Catalog of Atomic Bomb Photograp[h]y for Able Day 1 July 1946 and Baker Day 25 July 1946, Bikini Atoll, USAAF Task Unit 1.52

[Washington DC]: United States Army Air Forces. Very Good+. [ca.1947]. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket, probably as issued) [light external soiling, a little darkening to the spine]. (charts, maps) A massive catalog of all (and I do mean all) the photo-technical data related to the photography (both still and motion picture, both black & white and color) of "Operation Crossroads," the first two post-World War II nuclear bomb tests, conducted at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific in July 1946. The first test took place on July 1, and was nicknamed "Able Day"; the second, on July 25, was "Baker Day." (The names were directly taken from the first two letters of the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet.) The stated purpose of the tests was to assess the level of damage that the massive explosions would inflict on naval vessels of various kinds that were stationed in the vicinity; all humans were evacuated from the ships, although a large number of small animals were placed on board (thousands of rats; hundreds of goats, pigs, and mice; and even a few dozen guinea pigs) in order to measure the effects on them of the radiation emitting from the blasts. (Short version: not good.) The two tests were designed to measure the effects of two different kinds of explosions: the Able bomb was an "air burst," detonated 520 above the surface; the Baker bomb was suspended beneath a landing craft and detonated 80 feet underwater. The stated purpose of this catalog was "to provide a systematically-combined record of photography available from [the two operations] for study, measurement, and analysis purposes." The bulk of its 756 pages is devoted to reproductions of the three data sheets that documented each roll of film that was shot: (1) the "Film Data Sheet," giving the technical specs of the camera and a summary of its coverage; (2) the "Time and Position Data Sheet," with detailed data on each individual exposure; and (3) the "Aircraft Track and Position Chart," a map of Bikini Atoll with the positions of each camera-carrying aircraft plotted thereon. (Those aircraft, by the way, were essentially drones, operated by radio remote control, and the cameras were automatic, so that no humans needed to be too close to the blasts.) There are also, at the beginning of both the Able and Baker sections, abstracts of the contents of each roll of film. (Example: "This roll shows phenomena from fireball through development of mushroom cloud in a series of exposures made in rapid succession (3 per second).") Although the volume itself was apparently not classified, neither was it a U.S. Government Printing Office issue intended for wide circulation; it's stated in a couple of places that "a limited number of additional copies of this publication are available," and informs the reader where to procure them. Its obvious purpose was to facilitate the users' ability to locate the film footage or still photography needed for purposes of their own analysis, and it's likely that a certain level of security clearance was required. (There is, however, this note among the introductory matter: "All data and sheets pertaining to Able Day Sortie H and bomb carrying aircraft have been deleted from this catalog and will be found in a classified addendum." Keeping wraps on info about the plane that actually dropped the Able bomb I can understand, but I wonder what the deal was with "Sortie H"?) A small amount of the film footage documented here was incorporated into the official U.S. Government documentary film of the events, called "Operation Crossroads: Able and Baker Day Tests, Bikini Atoll, Summer 1946," released in 1949. One would hope that all this photography has been preserved in the National Archives -- maybe even the stuff from the mysterious "Sortie H." The present volume is quite rare, with OCLC recording just three copies: at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC; the Air University Library at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama; and at the Phillips Research Site Technical Library, which was merged in 1997 into the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio (the OCLC link, however, is dead) -- the latter two of which, I suspect, are not readily (if at all) accessible by the public. NOTE, by the way, that there is no actual photography reproduced in this book: it's strictly a non-visual catalog. .