Original Items: Only One Lot Available. 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 on July 16, 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 in 1945, each with a yield of 23 kilotons of TNT (96 TJ).

The items in this lot:

- Kwajalein Crossroads Orientation Booklet
- x3 58th Wing Stationary
- x2 Small Period Photos: One appears to be of a camera set up on an aircraft, most likely to record the tests. The other photo is from the 1970s/80s and appears to be of a crewmember for the tests.
- Dave’s Dream B-29 Photo COPY: Big Stink – later renamed Dave's Dream – was a United States Army Air Forces Boeing B-29-40-MO Superfortress bomber (Victor number 90) that participated in the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945. Assigned to the 393d Bomb Squadron, 509th Composite Group, it was used as a camera plane in support of the bomb-carrying B-29 Bockscar to photograph the explosion and effects of the bomb, and also to carry scientific observers. The mission was flown by crew C-14 but with Group Operations Officer Major James I. Hopkins, Jr., as the aircraft commander.

A lovely assortment of items ready for further research and display.

“As soon as the war ended, we located the one spot on earth that hadn’t been touched by the war and blew it to hell.” - Bob Hope, Operation Crossroads by Jonathan M. Weisgall, Naval Institute Press, 1994.