In 1946, the U.S. Military command decided that there was a lack of understanding of the affect of atomic weapons on naval targets. Hence it was proposed that for Operation Crossroads that three nuclear weapons would be detonated by empty naval ships off of the Bikini Atoll Island, within the Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific. 146 native people were removed from the Bikini Atoll Island before the tests began.
On July 1, 1946 an atomic weapon was dropped from a B-29 aircraft onto the island. A second nuclear weapon was detonated underwater which destroyed 74 naval ships. The military canceled the planned third nuclear test on the island due to decontamination concerns.
Author’s Note:
The United States conducted 23 nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll Islands from 1946 to the 1950s. On March 1, 1954 the Bravo Hydrogen Bomb was detonated at Bikini Atoll. The Bravo was the most powerful hydrogen bomb the United States ever detonated, and at 15 megatons, the blast vaporized 3 islands and was 1,000 times the magnitude of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic weapons that were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan during World War II.
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