union's position against acceptance
of the Acheson–Lilienthal Plan, which discussed
possible methods for the international control
of nuclear weapons and the avoidance of future
nuclear warfare. At a March 22 cabinet meeting
he said, "from the standpoint of international
relations it would be very helpful if the
test could be postponed or never held at all."
He prevailed on Truman to postpone the first
test for six weeks, from May 15 to July 1.
For public consumption, the postponement was
explained as an opportunity for more Congressional
observers to attend during their summer recess.When
Congressmen complained about the destruction
of $450 million worth of target ships, Blandy
replied that their true cost was their scrap
value at $10 per ton, only $3.7 million. Veterans
and legislators from New York and Pennsylvania
requested to keep their namesake battleships
as museum ships, as Texas had done with USS
Texas, but the JTF-1 replied that "it is regretted
that such ships as the USS New York cannot
be spared."
== 
Preparation ==
A series of three tests was recommended to
study the effects of nuclear weapons on ships,
equipment, and materiel. The test site had
to be in territory controlled by the United
States. The inhabitants would have to be evacuated,
so it was best if it was uninhabited, or nearly
so, and at least 300 miles (500 km) from the
nearest city. So that a B-29 could drop a
bomb, there had to be an airbase within 1,000
miles (1,600 km). To contain the target ships,
it needed to have a protected anchorage at
least 6 miles (10 km) wide. Ideally, it would
have predictable weather patterns, and be
free of severe cold and violent storms. Predictable
winds would avoid having radioactive material
blown back on the task force personnel, and
predictable ocean currents would allow material
to be kept away from shipping lanes, fishing
areas, and inhabited shores. Timing was critical
because Navy manpower required to move the
ships was being released from active duty
as part of the post–World War II demobilization,
and civilian scientists knowledgeable about
atomic weapons were leaving federal employment
for college teaching positions.On January
24, Blandy named the Bikini Lagoon as the
site for the two 1946 detonations, Able and
Baker. The deep underwater test, Charlie,
scheduled for early 1947, would take place
in the ocean west of Bikini. Of the possible
places given serious consideration, including
Ecuador's Galápagos Islands, Bikini offered
the most remote location with a large protected
anchorage, suitable but not ideal weather,
and a small, easily moved population. It had
come under exclusive United States control
on January 15, when Truman declared the United
States to be the sole trustee of all the Pacific
islands captured from Japan during the war.
The Navy had been studying test sites since
October 1945 and was ready to announce its
choice of Bikini soon after Truman's declaration.
On February 6, the survey ship Sumner began
blasting channels through the Bikini reef
into the lagoon. The local residents were
not told why.The 167 Bikini islanders first
learned their fate four days later, on Sunday,
February 10, when Navy Commodore Ben H. Wyatt,
United States military governor of the Marshall
Islands, arrived by seaplane from Kwajalein.
Referring to Biblical stories which they had
learned from Protestant missionaries, he compared
them to "the children of Israel whom the Lord
saved from their enemy and led into the Promised
Land." He also claimed it was "for the good
of mankind and to end all world wars." There
was no signed agreement, but he reported by
cable "their local chieftain, referred to
as King Juda, arose and said that the natives
of Bikini were very proud to be part of this
wonderful undertaking." On March 6, Wyatt
attempted to stage a filmed reenactment of
the February 10 meeting in which the Bikinians
had given away their atoll. Despite repeated
promptings and at least seven retakes, Juda
confined his on-camera remarks to, "We are
willing to go. Everything is in God's hands."
The next day, LST-861 moved them and their
belongings 128 miles (206 km) east to the
uninhabited Rongerik Atoll, to begin a permanent
exile. Three Bikini families returned in 1974
but were evacuated again in 1978 because of
radioactivity in their bodies from four years
of eating contaminated food. As of 2015, the
atoll remains unpopulated.
=== Ships ===
To make room for the target ships, 100 short
tons (90 t) of dynamite were used to remove
coral heads from Bikini Lagoon. On the grounds
of the David Taylor Model Basin outside Washington,
DC, dress rehearsals for Baker were conducted
with dynamite and model ships in a pond named
"Little Bikini." A fleet of 95 target vessels
was assembled in Bikini Lagoon. At the center
of the target cluster, the density was 20
ships per square mile (7.7 per km²), three
to five times greater than military doctrine
would allow. The stated goal was not to duplicate
a realistic anchorage, but to measure damage
as a function of distance from the blast center,
at as many different distances as possible.
The arrangement also reflected the outcome
of the Army/Navy disagreement about how many
ships should be allowed to sink.The target
fleet included four obsolete U.S. battleships,
two aircraft carriers, two cruisers, eleven
destroyers, eight submarines, numerous auxiliary
and amphibious vessels, and three surrendered
German and Japanese ships. The ships carried
sample amounts of fuel and ammunition, plus
scientific instruments to measure air pressure,
ship movement, and radiation. The live animals
on some of the target ships were supplied
by the support ship USS Burleson, which brought
200 pigs, 60 guinea pigs, 204 goats, 5,000
rats, 200 mice, and grains containing insects
to be studied for genetic effects by the National
Cancer Institute. Amphibious target ships
were beached on Bikini Island.A support fleet
of more than 150 ships provided quarters,
experimental stations, and workshops for most
of the 42,000 men (more than 37,000 of whom
were Navy personnel) and the 37 female nurses.
Additional personnel were located on nearby
atolls such as Eniwetok and Kwajalein. Navy
personnel were allowed to extend their service
obligation for one year if they wanted to
participate in the tests and see an atomic
bomb explode. The islands of the Bikini Atoll
were used as instrumentation sites and, until
Baker contaminated them, as recreation sites.
