The April 1946 All Hands article “Rendezvous with a Bomb” described Operation Crossroads, framing the planned nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll as a calculated encounter between the Navy’s surface fleet and the atomic bomb. Scheduled for the summer of 1946, the two detonations — Shot Able (aerial burst) and Shot Baker (underwater burst) — would test the survivability of a target fleet of surplus and captured warships under nuclear conditions and inform postwar naval ship design and doctrine.
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