Tests
The first atomic bomb to be detonated at Bikini was code-named "Able", a bomb similar in most respects to "Fat Man," which was dropped on Nagasaki. The B-29 designated to drop Able was named "Dave's Dream," and on July 1, 1946, at about 8:45 AM, the first peacetime detonation of a nuclear ordnance occurred. Of the animals left on board the ships at anchor in Bikini Lagoon, approximately 10% died instantly. The Naval vessels managed to withstand the blast for the most part, but many were destroyed during Test "Baker" on July 25. In the coming years, some twenty additional bomb tests would be conducted before the United States government officially returned control of the islands over to their natives in 1957. The largest test, Castle Bravo, also proved to be a large radiation fallout disaster: ashes from the explosion flew miles into inhabited islands, putting nuclear fallout into the public minds of many. The 1 March 1954 test exposed a Japanese fishing boat, Daigo Fukuryū Maru, to radioactive fallout, resulting in 11 of the boat's 23 crewmembers dying from radiation sickness.
Read more about this topic: Bikini Atomic Experiments
Famous quotes containing the word tests:
“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)