![]() Subsequent test names included Nutmeg, Walnut, Maple, and Rose. As described in the military’s official report, whether detonated in the air or under water, the atomic bomb’s end result would be “death and destruction on an enormous scale.” A third test, Charlie, was cancelled due to radiation concerns. Operation Crossroads continued on July 25 with “Test B” (Baker), the world’s first underwater nuclear detonation. The bomb exploded 520 feet above sea level, where 242 naval vessels floated in the eastern lagoon as targets. On July 1, 1946, Joint Task Force One launched Operation Crossroads “Test A” (Able) when, at exactly 34 seconds past 9 a.m., a B-29 Superfortress dropped a 23-kiloton plutonium bomb (nearly identical to the “Fat Man” bomb that destroyed Nagasaki) over Bikini Atoll. These tests played a key role in setting the stage for global politics and power struggles for the first 75 years of the atomic age. With World War II over and a new era of Pacific control ahead, the United States selected Bikini and Enewetak Atolls in the northern Marshall Islands, part of what it called the Pacific Proving Grounds, as the site of 67 nuclear weapons tests. military and political leaders began planning a series of atomic weapons tests in order to study the effects of the bomb on naval vessels. Just three months after the atomic ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been burned into Japan’s landscape, U.S.
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