=== Cameras ===
Radio-controlled autopilots were installed
in eight B-17 bombers, converting them into
remote-controlled drones which were then loaded
with automatic cameras, radiation detectors,
and air sample collectors. Their pilots operated
them from mother planes at a safe distance
from the detonations. The drones could fly
into radiation environments, such as Able's
mushroom cloud, which would have been lethal
to crew members. All the land-based detonation-sequence
photographs were taken by remote control from
tall towers erected on several islands of
the atoll. In all, Bikini cameras took 50,000
still pictures and 1,500,000 feet (460,000
m) of motion picture film. One of the cameras
could shoot 1,000 frames per second.Before
the first test, all personnel were evacuated
from the target fleet and Bikini Atoll. They
boarded ships of the support fleet, which
took safe positions at least 10 nautical miles
(19 km) east of the atoll. Test personnel
were issued special dark glasses to protect
their eyes, but a decision was made shortly
before Able that the glasses might not be
adequate. Personnel were instructed to turn
away from the blast, shut their eyes, and
cradle their arm across their face for additional
protection. A few observers who disregarded
the recommended precautions advised the others
when the bomb detonated. Most shipboard observers
reported feeling a slight concussion and hearing
a disappointing little "poom".On 26 July 2016,
the National Security Archive declassified
and released the entire stock of footage shot
by surveillance aircraft that flew over the
nuclear test site just minutes after the bomb
detonated. The footage can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KgKrHFuhgE.
=== Nicknames ===
Able and Baker are the first two letters of
the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet, used
from 1941 until 1956. Alpha and Bravo are
their counterparts in the current NATO phonetic
alphabet. Charlie is the third letter in both
systems. According to eyewitness accounts,
the time of detonation for each test was announced
as H or How hour; in the official JTF-1 history,
the term M or Mike hour is used instead.There
were only seven nuclear bombs in existence
in July 1946. The two bombs used in the test
were Fat Man plutonium implosion-type nuclear
weapons of the kind dropped on Nagasaki. The
Able bomb was stenciled with the name Gilda
and decorated with an Esquire magazine photograph
of Rita Hayworth, star of the 1946 movie,
Gilda. The Baker bomb was Helen of Bikini.
This femme-fatale theme for nuclear weapons,
combining seduction and destruction, is epitomized
by the use in all languages, starting in 1946,
of "bikini" as the name for a woman's two-piece
bathing suit.
The United States' test series summary table
is here: United States' nuclear testing series.
== Test Able ==
At 9:00 on July 1, Gilda was dropped from
the B-29 Superfortress Dave's Dream of the
509th Bombardment Group. The plane, formerly
known as Big Stink, had been the photographic
equipment aircraft on the Nagasaki mission
in 1945. It had been renamed in honor of Dave
Semple, a bombardier who was killed during
a practice mission on March 7, 1946. Gilda
detonated 520 feet (158 m) above the target
fleet, with a yield of 23 kilotons. Five ships
were sunk. Two attack transports sank immediately,
two destroyers within hours, and one Japanese
cruiser the following day.Some of the 114
press observers expressed disappointment at
the effect on ships. The New York Times reported,
prematurely, that "only two were sunk, one
capsized, and eighteen damaged." The next
day, the Times carried an explanation by Secretary
of the Navy James Forrestal that "heavily
built and heavily armored ships are difficult
to sink unless they sustain underwater damage."The
main cause of less-than-expected ship damage
was that the bomb missed its aim point by
710 yards (649 m). The ship the bomb was aimed
at failed to sink. The miss resulted in a
government investigation of the flight crew
of the B-29 bomber. Various explanations were
offered, including the bomb's known poor ballistic
characteristics, but none was convincing.
Images of the drop were inconclusive. The
bombsight was checked and found error free.
Pumpkin bomb drops were conducted, but were
accurate. Colonel Paul W. Tibbets believed
that the miss was caused by a miscalculation
by the crew. The mystery was never solved.
There were other factors that made Able less
spectacular than expected. Observers were
much farther away than at the Trinity test,
and the high humidity absorbed much of the
light and heat.The battleship USS Nevada had
been designated as the aim point for Able
and was painted red, with white gun barrels
and gunwales, to make her stand out in the
central cluster of target ships. There were
eight ships within 400 yards (366 m) of it.
Had the bomb exploded over the Nevada as planned,
at least nine ships, including two battleships
and an aircraft carrier, would likely have
sunk. The actual detonation point, west-northwest
of the target, was closer to the attack transport
USS Gilliam, in much less crowded water.
=== Able target array ===
In addition to the five ships that sank, fourteen
were judged to have serious damage or worse,
mostly due to the bomb's air-pressure shock
wave. All but three were located within 1,000
yards (914 m) of the detonation. Inside that
radius, orientation to the bomb was a factor
in shock wave impact. For example, ship #6,
the destroyer USS Lamson, which sank, was
farther away than seven ships that stayed
afloat. Lamson was broadside to the blast,
taking the full impact on her port side, while
the seven closer ships were anchored with
their sterns toward the blast, somewhat protecting
the most vulnerable part of the hull.The only
large ship inside the 1,000-yard (914 m) radius
which sustained moderate, rather than serious,
damage was the sturdily built Japanese battleship
Nagato, ship #7, whose stern-on orientation
to the bomb gave her some protection. Also,
unrepaired damage from World War II may have
complicated damage analysis. As the ship from
which the Pearl Harbor attack had been commanded,
Nagato was positioned near the aim point to
guarantee her being sunk. The Able bomb missed
its target, and the symbolic sinking came
three weeks later, in the Baker shot.Serious
damage to ship #10, the aircraft carrier Saratoga,
more than 1 mile (1.6 km) from the blast,
was due to fire. For test purposes, all the
ships carried sample amounts of fuel and ordnance,
plus airplanes. Most warships carried a seaplane
on deck, which could be lowered into the water
by crane, but Saratoga carried several airplanes
with highly volatile aviation fuel, both on
deck and in the hangars below. The fire was
extinguished and Saratoga was kept afloat
for use in the Baker shot.
