# U.S. ATOMIC BOMB TEST AT BIKINI ATOLL OPERATION CROSSROADS 42244b

Made for the home market by World in Color Productions, this silent color newsreel shows the atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll known as Operation Crossroads. Various views of the test are seen, including aerial footage of the blasts. 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, named Gilda after Rita Hayworth's character in the 1946 eponymous film, was dropped from the B-29 Superfortress Dave's Dream of the 509th Bombardment Group on July 1, 1946, and detonated 520 feet (158 m) above the target fleet. It…

- Kind: Film
- By: PeriscopeFilm
- Genres: Industrial and advertising
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/42244b-atom-test-atomic-fury-mos)
- Licence or status: none stated by the archive
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/42244b-atom-test-atomic-fury-mos?play=1)