Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll consisted of the detonation of 23 nuclear weapons by the United States between and on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Tests occurred at 7 test sites on the reef itself, on the sea, in the air, and underwater. The United States and its allies were engaged in a Cold War nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union to build more advanced bombs from until Able was dropped from an aircraft and detonated ft m above the target fleet. The second, Baker , was suspended under a barge. It produced a large Wilson cloud and contaminated all of the target ships.

The U. The plus indigenous people living on Bikini Atoll at the time were moved to other islands in order to enable nuclear testing to begin. Between and , there were 23 nuclear devices detonated at various spots on, within, above, or beneath Bikini Atoll. Operation Crossroads was an attempt to better understand the effect of atomic weapons on naval targets. The first atomic bomb to be detonated in Operation Crossroads was code-named Able , and it was a plutonium bomb that exploded in the air over 80 unmanned target vessels in the Bikini Atoll lagoon on July 1,

Operation Crossroads, which had its first big event—the dropping of a nuclear bomb—on July 1, , was just the beginning of the nuclear testing that Bikini Atoll would be subjected to. When the first bomb of the tests dropped, it was the first time since the attacks on Japan that a nuclear weapon had been deployed. Here are three things you might not know about the infamous tests:.