=== Radiation ===
As with Little Boy (Hiroshima) and Fat Man
(Nagasaki), the Crossroads Able shot was an
air burst. These were purposely detonated
high enough in the air to prevent surface
materials from being drawn into the fireball.
The height-of-burst for the first nuclear
explosion Trinity, in New Mexico on July 16,
1945, was 100 feet (30 m); the device was
mounted on a tower. It made a crater 6 feet
(1.8 m) deep and 500 feet (150 m) wide, and
there was some local fallout. The test was
conducted in secret, and the world at large
learned nothing about the radioactive fallout
at the time. To be a true air burst with no
local fallout, the Trinity height-of-burst
needed to be 580 feet (180 m). With an air
burst, the radioactive fission products rise
into the stratosphere and become part of the
global, rather than the local, environment.
Air bursts were officially described as "self-cleansing."
There was no significant local fallout from
Able.
There was an intense transitory burst of fireball
radiation lasting a few seconds. Many of the
closer ships received doses of neutron and
gamma radiation that could have been lethal
to anyone on the ship, but the ships themselves
did not become radioactive. Neutron activation
of materials in the ships was judged to be
a minor problem by the standards of the time.
One sailor on the support ship USS Haven was
found to be "sleeping in a shower of gamma
rays" from an illegal metal souvenir he had
taken from a target ship. Fireball neutrons
had made it radioactive. Within a day nearly
all the surviving target ships had been reboarded.
The ship inspections, instrument recoveries,
and moving and remooring of ships for the
Baker test proceeded on schedule.Fifty-seven
guinea pigs, 109 mice, 146 pigs, 176 goats,
and 3,030 white rats had been placed on 22
target ships in stations normally occupied
by people. 35% of these animals died or were
euthanised in the three months following the
explosion: 10% were killed by the air blast,
15% were killed by radiation, and 10% were
killed by the researchers as part of later
study. The most famous survivor was Pig #311,
which was (reportedly) found swimming in the
lagoon after the blast and was brought back
to the National Zoo in Washington, DC. The
mysterious survival of Pig #311 caused some
consternation at the time and has continued
to be reported in error. However, an investigation
pointed to the conclusion that it had neither
swum in the ocean nor escaped the blast; it
had likely been safely aboard an observation
vessel during the test, thus "absent without
leave" from its post on Sakawa and showing
up about the same time other surviving pigs
were captured.The high rate of test animal
survival was due in part to the nature of
single-pulse radiation. As with the two Los
Alamos criticality accidents involving the
earlier demon core, victims who were close
enough to receive a lethal dose died, while
those farther away recovered and survived.
Also, all the mice were placed outside the
expected lethal zone in order to study possible
mutations in future generations.Although the
Able bomb missed its target, Nevada, by nearly
half a mile, and it failed to sink or to contaminate
the battleship, a crew would not have survived.
Goat #119, tethered inside a gun turret and
shielded by armor plate, received enough fireball
radiation to die four days later of radiation
sickness having survived two days longer than
goat #53, which was on the deck, unshielded.
Had Nevada been fully manned, she would likely
have become a floating coffin, dead in the
water for lack of a live crew. She was later
finished off by an aerial torpedo. In theory,
every unprotected location on the ship received
10,000 rems (100 Sv) of initial nuclear radiation
from the fireball. Therefore, people deep
enough inside the ship to experience a 90%
radiation reduction would still have received
a lethal dose of 1,000 rems. In the assessment
of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
"a large ship, about a mile away from the
explosion, would escape sinking, but the crew
would be killed by the deadly burst of radiations
from the bomb, and only a ghost ship would
remain, floating unattended in the vast waters
of the ocean."
== Test Baker ==
In Baker on July 25, the weapon was suspended
beneath landing craft LSM-60 anchored in the
midst of the target fleet. Baker was detonated
90 feet (27 m) underwater, halfway to the
bottom in water 180 feet (55 m) deep. How/Mike
Hour was 08:35. No identifiable part of LSM-60
was ever found; it was presumably vaporized
by the nuclear fireball. Ten ships were sunk,
including the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen,
which sank in December, five months after
the test, because radioactivity prevented
repairs to a leak in the hull.Photographs
of Baker are unique among nuclear detonation
pictures. The searing, blinding flash that
usually obscures the target area took place
underwater and was barely seen. The clear
image of ships in the foreground and background
gives a sense of scale. The large Wilson cloud
and the vertical water column are distinctive
Baker shot features. One picture shows a mark
where the 27,000-ton battleship USS Arkansas
was.As with Able, any ships that remained
afloat within 1,000 yards (914 m) of the detonation
were seriously damaged, but this time the
damage came from below, from water pressure
rather than air pressure. The greatest difference
between the two shots was the radioactive
contamination of all the target ships by Baker.
Regardless of the degree of damage, only nine
surviving Baker target ships were eventually
decontaminated and sold for scrap. The rest
were sunk at sea after decontamination efforts
failed.
=== Baker target array ===
The German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, ship
#36, survived both the Able and Baker tests
but was too radioactive to have leaks repaired.
In September 1946 she was towed to Kwajalein
Atoll, where she capsized in shallow water
on December 22, 1946, five months after Baker.
She remains there today, with starboard propeller
blades in the air.The submarine USS Skipjack
was the only sunken ship successfully raised
at Bikini. She was towed to California and
sunk again, as a target ship off the coast,
two years later.
Three other ships, all in sinking condition,
were towed ashore at Bikini and beached: attack
transport USS Fallon, ship #25; destroyer
USS Hughes, ship #27; and submarine USS Dentuda,
ship #24. Dentuda, with a skeleton crew aboard,
being submerged (thus avoiding the base surge)
and outside the 1,000 yards (914 m) circle,
escaped serious contamination and hull damage
and was successfully decontaminated, repaired,
and briefly returned to service.
