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Bikini Atoll Nuclear Testing: "Project Crossroads Test Able" 1946 Department of Defense (DOD) - Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
🕑 Added 2019-10-27 16:01:16 +0000 UTCmore at http://quickfound.net/
Able Day blast of the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, July 1, 1946.
"These historic experiments were executed by units of the United States Army Ground Forces, Army Air Forces and the Navy in cooperation with the Manhattan Engineering District and many other branches of the United States Government and civilian scientific institutions. The primary purposes of the Bikini tests were to secure precise and accurate ship damage and instrumentation measurements resulting from atomic bomb explosions occurring both in mid-air and just beneath the surface of the water. The lessons learned may save many lives, many ships and many millions of dollars by guiding future expenditures for national defense into the most productive and efficient channels. It is therefore essential that our Army and Navy designers, tacticians, strategists and medical officers learn as much as possible NOW regarding the effect of this revolutionary weapon on targets not heretofore exposed to it. Without the information which can be gained from these experiments, your military leaders cannot discharge their responsibilities which you have assigned them. To find this information was the objective of Operation Crossroads. "
Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
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 2017, 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."...
