SFC Claudia Garcia
SFC Kyle Kinkel
CBRN SLC Class 004-17
Operation Crossroads
Two nuclear weapons have been used in the world for war purposes. Both nuclear weapons were deployed by the United States during World War II and resulted in an indescribable amount of damage. Government and military officials were concerned with the possibility of future wars and nuclear conflict. The United States’ Armed Forces required assurance that their military equipment and vehicles would be able to withstand the most dangerous of threats, to include chemical and/or biological warfare. This assurance came in 1946 when Task Force One undertook a mission, Operation Crossroads, which was critical to future military operations. Operation Crossroads was sanctioned under the command of Vice Admiral William H. P. Blandy (Shurcliff, 1947). Operation Crossroads consisted of a series of tests conducted in the Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands, located in the Pacific Ocean. These tests yielded pertinent statistical results, which were vital to the understanding of potential future conflicts and the readiness of the United States Armed Forces.
The first test, named Test Able, was engaged on July 1, 1946, and conducted
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Gilda did not hit its true target. Gilda missed the target by nearly 650 meters. This resulted in an explosion that was not as disastrous as initially anticipated. At least 35% of the animals aboard the vessels died immediately following the explosion from either extreme radiation or air blast (Weisgall, 1994). It was concluded in The Evaluation of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1946), that “a large ship, about a mile away from the explosion, would escape sinking, but the crew would be killed by the deadly burst of radiations from the bomb, and only a ghost ship would remain, floating unattended in the vast waters of the ocean."(p.