=== Sequence of blast events ===
The Baker shot produced so many unusual phenomena
that a conference was held two months later
to standardize nomenclature and define new
terms for use in descriptions and analysis.
The underwater fireball took the form of a
rapidly expanding hot gas bubble that pushed
against the water, generating a supersonic
hydraulic shock wave which crushed the hulls
of nearby ships as it spread out. Eventually
it slowed to the speed of sound in water,
which is one mile per second (1600 m/s), five
times faster than that of sound in air. On
the surface, the shock wave was visible as
the leading edge of a rapidly expanding ring
of dark water, called the "slick" for its
resemblance to an oil slick. Close behind
the slick was a visually more dramatic, but
less destructive whitening of the water surface
called the "crack".When the gas bubble's diameter
equaled the water depth, 180 feet (55 m),
it hit the sea floor and the sea surface simultaneously.
At the bottom, it started digging a shallow
crater, ultimately 30 feet (9 m) deep and
2,000 feet (610 m) wide. At the top, it pushed
the water above it into a "spray dome", which
burst through the surface like a geyser. Elapsed
time since detonation was four milliseconds.During
the first full second, the expanding bubble
removed all the water within a 500-foot (152
m) radius and lifted two million tons of spray
and seabed sand into the air. As the bubble
rose at 2,500 feet per second (762 m/s), it
stretched the spray dome into a hollow cylinder
or chimney of spray called the "column", 6,000
feet (1,829 m) tall and 2,000 feet (610 m)
wide, with walls 300 feet (91 m) thick.As
soon as the bubble reached the air, it started
a supersonic atmospheric shock wave which,
like the crack, was more visually dramatic
than destructive. Brief low pressure behind
the shock wave caused instant fog which shrouded
the developing column in a "Wilson cloud",
also called a "condensation cloud", obscuring
it from view for two seconds. The Wilson cloud
started out hemispherical, expanded into a
disk which lifted from the water revealing
the fully developed spray column, then expanded
into a doughnut and vanished. The Able shot
also produced a Wilson cloud, but heat from
the fireball dried it out more quickly.By
the time the Wilson cloud vanished, the top
of the column had become a "cauliflower",
and all the spray in the column and its cauliflower
was moving down, back into the lagoon. Although
cloudlike in shape, the cauliflower was more
like the top of a geyser where water stops
moving up and starts to fall. There was no
mushroom cloud; nothing rose into the stratosphere.
Meanwhile, lagoon water rushing back into
the space vacated by the rising gas bubble
started a tsunami which lifted the ships as
it passed under them. At 11 seconds after
detonation, the first wave was 1,000 feet
(305 m) from surface zero and 94 feet (29
m) high. By the time it reached the Bikini
Island beach, 3.5 miles (6 km) away, it was
a nine-wave set with shore breakers up to
15 feet (5 m) high, which tossed landing craft
onto the beach and filled them with sand.Twelve
seconds after detonation, falling water from
the column started to create a 900-foot (274
m) tall "base surge" resembling the mist at
the bottom of a large waterfall. Unlike the
water wave, the base surge rolled over rather
than under the ships. Of all the bomb's effects,
the base surge had the greatest consequence
for most of the target ships, because it painted
them with radioactivity that could not be
removed.
=== Arkansas ===
Arkansas was the closest ship to the bomb
other than the ship from which it was suspended.
The underwater shock wave crushed the starboard
side of her hull, which faced the bomb, and
rolled the battleship over onto her port side.
It also ripped off the two starboard propellers
and their shafts, along with the rudder and
part of the stern, shortening the hull by
25 feet (7.6 m).At 562 feet (171 m) long,
the battleship was three times as long as
the water is deep. When the Wilson cloud lifted,
Arkansas was apparently bow-pinned to the
sea floor with her truncated stern 350 feet
(110 m) in the air. Unable to sink straight
down in the relatively shallow lagoon, she
toppled backward into the water curtain of
the spray column.She was next seen by Navy
divers, the same year, lying upside down with
her bow on the rim of the underwater bomb
crater and stern angled toward the center.
There was no sign of the superstructure or
the big guns. The first diver to reach Arkansas
sank up to his armpits in radioactive mud.
When National Park Service divers returned
in 1989 and 1990, the bottom was again firm-packed
sand, and the mud was gone. They were able
to see the barrels of the forward guns, which
had not been visible in 1946.All battleships
are top heavy and tend to settle upside down
when they sink. Arkansas settled upside down,
but a 1989 diver's sketch of the wreck shows
hardly any of the starboard side of the hull,
making it look like the ship is lying on her
side. Most of the starboard side is present,
but severely compacted.The superstructure
has not been found. It was either stripped
off and swept away or is lying under the hull,
crushed and buried under sand which flowed
back into the crater, partially refilling
it. The only diver access to the inside is
a tight squeeze through the port side casemate,
called the "aircastle." The National Park
Service divers practiced on the similar casemate
of the battleship USS Texas, a museum ship,
before entering Arkansas in 1990.
=== Aircraft carriers ===
Saratoga, placed close to Baker, sank 7.5
hours after the underwater shock wave opened
up leaks in the hull. Immediately after the
shock wave passed, the water wave lifted the
stern 43 feet (13 m) and the bow 29 feet (8.8
m), rocked the ship side to side, and crashed
over her, sweeping all five moored airplanes
off the flight deck and knocking the stack
over onto the deck. She remained upright and
outside the spray column, but close enough
to be drenched by radioactive water from the
collapsing cauliflower head as well as by
the base surge. Blandy ordered tugs to tow
the carrier to Enyu island for beaching, but
Saratoga and the surrounding water remained
too radioactive for close approach until after
she sank. She settled upright on the bottom,
with the top of her mast 40 feet (12 m) below
the surface.USS Independence survived Able
with spectacular damage to the flight deck.
