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After the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman issued a directive to Army and Navy officials for the joint testing of nuclear weapons “to determine the effect of atomic bombs on American warships.“ Bikini Atoll was chosen as the new nuclear proving ground for the U.S. government because of its location away from regular air and sea routes. The natives needed to be relocated in order for operation Crossroads to get underway. This raw footage from 1946 shows members of the 53rd U.S. Naval Construction Battalion working on or near Bikini Atoll, in preparation for the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests. The film begins at Roi-Namur, an island in the north part of the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. At :7 a pair of jokey signs reads “Roi-Namur Power & Light Co.“ and then “Atoll Lodge -- No Liquor Atoll -- No Women Atoll“. A series of primitive huts are seen, along with sun tanned personnel. At 1:55 laundry is dried on a line. At 2:40 wide shots of the base are seen with quonset huts. At 3:10 a sail boat is seen on the beach. At 3:18 a three bladed propeller is on display in front of a large hut. At 3:40 remnants of what appears to be either a crashed bomber or perhaps a gun emplacement are seen, and a serviceman takes a picture with a Speed Graphic camera. At 4:30 a sign reads “United States Naval Construction Battalion Bikini Atoll.“ At 5:09 the island's primitive cemetery is shown. At 5:49 men joke around the for the camera. At 6:20 men examine a Japanese shrine on the island. At 6:40 a radio antenna is 7:20 the beach area and a dock are visible with many personnel on the beach. At 7;57 the Crossroads target fleet is visible including the bullseye ship USS Nevada which is painted bright red or orange. At 8:40 shots of what appears to be a Dauntless SBD aircraft are shown. These may have been in use as control aircraft for Hellcat drones, as they appear equipped with radar domes. At 9:04 an aircraft carrier is seen underway. At 10:00 the Able shot of Operation Crossroads is seen from a distance of perhaps 20 miles, with the mushroom cloud rising into the atmosphere. At 14:00 shots of the Atoll are seen from the air. At 14:20 the plane lands at an airbase where many B-29s are seen. At 14:27 radiation monitors and dosimeters / geiger counters are used to monitor the radioactivity of the aircraft. The Fifty-Third Naval Construction Battalion was commissioned on 22 December 1942 at Camp Allen in Norfolk, Virginia. After work in New Caledonia, the unit went to Guam and participated in the invasion there at war's end. After World War II the 53rd participated in Operation Crossroads Research Project at Bikini Atoll. Unit was deactivated in Bikini in August, 1946. Operation Crossroads was a pair of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. They were the first nuclear weapon tests since Trinity in July 1945, and the first detonations of nuclear devices since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The purpose of the tests was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on warships. The Crossroads tests were the first of many nuclear tests held in the Marshall Islands, and the first to be publicly announced beforehand and observed by an invited audience, including a large press corps. They were conducted by Joint Army/Navy Task Force One, headed by Vice Admiral William H. P. Blandy rather than by the Manhattan Project, which had developed nuclear weapons during World War II. A fleet of 95 target ships was assembled in Bikini Lagoon and hit with two detonations of Fat Man plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapons of the kind dropped on Nagasaki, each with a yield of 23 kilotons of TNT (96 TJ). The first test was Able. The bomb was named Gilda after Rita Hayworth's character in the 1946 film Gilda, and was dropped from the B-29 Superfortress Dave's Dream of the 509th Bombardment Group on July 1, 1946. It detonated 520 feet (158 m) above the target fleet and caused less than the expected amount of ship damage because it missed its aim point by 2,130 feet (649 m). The second test was Baker. The bomb was known as Helen of Bikini and was detonated 90 feet (27 m) underwater on July 25, 1946. Radioactive sea spray caused extensive contamination. A third deep-water test named Charlie was planned for 1947 but was canceled primarily because of the United States Navy's inability to decontaminate the target ships after the Baker test. Ultimately, only nine target ships were able to be scrapped rather than scuttled. Charlie was rescheduled as Operation Wigwam, a deep-water shot conducted in 1955 off the California coast. This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit
