Page:Bombs at Bikini; the official report of Operation Crossroads (IA bombsatbikinioff00unit).pdf/9



Tests A and B of Operation Crossroads, perhaps the most elaborate scientific tests ever conducted, are described in this official report with no attempt to prove or disprove anything. Its sole purpose is to present facts on the origin, planning, and execution of the joint enterprise.

The word joint needs emphasis. The Tests were neither Navy tests nor Army tests; this Report is neither a Navy report nor an Army report, and it has not been submitted to Army or Navy for approval. The Tests and the Report are the work of Joint Task Force One, an agency created by the Joint (Army and Navy) Chiefs of Staff and responsible only to them.

The Report does not attempt to duplicate the capable reporting of the many experienced reporters who witnessed the Tests. Through the press the general character of the Operation is known to hundreds of millions of persons here and abroad. The world knows that the first explosion was an atomic bomb detonation in the air on July 1, 1946, sinking 5 ships, and that the second explosion was an atomic bomb detonation underwater on July 25, 1946, sinking 9 ships.

But there is a wealth of information, much of it technical, which has not reached the public. Time was required to ferret out the significant facts; patience was required to piece them together ingenuity was required to present the material without jeopardizing se- iii