She was moored far enough away from Baker
to avoid further physical damage, but was
severely contaminated. She was towed to San
Francisco, where four years of decontamination
experiments at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard
failed to produce satisfactory results. On
January 29, 1951, she was scuttled near the
Farallon Islands.
=== Fission-product radioactivity ===
Baker was the first nuclear explosion close
enough to the surface to keep the radioactive
fission products in the local environment.
It was not "self-cleansing." The result was
radioactive contamination of the lagoon and
the target ships. While anticipated, it caused
far greater problems than were expected.The
Baker explosion produced about 3 pounds (1.4
kg) of fission products. These fission products
were thoroughly mixed with the two million
tons of spray and seabed sand that were lifted
into the spray column and its cauliflower
head and then dumped back into the lagoon.
Most of it stayed in the lagoon and settled
to the bottom or was carried out to sea by
the lagoon's internal tidal and wind-driven
currents.A small fraction of the contaminated
spray was thrown back into the air as the
base surge. Unlike the Wilson cloud, a meteorological
phenomenon in clean air, the base surge was
a heavy fog bank of radioactive mist that
rolled across all the target ships, coating
their surfaces with fission products. When
the mist in the base surge evaporated, the
base surge became invisible but continued
to move away, contaminating ships several
miles from the detonation point.Unmanned boats
were the first vessels to enter the lagoon.
Onboard instruments allowed remote-controlled
radiation measurements to be made. When support
ships entered the lagoon for evaluation, decontamination,
and salvage activities, they steered clear
of lagoon water hot spots detected by the
drone boats. The standard for radiation exposure
to personnel was the same as that used by
the Manhattan Project: 0.1 roentgens per day.
Because of this constraint, only the five
most distant target ships could be boarded
on the first day. The closer-in ships were
hosed down by Navy fireboats using saltwater
and flame retardants. The first hosing reduced
radioactivity by half, but subsequent hosings
were ineffective. For most of the ships, reboarding
had to wait until the short-lived radioisotopes
decayed; ten days elapsed before the last
of the targets could be boarded.In the first
six days after Baker, when radiation levels
were highest, 4,900 men boarded target ships.
Sailors tried to scrub off the radioactivity
with brushes, water, soap, and lye. Nothing
worked, short of sandblasting to bare metal.
=== Test animals ===
Only pigs and rats were used in the Baker
test. All the pigs and most of the rats died.
Several days elapsed before sailors were able
to reboard the target ships where test animals
were located; during that time the accumulated
doses from the gamma rays produced by fission
products became lethal for the animals. Since
much of the public interest in Operation Crossroads
had focused on the fate of the test animals,
in September Blandy asserted that radiation
death is not painful: "The animal merely languishes
and recovers or dies a painless death. Suffering
among the animals as a whole was negligible."
This was clearly not true. While the well-documented
suffering of Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin
as they died of radiation injury at Los Alamos
was still secret, the widely reported radiation
deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been
painless. In 1908, Dr. Charles Allen Porter
had stated in an academic paper, "the agony
of inflamed X-ray lesions is almost unequalled
in any other disease."
=== Induced radioactivity ===
The Baker explosion ejected into the environment
about twice as many free neutrons as there
were fission events. A plutonium fission event
produces, on average, 2.9 neutrons, most of
which are consumed in the production of more
fission, until fission falls off and the remaining
uncaptured neutrons escape. In an air burst,
most of these environmental neutrons are absorbed
by superheated air which rises into the stratosphere,
along with the fission products and unfissioned
plutonium. In the underwater Baker detonation,
the neutrons were captured by seawater in
the lagoon.Of the four major elements in seawater
– hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, and chlorine
– only sodium takes on intense, short-term
radioactivity with the addition of a single
neutron to its nucleus: common sodium-23 becomes
radioactive sodium-24, with a 15-hour half-life.
In six days its intensity drops a thousandfold,
but the corollary of short half-life is high
initial intensity. Other isotopes were produced
from seawater: hydrogen-3 (half-life 12 years)
from hydrogen-2, oxygen-17 (stable) from oxygen-16,
and chlorine-36 (301 thousand years) from
chlorine-35, and some trace elements, but
due to low abundance or low short-term intensity
(long half-life) they were considered insignificant
compared with sodium-24.Less than one pound
of radioactive sodium was produced. If all
the neutrons released by the fission of 2
pounds (0.91 kg) of plutonium-239 were captured
by sodium-23, 0.4 pounds (0.18 kg) of sodium-24
would result, but sodium did not capture all
the neutrons. Unlike fission products, which
are heavy and eventually sank to the bottom
of the lagoon, the sodium stayed in solution.
It contaminated the hulls and onboard salt
water systems of support ships that entered
the lagoon, and the water used in decontamination.
=== Unfissioned plutonium ===
The 10.6 pounds (4.8 kg) of plutonium which
did not undergo fission and the 3 pounds (1.4
kg) of fission products were scattered. Plutonium
is not a biological hazard unless ingested
or inhaled, and its alpha radiation cannot
penetrate skin. Once inside the body it is
significantly toxic both radiologically and
chemically, having a heavy metal toxicity
on a par with that of arsenic. Estimates based
on the Manhattan Project's "tolerance dose"
of one microgram of plutonium per worker put
10.6 pounds at the equivalent of about five
billion tolerable doses.Plutonium alpha rays
could not be detected by the film badges and
Geiger counters used by people who boarded
the target ships because alpha particles have
very low penetrating power, insufficient to
enter the glass detection tube. It was assumed
to be present in the environment wherever
fission product radiation was detected. The
decontamination plan was to scrub the target
ships free of fission products and assume
the plutonium would be washed away in the
process. To see if this plan was working,
samples of paint, rust, and other target ship
surface materials were taken back to a laboratory
on the support ship Haven and examined for
plutonium. The tests showed that the plan
was not working. The results of these plutonium
detection tests, and of tests performed on
fish caught in the lagoon, caused all decontamination
work to be abruptly terminated on August 10,
effectively shutting down Operation Crossroads
for safety reasons. Tests conducted on the
support ship USS Rockbridge in November indicated
the presence of 2 milligrams (0.031 gr) of
plutonium, which represented 2000 tolerance
doses.
