BOMBS AT BIKINI 



cording of results in a consistently uniform manner.* 

 Six days after A-Day the staff of the Director of 

 Ship Material completed an 85-page provisional re- 

 port on damage to ships and animals. Within thirty 

 days this group had completed an interim report of 

 2000 pages. Five months later it had finished a monu- 

 mental report of 150 volumes. The full story is now 

 available as to the damage wrought in the five seconds 

 after the detonation on A-Day. 



The GrILLIAM, closest of all the target ships, and 

 only ship located within 1000 ft. of the projected Zero- 

 point sank within one minute. She was a merchant- 

 type attack transport and was 446 feet long. Divers 

 later found that her superstructure was smashed al- 

 most beyond recognition, and her hull also was utterly 

 wrecked. She proved beyond the slightest doubt that 

 a ship of this type could not hope to stand up against 

 the atomic bomb at close range. 



The ANDERSON, a 338-foot destroyer located be- 

 tween 1000 ft. and one-half mile, sank within eight 

 minutes. Pictures taken from a PBM photographic 



* The difficulty of this job is hard to appreciate. On a single 

 ship such as the INDEPENDENCE, for example, there were liter- 

 ally thousands of compartments, rooms, and installations to inspect. 

 Hundreds of the rooms showed severe damage, and hundreds more 

 showed light damage. On the flight and hangar decks, too, there 

 were enormous areas of wreckage. Merely classifying an area as 

 ''wrecked" or "partially wrecked" would have been relatively 

 easy; hut to describe the wreckage in detail, and in terms suitable 

 for later practical use by engineers, ordnance experts, commMnica- 

 tions men, medical men, fire control personnel, and naval archi- 

 tects, was truly a Herculean task. 



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