Operation Crossroads: Baker
Operation Crossroads was a series of nuclear tests that took place in Bikini Atoll in 1946. “Baker,” the test shown above, took place on July 25, 1946, and was set off next to a fleet of unmanned naval vessels. The bomb unleashed exponentially more radioactive material than the government had predicted and a Joint Chiefs of Staff report later noted that Baker had transformed the nearby ships into “radioactive stoves” that would have “burned all living things aboard them with invisible and painless but deadly radiation.”