== Failed Baker cleanup and program termination
==
The program termination on August 10, sixteen
days after Baker, was the result of a showdown
between Dr. Stafford Warren, the Army colonel
in charge of radiation safety for Operation
Crossroads, and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations
for Special Weapons, Vice Admiral William
H. P. Blandy. A radiation safety monitor under
Warren's command later described him as "the
only Army colonel who ever sank a Navy flotilla."Warren
had been Chief of the Medical Section of the
Manhattan Project, and was in charge of radiation
safety at the first nuclear test, Trinity,
in New Mexico, as well as of the on-ground
inspections at Hiroshima and Nagasaki after
the bombings. At Operation Crossroads, it
was his job to keep the sailors safe during
the cleanup, and to avoid giving them grounds
to sue the Navy if health problems developed
later.
=== Radiation monitoring ===
A total of 18,875 film badge dosimeters were
issued to personnel during the operation.
About 6,596 dosimeters were given to personnel
who were based on the nearby islands or support
ships that had no potential for radiation
exposure. The rest were issued to all of the
individuals thought to be at the greatest
risk for radiological contamination along
with a percentage of each group who were working
in less contaminated areas. Personnel were
removed for one or more days from areas and
activities of possible exposure if their badges
showed more than 0.1 roentgen (R) per day
exposure. This is about the same as the annual
occupational dose limit in practice at many
modern U.S. nuclear facilities. Experts believed
at the time that this radiation dose could
be tolerated by individuals for long periods
without any harmful effects. The maximum accumulated
dose of 3.72 R was received by a radiation
safety monitor.
=== Cleanup issues ===
The cleanup was hampered by two significant
factors: the unexpected base surge and the
lack of a viable cleanup plan. It was understood
that if the water column fell back into the
lagoon, which it did, any ships that were
drenched by falling water might be contaminated
beyond redemption. Nobody expected that to
happen to almost the entire target fleet.
No decontamination procedures had been tested
in advance to see if they would work and to
measure the potential risk to personnel. In
the absence of a decontamination protocol,
the ships were cleaned using traditional deck-scrubbing
methods: hoses, mops, and brushes, with water,
soap, and lye. The sailors had no protective
clothing.
=== Secondary contamination ===
By August 3, Colonel Warren concluded the
entire effort was futile and dangerous. The
unprotected sailors were stirring up radioactive
material and contaminating their skin, clothing,
and, presumably, their lungs. When they returned
to their support ship living quarters, they
contaminated the shower stalls, laundry facilities,
and everything they touched. Warren demanded
an immediate halt to the entire cleanup operation.
He was especially concerned about plutonium,
which was undetectable on site.Warren also
observed that the radsafe procedures were
not being followed correctly. Fire boats got
too close to the target ships they were hosing
and drenched their crews with radioactive
spray. One fire boat had to be taken out of
service. Film badges showed 67 overdoses between
August 6 and 9. More than half of the 320
Geiger counters available shorted out and
became unavailable. The crews of two target
ships, USS Wainwright and USS Carteret, moored
far from the detonation site, had moved back
on board and become overexposed. They were
immediately evacuated back to the United States.Captain
L. H. Bibby, commanding officer of the apparently
undamaged battleship New York, accused Warren's
radsafe monitors of holding their Geiger counters
too close to the deck. He wanted to reboard
his ship and sail it home. The steadily dropping
radiation counts on the target ships gave
an illusion that the cleanup was working,
but Warren explained that although fission
products were losing some of their gamma ray
potency through radioactive decay, the ships
were still contaminated. The danger of ingesting
microscopic particles remained.
=== Warren persuades Blandy ===
Blandy ordered Warren to explain his position
to 1,400 skeptical officers and sailors. Some
found him persuasive, but it was August 9
before he convinced Blandy. That was the date
when Blandy realized, for the first time,
that Geiger counters could not detect plutonium.
Blandy was aware of the health problems of
radium dial painters who ingested microscopic
amounts of radium in the 1920s, and the fact
that plutonium was assumed to have a similar
biological effect. When plutonium was discovered
in the captain's quarters of Prinz Eugen,
unaccompanied by fission products, Blandy
realized that plutonium could be anywhere.The
following day, August 10, Warren showed Blandy
an autoradiograph of a fish, an x-ray picture
made by radiation coming from the fish. The
outline of the fish was made by alpha radiation
from the fish scales, evidence that plutonium,
mimicking calcium, had been distributed throughout
the fish, out to the scales. Blandy announced
his decision, "then we call it all to a halt."
He ordered that all further decontamination
work be discontinued. Warren wrote home, "A
self x ray of a fish ... did the trick."The
decontamination failure ended plans to outfit
some of the target ships for the 1947 Charlie
shot and to sail the rest home in triumph.
The immediate public relations problem was
to avoid any perception that the entire target
fleet had been destroyed. On August 6, in
anticipation of this development, Blandy had
told his staff that ships sunk or destroyed
more than 30 days after the Baker shot "will
not be considered as sunk by the bomb." By
then, public interest in Operation Crossroads
was waning, and the reporters had gone home.
The failure of decontamination did not make
news until the final reports came out a year
later.
