Operation Crossroads; The Official Pictorial Record

New York: Wm. H. Wise & Co., Inc, 1946. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover, cloth cover. good. 224 pages. Decorative cover. Illustrated endpapers. Color frontispiece. Illustrations. Index. Wise and Company promotional postcard still affixed after page 224. Pages slightly darkened, boards & spine somewhat scuffed & faded. Task Force One (TF 1) was organized on 11 January 1946. It followed the basic principles employed during World War II to develop amphibious task forces, but incorporated needs of the scientific program. The joint task force staff comprised Army, Navy, and civilian scientific personnel. This joint staff maintained liaison with the War and Navy Departments, the Manhattan Engineer District, and other government agencies. Commander Joint Task Force 1 [CJTF 1] maintained liaison with two boards of special interest, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Evaluation Board and the President's Evaluation Commission. The Evaluation Board was to advise CJTF 1 during preparation for the tests and evaluate test results. The Evaluation Commission was to cooperate with the War and Navy Departments in conducting the tests, and to undertake a study of the tests and to submit its observations to the President along with findings, conclusions, and recommendations. JTF 1 was subdivided into eight task groups, each of which performed some specific function. Task Group 1.1 (Technical Group); Task Group 1.2 (Target Vessel Group); Task Group 1.3 (Transport Group); Task Group 1.4 (Army Ground Group); Task Group 1.5 (Army Air Group); Task Group 1.6 (Navy Air Group); Task Group 1.7 (Destroyer Surface Patrol Group); and Task Group 1.8 (Service Group). 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 above the target fleet and caused less than the expected amount of ship damage because it missed its aim point by 2,130 feet. The second test was Baker. The bomb was known as Helen of Bikini and was detonated 90 feet 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 coast of Baja California. 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."