Description:

"OPERATION CROSSROADS" PICTORIAL RECORD
Operation Crossroads was a series of two nuclear weapon tests conducted at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. They were the first nuclear weapon tests since Trinity and the first detonations of nuclear devices since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki less than a year earlier. Ninety-six ships and submarines were anchored in the island's lagoon, including the carrier SARATOGA, to determine the effects of the blasts on naval vessels, equipment, and animals. Offered is a commemorative book, "Operation Crossroads The Official Pictorial Record", Office of the Historian, Joint Task Force One (New York: William H. Wise & Co. ), 1946. 222pp. 8vo., heavily illustrated, with foreword by the project leader, Adm. W. H. P. Blandy. Blue leather covers with gilt titles and "atomic bomb explosion". This is a Navy-produced souvenir pictorial prepared for those who participated in the tests, now determined to have been a near disaster. Officers and men are shown at work and play in the weeks preceding the tests, and preparations includes the destruction of coral reefs, care of test subject animals and the positioning of the target vessels. There are multiple images of the blasts, and also the resulting destroyed vessels. Particularly shocking are photos of sailors clambering all over the freshly-irradiated wrecks and diving bare-chested on the sunken vessels. Fine condition. The post-blast operation was a disaster, with virtually every non-test ship doused with radioactive water, and sailors were spreading radioactivity throughout their ships. No decontamination plan had been prepared, and the possibility existed that the entire fleet might soon have to be abandoned. Further operations were soon canceled. Not surprisingly, mortality rates for those closely involved with contaminated sites was substantially higher than the norm.

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July 7, 2015 10:00 AM EDT
Elkton, MD, US

Alexander Historical Auctions LLC

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