== Test Charlie ==
Testing program staff originally set test
Charlie for early 1947. They wanted to explode
it deep under the surface in the lee of the
atoll to test the effect of nuclear weapons
as depth charges on unmoored ships. The unanticipated
delays in decontaminating the target ships
after test Baker prevented the required technical
support personnel from assisting with Charlie
and also meant that there were no uncontaminated
target ships available for use in Charlie.
The naval weapons program staff decided the
test was less pressing given that the entire
U.S. arsenal had only a handful of nuclear
weapons and canceled the test. The official
reason given for canceling Charlie was that
the program staff felt it was unnecessary
due to the success of the Able and Baker tests.
The deep ocean effects testing that Charlie
was to have performed were fulfilled nine
years later with Operation Wigwam.
== Operation Crossroads follow-up ==
All ships leak and require the regular operation
of bilge pumps to stay afloat. If their bilge
pumps could not be operated, the target ships
would eventually sink. Only one suffered this
fate: Prinz Eugen, which sank in the Kwajalein
lagoon on December 22. The rest were kept
afloat long enough to be deliberately sunk
or dismantled. After the August 10 decision
to stop decontamination work at Bikini, the
surviving target fleet was towed to Kwajalein
Atoll where the live ammunition and fuel could
be offloaded in uncontaminated water. The
move was accomplished during the remainder
of August and September.Eight of the major
ships and two submarines were towed back to
the United States and Hawaii for radiological
inspection. Twelve target ships were so lightly
contaminated that they were remanned and sailed
back to the United States by their crews.
Ultimately, only nine target ships were able
to be scrapped rather than scuttled. The remaining
target ships were scuttled off Bikini or Kwajalein
Atolls, or near the Hawaiian Islands or the
California coast during 1946–1948. ex-Independence
was retained at Hunters Point Shipyard until
1951 to test decontamination methods.The support
ships were decontaminated as necessary and
received a radiological clearance before they
could return to the fleet. This required a
great deal of experimentation at Navy shipyards
in the United States, primarily in San Francisco
at Hunters Point. The destroyer USS Laffey
required "sandblasting and painting of all
underwater surfaces, and acid washing and
partial replacement of salt-water piping and
evaporators."Finally, a formal resurvey was
conducted in mid-1947 to study long-term effects
of the Operation Crossroads tests. According
to the official report, decontamination efforts
"revealed conclusively that removal of radioactive
contamination of the type encountered in the
target vessels in test Baker cannot be accomplished
successfully."On August 11, 1947, Life summarized
the report in a 14-page article with 33 pictures.
The article stated, "If all the ships at Bikini
had been fully manned, the Baker Day bomb
would have killed 35,000 crewmen. If such
a bomb were dropped below New York's Battery
in a stiff south wind, 2 million people would
die."The contamination problem was not widely
appreciated by the general public until 1948,
when No Place to Hide, a best-selling book
by David Bradley, was serialized in the Atlantic
Monthly, condensed by the Reader's Digest,
and selected by the Book of the Month Club.
In his preface, Bradley, a key member of the
Radiological Safety Section at Bikini known
as the "Geiger men", asserted that "the accounts
of the actual explosions, however well intended,
were liberally seasoned with fantasy and superstition,
and the results of the tests have remained
buried in the vaults of military security."
His description of the Baker test and its
aftermath brought to world attention the problem
of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons.
== Personnel exposure ==
All Operation Crossroads operations were designed
to keep personnel from being exposed to more
than 0.1 roentgen (R) per day. At the time,
this was considered to be an amount of radiation
that could be tolerated for long periods without
any harmful effects on health. Since there
was no special clothing or radiation shielding
available, the protection plan relied on managing
who went where, when, and for how long.Radioactively
"hot" areas were predicted in advance, and
then checked with Geiger counters, sometimes
by remote control, to see if they were safe.
The level of measured gamma radiation determined
how long personnel could operate in them without
exceeding the allowable daily dose. Instant
gamma readings were taken by radiation safety
specialists, but film-badge dosimeters, which
could be read at the end of the day, were
issued to all personnel believed to be at
the greatest radiological risk. Anyone whose
badge showed more than 0.1 R per day exposure
was removed for one or more days from areas
and activities of possible exposure. The maximum
accumulated exposure recorded was 3.72 R,
received by a radiation safety specialist.A
percentage of each group working in less contaminated
areas was badged. Eventually, 18,875 film-badge
dosimeters were issued to about 15% of the
total work force. On the basis of this sampling,
a theoretical total exposure was calculated
for each person who did not have a personal
badge. As expected, exposures for target ship
crewmen who reboarded their ships after Baker
were higher than those for support ship crews.
The hulls of support ships that entered the
lagoon after Baker became so radioactive that
sleeping quarters were moved toward the center
of each ship. Of the total mass of radioactive
particles scattered by each explosion, 85%
was unfissioned plutonium which produces alpha
radiation not detected by film badges or Geiger
counters. There was no method of detecting
plutonium in a timely fashion, and participants
were not monitored for ingestion of it.A summary
of film badge readings (in roentgens) for
July and August, when the largest number of
personnel was involved, is listed below:
Service members who participated in the clean
up of contaminated ships were exposed to unknown
amounts of radiation. In 1996, a government-sponsored
mortality study of Operation Crossroads veterans
showed that, by 1992, 46 years after the tests,
veterans had experienced a 4.6% higher mortality
than a control group of non-veterans. There
were 200 more deaths among Operation Crossroads
veterans than in the similar control group
(12,520 vs. 12,320), implying a life-span
reduction of about three months for Operation
Crossroads veterans. Veterans who were exposed
to radiation formed the non-profit National
Association of Atomic Veterans association
in 1978 to lobby for veterans benefits covering
illnesses they believed were due to their
exposure.Legislation was passed in 1988 that
removed the need for veterans to prove a causal
link between certain forms of cancer and radiation
exposure due to nuclear tests. Incidence of
the main expected causes of this increased
mortality, leukemia and other cancers, was
not significantly higher than normal. Death
by those diseases was tabulated on the assumption
that if radiation exposure had a life-shortening
effect it would likely show up there, but
it did not. Not enough data were gathered
on other causes of death to determine the
reason for this increase in all-cause mortality,
and it remains a mystery. The mortality increase
was higher, 5.7%, for those who boarded target
ships after the tests than for those who did
not, whose mortality increase was only 4.3%.
