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| Originally Posted by Diving Dude l thought they must be, but l was suprised that they carried bombs. |
Hi Dude
At the end of WW2 the US Army Air Force and the US Navy top brass engaged in an argument over how the newly developed A Bomb would change the order of play. The Air Force took the position that the surface fleet was outmoded. The Navy were keen to defend their corner claiming that an A Bomb would only cause superficial damage. It seems obvious today but no-one really knew at the time. The Bikini tests were held to settle the argument.
There were lots of outdated and interned ships floating around and lots of excess ordinance. The Negato and Prinze Eugene were selected more for political impact than scientific discovery. The targets were loaded out the as close to operational status as possible so the results would be as accurate as possible. Livestock was used to simulate the crew. As naive as it sounds they expected most of the ships to be repairable after the tests were completed.
The first air burst test appeared to do little damage. The Navy were feeling confident. The second bomb was exploded below the water line. The explosion was dramatic to say the least. The black and white film of the event is the one most people assosciate with the atomic explosion mushroom cloud. You can just about make out one of the battleships (IIRC Akansas) being lifted out of the water. The mushroom was not from the explosion itself. It was caused by the water column rebounding off the lagoon bottom and rising into the air along with several 1000 tons of highly radioactive coral.
What caught everyone out was the fallout. Most of the ships were not sunk but they were too radioactive for the repair crews to board for any length of time. Some were towed to San Francisco where the USN spent several decades learning the art of decontamination trying to scrub them clean. The Eugene was left rotting on a mooring at Kwajaliene too 'hot' to board. As far as I know none of the test subjects were ever made safe.
Arguably the most useful product of that first round of testing were the lessons learnt about fallout and decontamination. It had not really occurred to anyone before that the new bomb which so swiftly denied a point on the battlefield from the enemy, also denied it from the friendly forces.