Fair Sample, Fair Warning

The atomic bomb dropped at Bikini was not the clap of doom, but it was an ominous sample. Because it sank only a handful of ships, around the world there were some who scoffed at it. But military men saw a point that few laymen seemed to consider: in war a power with mastery of the atom would no more attack a prime enemy target with one bomb than a machine-gunner would go into battle with one round in his magazine.

As scientists and military observers crawled up & down the blackened sides of seared ships in Bikini's lagoon and stumbled over armored steel decks which had been dimpled by the unearthly blast, they needed little imagination to translate this laboratory test--by multiplying it fivefold or tenfold--into a scene of real war. What they saw was plenty:

P: The five ships sunk* were almost directly beneath the point of detonation (probably 500 yards short of the aiming point, and only half as high), and their passing left a hole roughly half a mile in diameter in the target array.

P: The blast pressure, transmitted through 150 feet of almost incompressible water, crushed the coral on the lagoon floor, turning the color of the water from slate-blue to turquoise.

P: If the ships had been manned, thousands would have been killed--most of those topside and many even below decks.

P: Men who survived the blast might have had only a few days to live because of radiation disease. Best evidence: a goat on the bull's-eye Nevada, which looked healthy enough when the ship was first boarded, died within two days when its white-corpuscle count went down to zero.

P: The smokestacks, even of battleships, crumpled like paper. The blast passing down the cruiser Pensacola's stacks blew open the boilers' fire doors--which would have brought death by suffocation to all the fireroom crews.

P: Masts, radar screens and radio antennae were snapped off or tattered.

P: Heavy topside structures were distorted to the point of uselessness.

P: Some gun turrets were "frozen" in position, their lubricants burned out.

Footprints in Steel. All this and much more, still to be disclosed, had been wrought by a bomb of the same plutonium type as that used at Nagasaki, but less powerful. As it was, these proud vessels had been humbled:

P: The light carrier Independence. Vice Admiral William H. P. Blandy, boss of Operation Crossroads, said as he stepped on the hulk's buckled flight deck: "She certainly can't be called a flattop any more. She's a rooftop now."

P: The battleships Nevada and Arkansas, and the less-proud Japanese relic Nagatoa, all with blackened paint, twisted upper works, and assorted injuries. Most remarkable, perhaps, was a three-foot dent in the armored afterdeck of the Nevada, as though a cosmic giant had set his boot there.

P: The heavy cruiser Pensacola, the only ship which showed serious damage below the main deck. She, too, had a deep depression in an armored deck amidships.

P: The submarine Skate, a contorted mass of wreckage.

Worse to Come. As the puzzling spots and shifting currents of radioactive water cleared, tugs were busy pulling a score or more wounded ships into position for Test Baker, scheduled for July 25. A few, virtually undamaged, like the haughty old Saratoga and the Nazi cruiser Prinz Eugen, both on the outer fringes of the circle, moved easily under their own power. But Navymen were convinced that the second bomb, to be detonated about 18 feet under water, would raise a wave 50 to 100 feet high, could cave in the hulls which had escaped damage last week. With no intent to be ironic, they said the first test had been only a curtain raiser for the main show.

*The Japanese light cruiser Sakawa; the destroyers Lamson and Anderson; the attack transports Gilliam and Carlisle.

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