On the first day of July 1946, a B-29 Stratofortress took off from Kwajalein Atoll and headed to Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, loaded with a “Fat Man” nuclear bomb.
The atomic era had just begun, and the United States Armed Forces questioned the purpose of traditional weapons in the new world. Even the utility of the entire Navy was suddenly challenged.
An experiment was then proposed in an effort to prove that the mighty fleet was still worthy of existence. It would be called Operation Crossroads, and it started when a 23-kiloton nuclear device was detonated on top of a ghost fleet of about 100 ships.
While many vessels were severely impaired, one emerged virtually unscathed. It was the renowned Prinz Eugen, a captured Kriegsmarine cruiser. The formidable ship would not go down with a single nuclear explosion, but a subsequent bomb proved more destructive.
As chemist Glenn T. Seaborg put it, the spectators had just witnessed: "The world's first nuclear disaster."
