National Test Exercise - Operation Ivy
Item Information
- Title:
- National Test Exercise - Operation Ivy
- Description:
-
Hydrogen Detonation
- Creator:
- Federal Civil Defense Administration. Region I. 1951-1958
- Photographer:
- United States. Air Force
- Name on Item:
-
U.S. Air Force
- Date:
-
April 5, 1954
- Format:
-
Photographs
- Genre:
-
Photographic prints
- Location:
-
National Archives at Boston
Box ID: 05 (shelf locator) - Collection (local):
-
Record Group 304: Records of the Office of Civil Defense and Defense Mobilization
- Series:
- Civil Defense Photographs, 1951-1961
- Subjects:
-
Islands
Nuclear weapons testing
Nuclear weapons
Civil defense
Operation Ivy, Marshall Islands, 1952
- Places:
-
Marshall Islands
- Extent:
- 1 photograph : print ; 8.5 x 11 in.
- Permalink:
- https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/h128rw508
- Terms of Use:
-
No Copyright - United States
Unrestricted
This work is in the public domain under a Creative Commons No Rights Reserved License (CC0).
- Notes:
-
Title from accompanying material.
Text from item: An aerial view of a portion of Eniwetok Atoll after the "MIKE" detonation. The test island - Elugelab - is completely gone. The arrow points to the water-filled crater roughly a mile in diameter. The crater sloped down to a maximum depth of 175 feet - equivalent to the height of a 17-story building. Operation IVY was conducted by Joint Task Force 132, for the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense, at the AEC's Pacific Proving Grounds in the Marshall Islands in the fall of 1952. Operation IVY involved an experimental thermonuclear or "hydrogen" detonation. The thermonuclear device, code-named MIKE, caused the greatest destructive effects ever noted from a single explosive device. The particular test island (ELUGELAB) of the atoll completely disappeared. The resulting nuclear "fireball" was the largest ever produced. Joint Task Force 132 was commanded by Major General Percy W. Clarkson, USA. Dr. Alvin Graves, of AEC's Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, was Scientific Deputy to the Task Force Commander. Scientific and military tests were conducted by a Scientific Task Group, supported by Army, Navy and Air Force Task Groups. Photos #1 through #18 in this series were prepared by the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense. They are issued by the Federal Civil Defense Administration because as President Eisenhower has said, "If the peoples of the world are to conduct an intelligent search for peace, they must be armed with the significant facts of today's existence."
- Notes (date):
-
Date from item or accompanying material.
- Accession #:
-
824935
- Identifier:
-
0908
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