== Bikini after Operation Crossroads ==
The 167 Bikini residents who were moved to
the Rongerik Atoll prior to the Crossroads
tests were unable to gather sufficient food
or catch enough fish and shellfish to feed
themselves in their new environment. The Navy
left food and water for a few weeks and then
failed to return in a timely manner. By January
1947, visitors to Rongerik reported the islanders
were suffering malnutrition, facing potential
starvation by July, and were emaciated by
January 1948. In March 1948 they were evacuated
to Kwajalein, and then settled onto another
uninhabited island, Kili, in November. With
only one third of a square mile, Kili has
one sixth the land area of Bikini and, more
important, has no lagoon and no protected
harbor. Unable to practice their native culture
of lagoon fishing, they became dependent on
food shipments. Their four thousand descendants
today are living on several islands and in
foreign countries.Their desire to return to
Bikini was thwarted indefinitely by the U.S.
decision to resume nuclear testing at Bikini
in 1954. During 1954, 1956, and 1958, twenty-one
more nuclear bombs were detonated at Bikini,
yielding a total of 75 megatons of TNT (310
PJ), equivalent to more than three thousand
Baker bombs. Only one was an air burst, the
3.8 megaton Redwing Cherokee test. Air bursts
distribute fallout in a large area, but surface
bursts produce intense local fallout. The
first after Crossroads was the dirtiest: the
15 megaton Bravo shot of Operation Castle
on March 1, 1954, which was the largest-ever
U.S. test. Fallout from Bravo caused radiation
injury to Bikini islanders who were living
on Rongelap Atoll.The brief attempt to resettle
Bikini from 1974 until 1978 was aborted when
health problems from radioactivity in the
food supply caused the atoll to be evacuated
again. Sport divers who visit Bikini to dive
on the shipwrecks must eat imported food.
The local government elected to close the
fly-in fly-out sports diving operation in
Bikini lagoon in 2008, and the 2009 diving
season was canceled due to fuel costs, unreliable
airline service to the island, and a decline
in the Bikini Islanders' trust fund which
subsidized the operation. After a successful
trial in October 2010, the local government
licensed a sole provider of dive expeditions
on the nuclear ghost fleet at Bikini Atoll
starting in 2011. The aircraft carrier Saratoga
is the primary attraction of a struggling,
high-end sport diving industry.
== Legacy ==
Following test Baker decontamination problems,
the United States Navy equipped newly constructed
ships with a CounterMeasure WashDown System
(CMWDS) of piping and nozzles to cover exterior
surfaces of the ship with a spray of salt
water from the firefighting system when nuclear
attack appeared imminent. The film of flowing
water would theoretically prevent contaminants
from settling into cracks and crevices.
== In popular culture ==
The juxtaposition of half-naked islanders
with nuclear weapons that had the power to
reduce everyone to a primitive state provided
some with an inspirational motif. During Operation
Crossroads, Paris swimwear designer Louis
Réard adopted the name Bikini for his minimalist
swimsuit design which – revolutionary for
the time – exposed the wearer's navel. He
explained that "like the bomb, the bikini
is small and devastating". Fashion writer
Diana Vreeland described the bikini as the
"atom bomb of fashion". While two-piece swimsuits
have been used since antiquity, it was Réard's
name of the Bikini that stuck for all of its
modern incarnations.Artist Bruce Conner made
Crossroads (1976 film), a video assembled
from the official films, with an audio collage
fashioned by Patrick Gleeson on a Moog synthesizer
and a drone composition performed on an electric
organ by Terry Riley. A commentator at the
New York Review of Books called the experience
of watching the video the "nuclear sublime."
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Lauren R. Donaldson Collection, served as
a radiation monitor for Operation Crossroads
- University of Washington Digital Collection
A series of watercolour paintings, made by
U.S. Military combat artists, as a report
of the tests.
US Navy and Nuclear Weapons Testing
Operations Crossroads (1949) is available
for free download at the Internet Archive
Atom Test Nears, 1946/06/13 (1946) is available
for free download at the Internet Archive
Operations Crossroads Underway, 1946/07/01
(1946) is available for free download at the
Internet Archive
First Pictures Atomic Blast!, 1946/07/08 (1946)
is available for free download at the Internet
Archive
Nuclear Test Film – Project Crossroads is
available for free download at the Internet
Archive (42m32s)
Atom Bomb (Joe Bonica's Movie of the Month)
(ca. 1955) is available for free download
at the Internet Archive
Analysis of Radiation Exposure for Naval Units
of Operation Crossroads – Volume I-Basic
Report
Analysis of Radiation Exposure for Naval Units
of Operation Crossroads – Volume II-(Appendix
A) Target Ships
Analysis of Radiation Exposure for Naval Units
of Operation Crossroads – Volume II-(Appendix
B) Support Ships
Internal Dose Assessment – Operation Crossroads
The Archeology of the Atomic Bomb – A Submerged
Cultural Resources Assessment of the Sunken
Fleet of Operation Crossroads at Bikini and
Kwajalein Atoll Lagoons (1991)
Wikimapia link showing Bikini Atoll and, particularly,
the Castle Bravo crater
The Smithsonian scientists involved in surveying
Bikini before and after the tests
Project Crossroads - Nuclear Test Film (1946)
on YouTube
